Summary: A wonderfully composed successor to Dungeon Keeper 2 which captures the look and feel of the original game. Sadly however, the game has been released long before its due time, and as such is filled with placeholder items, niggly interface bugs and occasional game breaking issues. First person minion view (possession) and the entire multiplayer mode are both horribly broken.Summary: A wonderfully composed successor to Dungeon Keeper 2 which captures the look and feel of the original game. Sadly however, the game has been released long before its due time, and as such is filled with placeholder items, niggly interface bugs and occasional game breaking issues. First person minion view (possession) and the entire multiplayer mode are both horribly broken. Please note the time of writing of this review. If you are reading this in a few months from now, it may be worth investigating if the issues mentioned herein have been resolved.
War for the Overworld is ostensibly the most lauded spiritual successor to the Dungeon Keeper series, and with good reason: it has been lovingly designed by some of its must staunch fans who have worked together to build this game from the ground. Not only that, but it has received a verbal endorsement from Dungeon Keeper designer Peter Molyneux himself!
Starting up War for the Overworld for the first time leads the user to a very functional lobby. The options menu is well laid out and almost all options are neatly described in layman's terms via tool-tips. The omission of any function to change keyboard bindings was noted.
The campaign mode was the only acceptably functional game mode at the time of writing. The levels are nicely designed with great variation and interesting nooks and crannies to explore as you expand your dungeon, wealth and army of minions. Each room performs specific functions and how you design your dungeon will affect how efficient it becomes, although it is sometimes difficult to discern exactly what the room actually does. Traps, doors and constructs facilitate other means to reinforce your stronghold, each having unique mechanics to allow the player to devise their own devious death delivery systems to would-be trespassers.
The narrator/adviser will ensure that you don't to too far astray by pointing out strategic goals, highlighting rooms of interest and introducing the player to new creatures as they make their debut. My personal opinion that was while the advice was good, the game did rather hand hold a little too much. In some cases the adviser was responsible for me losing a level due to moving the map and focusing on something at a critical moment. The game is fun to play in spite of its bugs, but the problems do feel like a let down when compared to the highly polished Dungeon Keeper 2.
The bugs are quirky but difficult to overlook. There are problems with selecting some of the options using the on-screen HUD, object names have placeholder tags, descriptions of the functions of many rooms are woefully lacking, imps keep dying in the same place like lemmings and the 'wards' to control them don't work terribly well. Furthermore there are occasional game breaking bugs which will cause you to reload. Some of these will recur on reload, forcing you to restart the level.
Pros:
Captures the Dungeon Keeper look and feel.
Exciting creatures, rooms and traps.
Nice level design with fantastic narration.
Witty and sarcastic commentary.
Some new game mechanics that really add depth to the game.
Cons:
A large number of bugs, place-holders, graphical glitches and odd animations.
Interface problems get in the way of gameplay.
No option to change keyboard bindings.
Multiplayer mode very much incomplete.
First person minion mode virtually unusable.
Creature pathfinding is poor.
A little too much hand-holding. Can impede gameplay at times.
Feedback to the player is lacking in places. Imps die like lemmings with no alerts to the player.
It is difficult to imagine how a project like this managed to go so horribly wrong at its final stages of development. The design and ideas in this game are remarkably good throughout, but the game was simply never quite given those finishing touches. War for the Overworld has the potential to be a great game, but is let down by countless bugs which should have been quashed during the beta stage. It is likely that these bugs will be fixed in the coming months. While I have had a great deal of enjoyment playing War for the Overworld, I can not recommend consumers to spend their hard earned cash on what is essentially an unfinished product that has no guarantee of completion.
About me: I am and avid gamer and Dungeon Keeper fan. I have supported War for the Overworld from a fairly early stage which should be taken into account when reading this review. I refrained from engaging in the beta process in order to save the experience for the final product.… Expand
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