Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1909 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Codemasters Limited
• Released on: 2007-06-28
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• ESRB Rating: Everyone
• Platform: Xbox 360

Amazon.co.uk Review

Morally ambiguous characters are all the rage in video games nowadays, but they always tend to be violent crime games. This is essentially a cross between the old Dungeon Keeper games and Nintendo’s Pikmin, where you play a Sauron-like dark lord in a fantasy world fill of so many corrupt and unpleasant people you often end up playing the de facto hero. Like Pikmin this is a mix of third person action game and a real-time strategy, the obvious difference being you’re now in charge of a horde of goblins instead of cute little flower creatures.

Although you directly control your bad self in the game you’ve only got some simple axe attacks and magic spells. Instead your main interaction with the world is via your goblin minions. You can either target an enemy and tell them to attack or control the biggest group directly with the right stick. One of the main currencies in the game then is lifeforce, with which you can instantly generate a new minion. This can be obtained from some enemies, and also sheep, but also from innocent villagers if you want to be really nasty. Although the game may lack moral complexities the capacity for strategy is more developed, as you eventually gain the ability to set ambushes and cast spells on minions. The game’s graphics are generally attractive, even with a jarringly short draw distance, but it’s the gameplay that really impresses here with something genuinely out of the ordinary in terms of both strategy and motivation.

Manufacturer's Description
Discover how corruptible you are in Overlord, the twisted fantasy action adventure where you can be evil (or really evil). In the game's seriously warped fantasy world, players will become the Overlord and get first-hand experience of how absolute power corrupts absolutely". You could be a regular run-of-the-mill Overlord. However, with incredible power at your disposal and a team of evil-minded impish critters, the Minions, on hand to do your bidding, how will you resist the temptation to be wonderfully despotic?!

The Overlord has the power of concentrated badness right from the start and you'll know how much more of a total bad-ass you're becoming as the game tracks your 'corruption' throughout.

How corrupt you become depends on how you handle any given situation, your actions and how their consequences impact the game world. For example, if you and your minion horde dispose of a bunch of particularly nasty, violent Halflings that have overrun a once-peaceful village, the village's original peasant occupants will herald you as their liberator. Now each time you pass through, the peasants will welcome you as their new lord and protector, cheering your arrival and giving you offerings.

However, as an Overlord, it's worth seeing what more can be obtained from the peasants' gratitude. If you exert some proper feudal repression, they'll tremble and fall to their knees when you're in town. If you become truly mean, the poor peasants will resort to cowering in your presence, pray for their lives and even offer up their daughters in order to appease you.

Customer Reviews

dark yet light
over lord is a game where you have been chosen to be the ruler of a group of goblin like creatures who devote themselves to you they will move, gather and kill for you but you can fight for yourself with hand to hand weapons or special powers such as fire balls.

A medeivel gta, but with little minions to do the work for you!
This game is a brilliant game and is like fable, the minions are very tought and easy to controll, the only bad thing about this game is that it has its fair share of glitches, but a patch has just come out for xbox 360. I must say McArthur you must be a pretty bad player to lose most of your minions, i found it easy to controll them. Ive almost completed the game, but im stuck on the second last boss battle =[. I would recomend this game to anyone whoi liked fable.

Short-lived
Overlord is one of those irritating games that start so promisingly. The concept is fresh and fun, and it's executed with a bit of flair and humour not usually found in this type of RPG. Controlling a small army of bloodthirsty minions is enthralling at first, and you may well be forgiven for thinking you've stumbled across a ground-breaking game.

However, six or seven hours later you feel quite differently.

Mininons that were once great fun are now impossible to control (and thus, keep alive) and your main character's lack of interaction with the world begins to really grate. It feels largely unfinished, as if the creators designed the controls after only playing the early levels.

Of course, on the other hand, those early levels are refreshing, and when you only have one or two types of minion following you about in a relatively small group, you can really have a great time, no matter how short-lived it may be. The problems only arise when you unlock more and more different minions (one type of whom seems quite redundant) and more slots with which to fill with the little creatures. To the point where you're followed by scores of the things that are impossible to keep under control. You end up watching half of them die while you're helplessly trying to save the rest. It's really a terrible shame.