Dungeon Keeper 2

by Electronic Arts

Product Details

• ASIN: B0000CFUB2
• Item Weight: 1 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,719 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

Product Description

If you built it they will succumbProduct InformationCreate the most wicked loathsome underworld imaginable.  Dig out yourunderground kingdom.  Populate your dungeon with a variety of beasts suchas the Skeletons Dark Elves Trolls and evil Warlocks.  Prepare them forbattle with training rooms workshops and magical libraries.  With the helpof the dreaded reaper conquer your enemies and expand your empire in your questto defeat the King and invade the land heroic good.Product Features Build the Dungeons of Your Darkest Dreams First construct a nightmarish floor plan.  then direct your Imps to dig out the tunnels rooms and chambers for your new home.  Slap them around if they are not working fast enough. Infest Your Dungeon with Vile Beasts Discover a portal so evil creatures can find their way into your domain.  Mine gold to pay their wages build places for them to rest in and a hatchery where they can feed. Put Your Minions To Work For You Construct training rooms to improve the fighting skills of your dungeon dwellers a library where they can research and learn devious new magic spells and a workshop to create new traps to thwart encroaching do-gooders. Battle the Forces of Good Fulfill your strategic role as the evil overlord leading your wicked hoards in combat against those righteous heroes.  Cast devastating spells to crush your enemies and support your minions.  Or join the action at dungeon level by possessing your creatures and battling from a first person perspective using special spells and abilities. Entertain the Creatures of Your Dungeon Keep your minions happy by creating casinos where they can drink and gamble.  Or build a pit arena where they can gain combat experience or sit back and enjoy the fights from a ringside seat.  Torture Chambers are popular attractions for those who like it rough.Windows Requirements

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating idea that doesn't quite reach it's full potential, March 19, 2008

By 

Stratohoven (UK) - See all my reviews

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Dungeon Keeper 2 (Video Game)

I bought Dungeon Keeper 2 a few years on budget out of curiosity and at the time it struck me as being quite a fun game. I completed it, then decided to sell it, as it didn't grab me *that* much. About a year later I thought back to it and realised how much I would like to play it again, so I bought it again and worked my way through the campaign.

Dungeon Keeper is a real time strategy game with an obvious difference. You play on the side of evil and try to crush the sickeningly pure and good inhabitants of the Sunlit Kingdom. But there is more to the game than simply a change of side. In most Real Time strategy games you have control over your minions and little control over the terrain. In Dungeon Keeoer 2 the opposite is true. You can dig out your subterranean kingdom any way you see fit. You can build a few large rooms with few corridors, or you can build mazes of corridors and many small rooms; whatever strikes you as being a good strategy. However you have little control over your inhabitants. If you build a room it will attract a certain type of creature. Workshops attract Trolls, Libraries attract sorcerors, Combat Pits attract Dark Knights etc. But you can't order anyone to actually do anything. Of course they like to keep busy, so Trolls will toil ion the Workshop and Sorcerors will research Spells in the library but the only way to force someone to do anything is to physically lock them in a room.

Strategically Dungeon Keeper is potentially rich. Gold is mined as a resource and is in only limited supply. Your creatures demand payment and higher level creatures demand a higher wage. If you run out of money your hard trained creatures will leave your dungeon in anger, so there is certainly pressure in completing a mission before your gold reserves run out. A dungeon with many corridors may make it harder for invaders to wind their way to your vulnerable dungeon heart and make good areas for boulder traps, but may result in your creatures having to walk too far to get to lair, hatchery or treasury. Obviously the converse is true. Many large rooms make areas accessible to your creatures but leave you wide open to enemy encroachments. No strategy is really the "right" one most of the time, and missions should not be thought of as a puzzle with only one solution.

Aesthethically Dungeon Keeper 2 is great. The graphics are good at conveying stone passages and gold seams, and you may feel feel a hint of gold fever as you zoom in to your treasury laden with chests overflowing with gold coins. The presentation is all quite tongue in cheek though so expect smiles rather than chills when you survey your realm. The voice acting is uniformly good and often amusing; the Troll with make a goofy annoyed sound when picked up and hearing the Goodly Folk describe you as a "foul fiend" is amusing. The music is excellent too. Although synth infused it contains a menacing ambience to convey your dungeon and Gregorian chant style music to denote the Heroes.

However there are some faults to the game. As I said Dungeon Keeper 2 is *potentially* strategically rich. Some missions simply need you to crush a rival Keeper and that isn't actually all that difficult. Simply build a dungeon, train them up using Training Rooms and Combat Pits and when your army is large enough and well trained enough just plant a call to arms flag on the dungeon heart and they'll destroy it. For me the game is at it's best when your dungeon is on the defensive as this is where your arsenal of traps comes into use. There is much strategy in placement of traps. Some can be used in harmony with others for greater effect. A freeze trap by itself for instance isn't much use but in conjunction with a lightning trap it can be brutal. Establishing killing zones laced with traps is an under utilised aspect of the game. Which is a shame as it's the most satisfying. Too often you're expected to be the attacker and this is where the game tends to play too much like a standard real time strategy game.
The spell list is curiously unsatisfying and limited too and some spells you might use only a couple of times in the game.
Of the game modes the Campaign is probably the best, as there are a wide variety of mission styles to complete. There is a Skirmish mode but the AI is too passive and most maps just require you to build up an army and unleash it. There are a few exceptions, but they are too few and far between.

However it's worth pointing out that it's rated Mature for a reason, mainly for the Mistress character. Her cries of ecstasy as she is being tortured on her own equipment certainly might meet with the disapproval of some family members if they hear it. Perhaps a pair of headphones would be recommended when playing this.

Overall a highly enjoyable and unusual strategy game that unfortunately could have improved upon. Still highly recommended.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful nostalgia, March 17, 2008

By 

V. L. K. - See all my reviews

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Dungeon Keeper 2 (Video Game)

I used to play Dungeon Keeper years ago and when I got a new laptop recently I wanted to relive this game. I bought Dungeon Keeper 2 and it is all the fun and addiction I remember. The game itself is great, it is hilarious, fun, and oh so addicting. It's hard to stop playing and the difficulty is just right to remain enjoyable. If you like strategy games, or are one of those people (like me) that tends to root for the bad guy, you should buy this game!
I did have some compatibility problems and the game kept crashing and freezing up my entire computer, or else it would just shut down altogether and I would lose my progress. It's unfortunate that the game doesn't translate well to newer machines, but I still think it's worth it to play. I just have to save my game every two minutes :/ .

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What a great game, playable on XP too!, December 27, 2007

By 

Mudd (San Jose, CA) - See all my reviews

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Dungeon Keeper 2 (Video Game)

There were complaints from fellow reviewers who could not play this game on current PC with Windows XP. I decided to try this game (distributed by Sold-Out) anyway because I do have a Win2000 system sitting around. But first I tried it on my most up-to-date WinXP gaming system, which isn't anything to brag about. I don't know what Sold-Out did but the game works fine on my gaming rig. This game comes with the most recent 1.7 patch. Everything runs smoothly and the game is fun. It's quite unique because you get to play a "bad-guy." Remember that this isn't simply a strategy game, it is also a tycoon game too, because you have to worry a lot about the happiness of your denizens. The big CON is that the graphics are really out-dated by today's standard and the fact that DK3 isn't pending production anytime soon, which is really sad.

System:
Core 2 Duo E6300 w/ 1GB RAM
ATI x1900GT
WinXP