Customer Reviews

Dungeon Keeper 2

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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 :/ .

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

This updated version of this game works great on Windows 7. It still looks the same, and plays great. I love playing this game and wish there was something modern that was close. When I board with MMO's and FPS games this is my ultimate fall back game. I love it!

This software will not run properly on Windows 7, Vista, XP even in 2000 Compatibility Mode. Do not waste your money on this product.

This game is still awesome after all these years, but very hard to find. Amazon is the only place to get copies that I am aware of. I highly recommend the game. Humor, strategy, and excitement all in one package.

The game is compatible with windows XP and Vista now. There may be minor adjustments to make to the settings to get it to stop crashing, but it can be totally stable. I have hundreds of hours into the game (and my wife has twice as much as I do) on out high end Vista machines, and we've had zero crashes once we got the settings right.

The game leaves very little to desire, it is virtually perfect!

My current PC is a AMD dual-core 2.8 GHz, 6 GIGs of RAM, ATI Radeon HD 4200 graphics (onboard) running under Windows 7 64-Bit. All drivers are up-to-date. I run a clean machine, little more than mouse, audio and graphic drivers loaded with nothing extraneous starting up or running when attempting to play Dungeon Keeper 2.

It took a couple hours of changing settings and checking Google for solutions and hints to get to even see the game graphics. Once I was able to get the game started I found it was impossible to keep it playing. Randomly after as little as a few minutes or more than half an hour the game will simply quit to Windows. This happens when hitting the ESC key to access the game menues, when clicking on the Panel Bar or the game screen itself or also when doing nothing but watching things happen with no user input at all.

I have had multiple email exchanges with the technical support people at Sold Out Software (the current distributors of the game) and while they were quite willing to work with me on this issue they have not found a solution and as of this writing have exhausted their knowledge and are giving up on finding a solution.

From what I was able to see of the game in my limited playing time between crashes... I wasn't all that impressed. At 1024x768, the only resolution I was offered by the game, icons over creatures heads were unreadable unless you were fully zoomed in. Graphics appeared muddied. Going on (fond) memory, I'd say the original Dungeon Keeper's graphics were nearly as good as Keeper 2's graphics although the animations in the newer game were somewhat better. I wasn't all that impressed.

In conclusion; good luck getting this running. I know, from reading other reviews and web sites, that many people have gotten it to work but it seems just as many run into the same problems I've been having. I'm just glad I didn't spend a lot of money on this game, I can NOW* recommend it.

* After searching Google over the past week or so and reading a hundred or more messages on a half dozen message boards I was able to find the right combination of settings and registry tweaks to get the game to run properly on my computer. Updating Stars accordingly. The following are my settings and may or may not work for you. Use at your own risk.
Compatibility: Windows XP SP2 mode
Run as an administrator

Only attempt to edit the registry if you know what you're doing!
In the Registry Key:
"HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Bullfrog Productions Ltd\Dungeon Keeper II\Configuration\Video"
Set:
Engine ID to 4
Screen Width to 800
Screen Height to 600

I loved this game when it first came out and decided to give it a go again. Got it in and spent 4 hours trying to get it to work right. Install went fine, update went fine, open the game and you have a menu with no background, just words...start a mission and you have a black screen with a mouse and maybe a bit of menu options showing at the top of the screen. After beating my head against it trying to figure out what i did wrong i found a post saying "uncheck hardware acceleration in graphic options. then blindly start first mission and it should work. at least this worked for me." I hope this saves any other DK2 fans out there the trouble i just went through lol!

This is a great game. It feels too good to be bad and kill all of the good guys for once.

DK2! So awesome. I can play this game for hours on end and forget what time it is. The quality of this particular game purchase was great, and I would buy again from this seller. I also wish they had come out with DK3 like they had promised. Only drawback to this game is my boyfriend is starting to get jealous...but whatever.