I have been playing Overlord By codemasters for the xbox 360 and have been immensly enjoying this fresh new spin on rpg’s. I think the best thing about this game is it’s slightly cartoonish styling, albeit with polished, stellar graphics, and the simplistic application of a nice array of abilities and spells for you and your minions.

This game introduces a very interesting new spin on summoned critters. Instead of just being able to ‘summon creature x’ from your wizard wares, you have four classes of critters to choose from, and throughout the game, you obtain spells that you can also taint each minion with. The other cool spin on this is that depending on certain choices you make, you get different spells for different minions. That being said, here are the four types of minions you get to use: blue, green, brown, and red. You get the brown ones first, right at the beginning of the game, regular ‘ol brute force guys, good for hackin’ and pillagin’. As you progress throughout the game, you have to unlock the ability to spawn each other type of minion, often with certain quests you must perform before you can do so. (which adds yet another element of freedom to the game).

The red minions are not so tough, but can throw fireballs at your enemies, and can be especially powerful when stacked in groups. (more on that shortly) the green minions are kindof an offshoot of the brown guys, although they have the ability (when grouped) to pounce simultaneously on a baddie. lastly, the blue minions, while rather useless at combat, can resurrect your freshly killed guys back, provided you get to hem in time. (you only have about 10-15 seconds or so).

You also have the ability to forge your own weapons (again, after finishing a quest for the smelter(s). this is cool b/c you can imbue your weapon with abilities based upon how many of each minion you have. there is also a nice convenient dungeon for fighting baddies you’ve already conquered, in order to get more critters to imbue your weapon with. Another way that you use your critters during the game is being able to sacrafice them at certain blood or mana locations interspersed throughout the levels, by losing a minion you gain back health or magical energy.

Now about the stacking of minions. this is pretty cool – you can tell all your minions to stay put, and pluck one or all of them out of that pack and send them to their own areas. this is great for things like stacking the green guys to pounce on a baddie from a certain position, or stack the red guys to throw a huge collective fireball at ‘em. it’s also great for blues as since they are bad at fighting, you can keep them out of harm’s way and only use them when you need some medical assistance.

This game is very enjoyable to play and I only have a few negative things to say about it. first of all, the brewery level glitch totally sucks, but codemasters is actually releasing a fix for this.
Basicly you can get permanently stuck in a level b/c of this, i’ll spare you the details. the other thing i found tedious was the sometimes circuitous routing of some of the levels (like the @#%@ swamp, aaaggghh!!), i got SO lost in some of them and had no idea where i was. how about a simple map or somthin? i mean ANYthing to help me get my bearings. Aside from that I think the game is great and would recommend it highly to any rpg’er or anyone who just wants to try something different in a game. rating? 8/10 for graphics, playability and overall enjoyment. some points taken off for the glitch and the occasionally difficult navigation in the game.