Evil Genius 2: World Domination

Not a bad game, just an extremely tedious game, starts off extremely fun at first, but between agent scaling, downright unfair agent vs minion stats(IE any of youre minions maximum Vitality only goes up to 150 with all upgrades and start at 50 vitality per minion and the games idea of making it more "hard" is to just throw more guys at you and to decrease the amount you earn and how much damage you do) But the forces of Justice scale so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ terribly in the late game that like a group of no name soldiers has more health per squad member than one of youre elite henchmen(named characters that take unique quest to recruit them) Minion AI and pathfinding can be extremely awful in the late game to where you can soft lock yourself at the heli pad. Weapon progression for youre minions is really awful as well, you have to build a high tech impact analyzer just to equip minions with studded batons. and the highest tier weapons they can get in the base game is "rifles" AKA just sub machine guns the RIFLE RACK EVEN SAYS IT HANDS OUT SUB MACHINE GUNS! It takes a DLC(oceans pack) just to like equip them with rocket launchers/freaze rays. the aesthetic is cool and novel and so is the soundtrack.... however it starts to wear itself really thin... Traps range from useful for free damage to agents to downright ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ USELESS LATER GAME! Combat devolves into trapping agents in a single corridor and rushing them with 50 mercs, hitman and martial artist late game. The damage super agents do to minions is downright unfair sometimes. So like youre telling me a guy with a suppressed pistol (Super agent) Does more damage/has a higher DPS then a huge ass russian women with a Light machine gun? the Combat AI is also incredibly dumb. The game, doesnt respect its own pyschics and or internal logic and outright breaks it many MANY times. The only difference between an early game guard(in an orange jumpsuit) and an Agent 47/Bruce lee wannabe is their damage and "armor" which is really just hidden damage resist. But also hitmen require a much higher salary than mercs. Mercs and guards become useless late game. Agents disarm traps way too high of a rate in the late game. Also traps eat up a bunch of power. the so called "fusion generator" produces only 48 POWER! for 1 FUSION GENERATOR! DO YOU REALIZE HOW DUMB THAT IS A REAL FUSION REACTOR IRL WOULD POWER AN ENTIRE CITY! YET IN THE GAME ITS JUST TREATED AS JUST A LARGER GENERATOR THATS MORE EXPENSIVE! the 1960s aesthetic is cool and all... but this is more a hyper idealized/cartoonized version of the real world 1960s and 1970s. Ironically in some ways team fortress 2 has a very accurate depiction of the 1960s. Even tho it kinda does the same thing this game does. that being the 1960s the "themepark version" While certain things ironically the Mercenary's outfits actually look quite time period accurate. Youre cover op casino is good and all, except when enemy super agents/later game agents spawn their either 1. Completely resistant to distraction and have a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of HP and damage(so like a basic investigator with a 38 special revolver and no body armor) Having more HP than an extremely muscular Agent 47 with a submachine gun(same with damage really) I would have liked a much more in depth system/game system for combat and like honestly a better way to do difficulty would have been instead of inflating agent stats in the late game would be better to just like introduce new agent types and they increase not in HP and flat damage they do but rather new enemy types with better weapons(all the same weapons you unlock over the course of the game) and My idea is like agents on higher difficulties will unlock or put people that for example have SMGs while you still have pistols, IE their not unbeatable you just have to tech up and or like make smarter choices. the world map is a click and wait mobile game... theres no chance a minion can fail a scheme and its all about cooldown timers. in the game though, I actually really enjoyed it and am heart broken that I just wanna finish it :( but its just gotten so tedious/the many MANY frustrations of this game piled up and I don't wanna play it no more. All of that could be fixed if the devs added modding tools and or like the game wasn't running on a proprietary engine. Honestly TLDR: This game is less a strategy game and more a quick and wait game where you just use meta strats to cheese the difficulty esp later game and what not!

EG2 feels like they tried to make another mobile game in the franchise before realizing everyone hates mobile games, and then rapidly had to re-tool it to work as a PC game. 99% of the time you are going to be twiddling your thumbs, waiting for something to happen. The annoying VHS fast-forward whine will be stuck in your head permanently as there is almost no reason to play at 1x speed. The missions lack the amusing charm from the first game since now they're all repeatable slop, base design is nearly braindead if you put about 5% effort into working on your cover operation, and defending against any invasions consists of pointing your henchmen at them and going to sleep. The first game had some of these issues (specifically how handling any group of soldiers really boiled down to how many henchmen you could sic on them) but I never felt bored playing the first game, there was always something to keep an eye on or even just fun stuff to watch happening in my lair. This was very disappointing as a sequel and it almost certainly killed the franchise dead, just go play the first game after getting it dirt cheap on sale.

Evil Genius 2 is at best fine, but at worst a slog of repeated timers. It's a base building game where you get to build a lair inside a mountain, hire henchmen, and do schemes to take over the world. Your lair is filled with minions, controlled by AI, and elite henchmen that you personally control (as well as the evil genius themselves). You send minions out into the world to do schemes, which then attract agents who try to come kill you. The highlight of the game is definitely the base building aspect. It's easy to understand, easy to change, and the visuals are nice. After 3 playthroughs the base building and management is what kept me interested. Where the game begins to fall apart is the actual schemes, which feel bloated and slow from beginning to end. Game progression is split into 3 categories: main mission, side mission, and research. Main missions progresses the story and unlock side missions. Side missions unlock minion types, agent stories, and loot. Research improves your base as well as is used for progressing the other two categories. These 3 overlap regularly with main missions occasionally requiring a side mission to be done, or research, ect. This is one of the bigger bottlenecks of the game because you can only do 1 mission each at a time and 1 mission in a territory on the world stage at a time. It's not uncommon for all your missions to require research, meaning you have to stop your current research to do the others one at a time, as well as occasionally requiring you to go to the same area of the world, blocking each other. You can't do 2 research at the same time, you can't do 2 side missions at the same time, you can't do a main and side mission in the same territory in the world at the same time. It becomes a long queue that you slowly work through. This wouldn't be too bad if things could be done faster, which they technically can, but not by much. The general flow of a single mission usually goes along the lines of: research a mission in your lair, send minions to various places around the map, protect your lair from goons, send more minions into the world to retrieve an item, defend yourself again. Occasionally there is another step like interrogate a goon or agent, call a meeting with politicians, ect. Regularly these steps are repeated in the same mission. The problem begins with the research needing your scientist to do the actual research. If all goes right, and your scientists don't decide to prioritize eating halfway across the lair instead of the mess hall right next to the lab, this can take several minutes, blocking you from researching anything useful or starting a different mission. The minions travel to the world via helicopter which requires an animation for each minion. If your deception minions have to run through your casino (cover operation to fool agents) they are very likely to forgo the mission and talk to tourists, causing another deception minion to get tagged for the mission, go into the casino, and create a death spiral where nobody makes it to the mission. Having goons invade your lair can sometimes take minutes, leaving you wondering if they're coming at all. Lastly, the missions take on those school problems you dreaded in that there's only 3 parts to the mission, but each part has an A, B, and C. So a 3 part mission requires 10+ sub missions. There are no 5 minute missions, only 45+ minute missions. The subtle issue that will also bottleneck your progression is the minions themselves. In EG2 they are more like a currency to pay for a mission. Once they go to a mission they don't come back. This means that each one you train is good for 1 single mission before needing to be replaced. If a mission requires you to do 5 things on the world stage you'll probably deplete one of your minion types, requiring training dozens of minions all over again, slowing your progress even further. Higher level minions take longer to train. This becomes even more inefficient due to the design of some training machines not allowing you to stack them close together to be boosted by your evil genius' abilities. In addition, another problem with your minions is the pathfinding and logic. If you arm up all of your security with guns they will still stand around in a giant crowd with their fists up watching a 1v1 take place in the center. I've had a bunch of times where all of my security is standing around watching an agent cut through half my forces in 1v1 fights only to have the agent finally die and all of my security return to their idle walking animations with their guns drawn. Minions will also struggle to navigate around objects like desks, so instead of attacking an agent from behind to turn a 1v1 fight into a 1v2 next to a desk, potted plant, ect. your minions will instead form an orderly line and die one by one. Lastly, the player's orders do not take top priority, even with your henchmen. If you want to launch an early attack against agents inside your casino the henchmen that you've told to run in will almost certainly stop to talk to a tourist on their way, missing their window of opportunity. You won't always see that your henchmen are distracted, so you'll give them an order and wrongly think they are going to do it. There are voice lines to indicate if the henchman will listen, but they can be vague. A single playthrough will probably take about 40 hours depending on how much you care about side missions. At least 10 of those hours will be you helplessly sitting there waiting for a minion to run to the helipad, a squad of goons to come to your lair, a number to go up, or a number to go down because the game is so slow that you've done everything else and have nothing left to do while waiting. You'll read in many negative reviews that the game feels much like a mobile game, something you are supposed to play idly rather than actively. I would argue that those statements are completely true. The problem is that this isn't a mobile game, it IS a game that requires attention as there are genuine threats that will wipe out your lair if you don't deal with them yourself. However, that clashes with the long wait times involved with every single action. If you begin a long timed mission, you can't go do something else because you could get attacked at any moment by high level agents. In my 3 playthroughs I've collected dozens and dozens of small issues here and there. From not being able to micromanage which weapons your security uses (mercenaries gobble up everything), to your deception minions not scaling alongside the agents they are supposed to be weakening, to having to search multiple levels of your lair because there's a stealthed super agent that you need to kill in order to progress a mission. I haven't even mentioned the heat mechanic that can lockdown areas of the world for 5 minutes (unskippable), canceling and preventing missions. Or that doing heat reduction missions clears out all the other missions in the area so that you lose the gold making mission you were wanting to get, but couldn't because the heat was too high. Or that non-story missions appear randomly on the map so you sometimes just don't have an option to reduce heat. Or that the mission text that is supposed to get you invested into the EG world is crammed into a small box that auto scrolls even though there's plenty of room for it. There's also the problem of not knowing what some things do, such as traps. The text says that this trap freezes agents into a popsicle, but what does it actually DO? Lower skill? Health? Resolve? Suspicion? This game would have greatly benefitted from more player testing or modding. There is a decent game in there that needs various small changes here or there, but it will never be found because the game (once the DLC was finished) was quickly abandoned by the devs and modding has been locked out by DRM. Evil Genius 2 is one of the ideal examples for death by 1000 cuts.

Never played evil genius 1 so I can't speak for all the people comparing it to the first game, but I thoroughly enjoyed the game. The humor is great, the artstyle is great and the gameplay is... okay. I do wish there the balance was a little better because there are certain casino items, traps or henchmen that are very clearly just way better than any alternatives.

Игра хорошая.ИИ миньонов это шедевр какой-то,кажется,что их код писал пьяный студент.Игра хороша большим выбором кастомизации своей базы,есть даже туалет ♥♥♥♥♥ золотой.Если хотите расслабиться вечером и просто построить базу,то вам сюда.Игра крутая 10 минонов из 10

Более чем половина механик и вещей по началу кажутся полезными, но по итогу либо бесполезны, либо вообще вредят. В казино нет смысла потому что у врагов очень быстро статы вырастают так что вы никого не сможете обмануть и отправить домой. Деньги разве что, но и тех не густо. В дверях нет смысла потому что они больше замедляют ваших миньонов, а не врагов. Да и врагов замедлять смысла нет, потому что у них нет никакого таймера на пребывание. Они либо живы и бьют ваших, либо мертвы. Ловушки, особенно сплэшовые, больше дамажат ваших юнитов, чем врага, потому что обысно врагов приходит 3-5, а ваш муравейник окружает их скопом в 20-30 человек. Это крайне неприятно, учитывая что хп ваших миньенов раза в три-четыре меньше чем у эндгейм врагов, и даже самые безобидные враги по типу Воров или Дознавателей будут класть ваших пачками и без помощи ловушек которые этим самым миньонам снесут 30-50% хп. Роботы вообще ужас - да, не едят, но также ходят заряжаться, так и ещё постоянно пытаются в бой первыми ворваться. В чем проблема? А они взрываются после смерти. Нет, они не супер-танковые ребята, они ложаться ровно также как и остальные миньоны соответствующего класса, но в отличии от них - взрываются, дамажа не только ваши постройки и всех окружающих (А как вы помните - ваших в зоне поражения в разы больше чем врагов), так ещё и пожар вызывают, что при затяжной драке может очень быстро эскалировать в тотальный ужас по всей базе. Ваше оружие судного дня тоже бесполезно. Да, оно снижает внимание от властей, но с тем количеством врагов что на вас идет - можно просто из каждой пачки по 1-2 типа захватывать, допрашивать у вас будут просто бесконечные разведданные для ровно такого-же моментального снижения внимания. Геймплей затянут невероятно. После первого часа игры вы вообще никогда не выключите Х2 ускорение, и она всё равно будет утомительно долгой. Когда вы построите более-менее хорошую базу (А происходит это примерно часу к 3-4) - ваш основной геймплей будет простым втыканием в ожидании пока натренируются юниты для Квестовых Миссий. Вам быстро надоест делать сайдквесты кроме добычи новых миньонов, потому что это (кто-бы мог подумать) бесполезно. Приспешники не настолько мощные (хотя можно всё-же собрать полный отряд) что-бы из кожи вон лезть и добывать их, а добыча - вообще просто украшение. Короче, писал сразу после 32ч. прохождения, минусы лезут в глаза больше чем плюсы. Возможно просто не моё. Делайте выводы сами.

I bought this second game after seeing a friend play the first one and getting excited about it. However, it has almost nothing to do with the first game. Traps feel completely useless. To kill the super agents you are forced to progress the main story, and you end up repeating the same “go there, kill this” missions over and over again. Unfortunately, the same repetitive loop also appears in the side missions. In management-style games I usually expect a certain level of realism, and this game seems to have lost that completely. Some super agents simply spawn directly in specific locations rather than following a logical path, which means the game gives you almost no opportunity to prepare a proper defence. In short, they managed to ruin the excellent formula of the first game. The result is a mediocre experience and, honestly, a waste of time.

I'm what I assume is half-way through my first playthrough. Initially its a really fun, if obviously watered down version of what Evil Genius was. However, as other reviewers state, it becomes very tedious after a point. You reach a point where you have built your base and you're just waiting for minions to leave on missions or for a research project to complete. It's compounded by the fact you can only pursue one side objective at once and there are over 20+ of them, some of which seem to repeat over and over (looking at you super agent missions). If you could just do all the side missions at once at your own pace alongside the main story, then it would probably remove the majority of the tedium. If you can, I'd recommend getting this for under £5 or just buy the original, which was more fleshed out and thought through than this version