Dungeon Keeper 2

by Electronic Arts

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00000K3DM
• Item Weight: 5 ounces
• Media: CD-ROM
• Release Date: June 1, 1999
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #11,603 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Review

There are many games that let you tear through dungeons with a group of adventurers as you loot, kill monsters, and build up your strength for the final showdown with the evil beast that runs the place. Dungeon Keeper 2 reverses these traditional roles by letting you run the dungeon. You get to stock your custom-made deathtrap with creatures, set traps, and generally make life as miserable (and short) as possible for the heroes foolish enough to invade your lair.

Games such as the old Wizardry 4 and the original Dungeon Keeper have operated under this concept, but no game has done it this well. Starting with a little hole in the ground, you command your minions to start digging tunnels, mining veins of gold, and clearing out rooms to house the nasty creatures you'll eventually generate and recruit. Everything is rendered in colorful 3-D, and the special effects are especially satisfying.

Beware: This isn't a game for the kiddies. Characters like the Mistress, who is rewarded by being tortured, are strictly for adults. That "Mature" ESRB rating is there for a reason. If you like building games like SimCity and can appreciate Dungeon Keeper 2's dark sense of humor, it's hard to beat for wicked fun. --T. Byrl Baker

Pros:

• Terrific 3-D graphics and overall production values
• Twisted sense of humor
• Lets us play a fantasy game from the bad guy's perspective

Cons:

• Definitely an adult game: don't let the kiddies anywhere near it
• A little too easy to master

Product Description

Be the Dungeon Keeper, ultimate ruler of your dark creepy networld. Build a Dungeon. Monstrous warfare. Wicked perspective. Mulitplayer warfare. Downloadable updates.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Dungeon Keeper 2: Good & Bad, December 28, 1999

By 

Lisa Shea "medieval swordfighting enthusiast" - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (TOP 50 REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Dungeon Keeper 2 (CD-ROM)

We waited quite a while for Dungeon Keeper 2 to come out, and bought it immediately when it did. On one hand, it's great for a sequel. People who played DK1 will easily be able to pick up on moving units, building rooms, lining corridors with traps.

The graphics are better in the sense that they're more geared towards future development. Instead of pixel-based graphics, the creatures and rooms are now drawn with polygons. While that makes some of the monsters look clumsy, it does mean that future graphics will be much smoother and cleaner.

Going down into your dungeon by possessing a creature does not cause the creatures to turn into a cloud of dots - the rooms you roam through are still crisp and easy to see. Roaming through your own dungeons is one of the true pleasures of this game, too!

There are only a few extra rooms - you'd have hoped for much more from a sequel that took this long to make. The casino is neat, if only because a jackpot-winning minion starts dancing and singing when he wins. (Disco Inferno!)

Rooms have better graphics, though. The hen-houses in the hatchery, the on-wall bookshelves and torture racks, everything shows a subtle touch.

If choosing between DK1 and DK2, I'd definitely recommend people get this game. The challenges and gameplay in DK2 are better than DK1, and DK1 has many new extra features like Pet Dungeons.

New players will appreciate having a well crafted game that is a fun challenge, while experienced players will appreciate the subtle differences between the old and new version.

Don't expect a masterpiece of Sequelhood, but do expect a fun strategy gaming experience that will last quite a while!

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars When will modern games be as good as this was?, May 29, 2005

By 

Drake-by-the-Lake "movie critic" (State of Euphoria) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dungeon Keeper 2 (CD-ROM)

This 1998 release is about as good as gaming gets. In 2005, I bought a used copy in order to re-experience DK2 which I had bought and sold many years earlier.

Today, the product is finicky, and won't work with every computer system. If you have a fancy sound card, you might experience program crashes. I still rate DK2 five stars, because I remember it was fully compatible in '98. How can the producer plan for future sound cards, which should by rights be backwards-compatible?

I had trouble getting it to work with my laptop, but it worked ok with my PC. Both systems run Windows 2000. The main thing is to be using a sound card that DK2 likes. There is a lot of advice out there on the net of marginal usefulness, and some gurus recommend modifying your Windows Registry, but that seemed a bunch of hogwash to me, and I just took the game to a different PC which had an older sound card, and had no more problems. That is, until I upgrade Direct X. Now the game crashes after 30 minutes.

In summary, expect the program to crash if you buy it. If you can get it to work--likely if you have an older PC--then it is very fun. And a bargain for the price--like Quake II.

I loved DK2 because it was naughty, fun, diverse, witty and easy to use. One of the great tragedies of video gaming is that the much-anticipated DK3 never was, or will be, released, due to the myopia of Electronic Arts, which bought Bullfrog, the original producers. They could have earned many millions from a DK3; but they chose not to. For whatever reason.

***RECOMMENDATIONS for Users/Consumers of DK2: ***

I am including this section for those diehard DK loyalists who really want to play this game on their Win 2000/XP system. There are a few things you have to do.

One is, download the upgrade to version 1.7. This is available for free on many places on the web. Get it from a legit source. Avoid pirate Russian/east European web sites which typically attempt to install spyware on your PC. DK2 will ***NOT WORK*** on Windows 2000 without this upgrade! You have been warned! I have never found any difficulty obtaining the upgrade as it is available on many gamer sites.

Two is, you may need to run dxdiag from your Windows Run menu. This *may* fix problems such as choppy/erratic sound or video. Or, it may not, and you may spend many hours trying to get it to work, without success.

Your best prognosis is if you are running Windows 98. This game is the most prone to crashing of any that I have played in my life, on my Win2K system.

Mainly, I recommend using on a Win 98 system.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderfully Funny and Addictive, July 17, 2000

By 

Bill "william5916" (Newport News, VA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dungeon Keeper 2 (CD-ROM)

I'll be perfectly honest. This title wouldn't be in my home if it hadn't been given to be as a birthday gift. In fact, I had the game for a month before even trying to play it. Was totally unimpressed the first night...but...something happened...addiction slowly began to set in...let's just say that this person stayed up playing Dungeon Keeper 2 until 4:30 this morning, fighting creatures, the urge to sleep, and the wisecracking game narrator who at 3 am informed me that "your nocturnal prowess has earned you a special gaming tip---GO TO BED!"

As others have mentioned, humor is a standout feature in Dungeon Keeper 2. If the game had taken itself seriously I wouldn't be staying up so late playing it. Not that humor is all there is though. Carving out a dungeon is challenging and requires strategy, lest you find your treasury drained of gold or end up facing an unexpected enemy attack that kills your minions off one by one.

Like any good game, Dungeon Keeper 2 is easy to learn, but difficult to master. The first level is literally a tutorial in which most of your moves are prompted by the helpful though occasionally sarcastic narrator ("The very rock yawns in anticipation of your next fascinating move," he'll intone if you pause the game for several minutes).

Each succeeding level builds upon the previous, with new challenges being added. Already-completed levels can be replayed as many times as desired, which can be a great way to take a small breather after a lengthy battle with a new enemy.

Each of your dungeon creatures has its own distinct personality. Like children, they'll whine loudly if unable to find a place to sleep, eat, etc. Refuse to cater to a creature's demands and it will eventually leave your dungeon in a huff. On the flip side, if you find the bellyaching to be intolerable in one of the later levels, pick the griper up and drop him in a prison. Eventually he'll die and will come back to life as a more agreeable skeleton! The dead even rise again as vampires in later levels of the game.

Beautiful graphics and sound, first-rate gameplay, and a wonderfully off-beat sense of humor. Dungeon Keeper 2 is first-rate!