Evil Genius 2: World Domination

It has a lot less replayability than the last one but it is still pretty solid.

Got the Deluxe Edition for $6 (cad) during a steam sale and i put in 40 hours within 3 days and it's real fun and worth the money. There are very few issues I have that can be fixed in a small update, which I doubt would happen since the last update was in 2022. [list] [*]If objects are destroyed you have to manually replace them, there is a toggle to have it auto replace but you'd have to press it (enable it) for every single item. The devs should've made it so that it'll be on by default or even add a on/off option in the settings. [*]Denuvo. Just remove it at this point, it's been 4 years since release and I want to mod this SINGLEPLAYER game. [*]DLC achievements. From what I could tell is there are none. [/list]

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

I've not played the first Evil Genius and had no point of reference or expectations before buying this game. Overall, I got my money's worth (on sale) but there is 0 replay value. Late game becomes such a grind that I haven't even finished the game. Early game has some challenges, but after you figure out the strategy, it's just managing priorities. Mid-game is enjoyable: you get to build out your layer, research new machines and decorations, etc. But then late game all the activities are on the world map. All you end up doing is dispensing your minions to keep the "heat" low, training minions to send them to one-way missions, and fighting the super agents that inevitably show up because there is just no way to keep everything on the down low. And sadly, there is no mechanism to make the grind simpler. You can't see which territories have no activities going and have no advance information about which minion types will be needed. After completing what I thought was a challenging main mission, the next mission presented with almost the same steps. At that point, I bailed and uninstalled the game. But still, before the grind hit, I was reasonably entertained for a few evenings, hence "recommended with reservations". The game was solid, with no glitches, cute animation, good sound, some humor. Has great potential, just needs less focus on the damn map.

I loved the first game, and I loved the second game at first too. This game has a great foundation, but needs severe QOL improvements to help keep the game engaging. As it stands, various different problems drag the game towards tedious near the mid game rather than challenging or fun. Unfortunately, I don't believe this will happen, and would suggest looking into other base building games.

its an interesting concept, and the aesthetic is cool, but there are a number of problems. The biggest by far is the fact that 90% of "content" in the game is just sitting around waiting. Wait for minions to train, wait for minions to go on a mission, wait for research, wait for minions to build something. Genuinely feels like the game mostly plays itself and you're really only there to design the lair. Cool, but I feel like the rest of the game is just an annoying afterthought to the lair builder. Also the DLCs are genuinely terrible. None of them do anything particularly different, and just add more things to sit around and wait for. The Polar one (the biggest) adds a terrible heat mechanic that makes your base way more fragile for very little benefit, the in-genious one just adds a bunch of items that are straight upgrades of things that are already in the game (take less space, work faster, etc) so it feels pay-to-win cheaty.

While I do enjoy playing this game, I would never recommend this to a friend. [to be clear I've been playing this game on hard mode and have been doing everything correctly] This game has massive game design flaws that hurt my enjoyment of the entire game. I don't feel in the mood to explain why with like 2 - 3 paragraphs but to keep it short; the entire game is a progress bar, there is no 'game'. It's a glorified decorated progress bar where to wait like an hour for SOMETHING, ANYTHING to happen. While you play the game further, the fights get reptitive, and while I do sometimes enjoy a game being repetitive, this is like, REALLY repetitive. Literally just task your henchmen to kill the enemy every 10 minutes and forget about it. There's barely any strategy here and the traps most of the time get disabled for me which seems kind of pointless for one of the CORE mechanics to just be thrown out of the literal window. There is no gameplay, no strategy, and the breadcrumbs of gameplay you do in this game is 90% the same. exact. thing.

I played the first one when i was alot younger and i bought it and though i would get the same feeling like i did when i was younger and played EG 1 but i just didn't feel it. ANd on top of this it's quite expensive for being 4 years old. Recommend? No.