Overlord

by Codemasters

Product Features

• Amass and breed minions and collect weapons and armor to keep them equipped and fighting for gold
• Steal anything from gold and axes to pitchforks, chef's hat and even dried-out pumpkins -- almost anything can be used
• Use your minions tactically -- they're ready to sacrifice themselves and their lives in servitude to the Overlord. Just don't let them get distracted by alcohol or succubi
• Employ Healers to resurrect fallen minions and prepare them for the next battle

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000QS1K46
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches ; 4.8 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Release Date: June 26, 2007
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (61 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #11,614 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Platform: Xbox 360

Overlord is an Xbox 360 exclusive that takes role-playing and action conventions and flips them on their head. You're exploring the legendary Overlord's Dark Tower when you discover you've inherited the legacy of the evil long-dead Overlord. As you emerge near-death you decide to rise as the new Overlord -- and you'll have to decide how evil you're willing to get. Played out with plenty of black humour and dark irony the game will immerse players in twisted parodies of classic fantasy scenarios and characters. Format: XBOX 360 Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE Rating: RP UPC: 767649401529 Manufacturer No: 116716

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

68 of 71 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's Good to Be the Overlord, September 19, 2007

By 

Michael J. Tresca "Talien" (Fairfield, CT USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Overlord (Video Game)

I didn't start out planning to be an evil overlord.

When I found out that Overlord was a cross between Dungeon Keeper (where you get to play the bad guy in a fantasy world) and Pikmin (where you get to control different colored carrot people in quests), I was sold.

My first impressions of Overlord was that I was playing Sauron, back when he was still a horse-headed giant-type, before all that all-seeing angry red eye on top of a tower business. As Overlord you are in charge of goblins, who come in four flavors: brown, red, blue, and green. Fans of Pikmin (or any video game on the planet) know how this works: blues are immune to water, greens are immune to poison, etc. These diabolical minions accompany your Overlord everywhere as you rampage around the countryside reclaiming your evil inheritance. You know, cleaning up the tower, reclaiming all your minions, and finding a naughty girl to settle down with.

Being an Overlord is rather domestic, apparently.

-----+= EVIL OVERLORD RULE #24: I will maintain a realistic assessment of my strengths and weaknesses. Even though this takes some of the fun out of the job, at least I will never utter the line "No, this cannot be! I AM INVINCIBLE!!!" (After that, death is usually instantaneous.) =+-----

I started out feeling very charitable to the peasants of Spree, returning their food from the evil halflings. I discovered that Overlord is basically a cynical view of Lord of the Rings, with all the heroes being horrible hypocrites, and thus truly the villains. Compared to Melvin Underbelly the gluttonous halfling, the Oberon the slothful elf, Sir William the lecherous lord, Goldo the greedy dwarf, Jewel the envious and Kahn the wrathful. The seven deadly sins, wrapped up in fantasy stereotypes, all waiting to be defeated.

There are two paths you can pursue in Overlord. Be nice to people and do good deeds (or at least, not particularly evil deeds) and you can pursue the path of Lawful Evil, for those of you who know D&D. Be mean and it's a downward spiral into Chaotic Evil. These choices reflect how the various characters interact with you, from the lowliest peasant to your mistress of choice. I started out trying to be relatively nice, if only because all the walkthroughs I consulted whenever I got stuck took me down that path.

Then I was on a quest to save some stupid sacred Tree of Life in a stupid sacred elf forest and in an attempt to stop two bloody unicorns (no, really, they're unicorns covered with blood) from killing me, I used a fire spell...and set the Tree of Life on fire. This in turn set the whole forest ablaze, bloody unicorns, elves, and all, who went up in a screaming conflagration.

Well that pretty much dashed any hopes of my redemption right there and I started considering an evil path. I felt bad about the whole thing and was actually considering making it up to the elves, maybe by planting some trees or something...

Until I met Velvet.

-----+= EVIL OVERLORD RULE #49: If I learn the whereabouts of the one artifact which can destroy me, I will not send all my troops out to seize it. Instead I will send them out to seize something else and quietly put a Want-Ad in the local paper. =+-----

About halfway through the game you have the opportunity to take a mistress. Rose, Velvet's older and more straitlaced sister, calls your little goblins "pixies" and generally sets an imperious tone about your tower--MY tower, which I didn't invite her to. So when I had the opportunity to switch to the sleek little minx named Velvet, reclining in laced up stockings on her bed and promising Teen-rated services...I suddenly had a change of perspective.

Velvet's evil and she's not subtle about it. She constantly threatens, cajoles, and pouts throughout the game to get you to do more evil things. It worked. Oh how it worked! And when you give Velvet what she wants, she...reciprocates.

I'm not proud of this, but Xbox Live is. Because it has Mistress Master as a title. This has to be a new low. Or a new high, depending on your perspective.

Thus I became not just an evil overlord, but a really sadistic jerk. I went back to Spree and slaughtered every inhabitant, burned every building to the ground, and took all their stuff. Then I went back and enslaved their best-looking women as servants. I mean...somebody knows what 12-year-old boys want. I am not a 12-year-old boy, but I hope to be when I grow up.

Overlord is a glorious form of stress relief. You travel from area to area via your tower, slowly accumulating more minions and gold. You can upgrade your weapons, learn new spells, and of course evil-fy your tower. Because Velvet wants you to. And you should really do what Velvet tells you to do if you know what's good for you.

-----+= EVIL OVERLORD RULE #53: If the beautiful princess that I capture says, "I'll never marry you! Never, do you hear me, NEVER!!!" I will say "Oh well" and kill her. =+-----

Overlord can be repetitive at times, especially when you run out of minions and have to resort to "farming" lesser creatures to get the magical energy up to create new ones. Death has no penalties other than a loss of minions and starting over on a level, so there comes a tipping point where you are either clearly outmatched and thus have to spend more time mindlessly killing wimpy critters, or you are so powerful that you roll over everything in the game.

By the end of the game, I had a huge pile of gold in my coffers--you can visit your coffers and watch as the gold accumulates. I bought Velvet everything her wicked little heart desired and then some, from flaming demon-shaped fixtures to skull banners. And I had a shiny new set of armor and weapons. At one point I had ten female servants, Velvet lounging around, and Jewel in a cage in front of my throne. This is not a game that caters to females...unless your name happens to be Velvet.

It's good to be the Overlord.

(Rules courtesy of Peter Anspach's The Top 100 Things I'd Do If I Ever Became An Evil Overlord: http://www.eviloverlord.com/lists/overlord.html)

40 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Dungeon Keeper Meets Pikmin, July 8, 2007

By 

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

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Overlord (Video Game)

While the commercials make Overlord seem like a Dungeon Keeper game - a series I *adored* - in actual gameplay, this is pretty much Pikmin with an attitude. This can be great or annoying depending on your point of view.

You are playing a dark lord who looks very suspiciously like Sauron from the Lord of the Rings series. Your advisor and minions are straight from Gremlins, with perhaps a bit of Yoda thrown in for good measure. When you head out on your first world to conquer, you run into hobbits, who live in little holes with round doors, in a village named ... "Spree". Yes, the game goes out of its way to be cute and poke fun at all fantasy stories.

Just like in Dungeon Keeper, you are in control of a swarm of mindless but generally loyal lackeys. You start with just the basic grunts, but as you progress you can unlock a healthy variety of creature types.

Most of your tasks are typical - get 10 minions to push aside a blockade, send your minions in to raze a village, and so on. While you are praised for being "evil", you're also warned to allow at least some innocents to survive so they provide workers for your empire. Meanwhile, back at the Evil Castle, your progress means that they fix up the place so it is worthy of being your home.

I do have to admit the little minions are quite cute. If you raid a pumpkin patch, a few of them will grab pumpkins and stick them on their heads. As they find weapons and armor, they'll equip them, so each minion becomes unique. If you need health, you have to sacrifice a few minions at an altar - and sometimes it's hard to do it, because you've become fond of the little critters. Still, that's the price of being evil. You can generate more, but they start out in their raw state.

The dialogue is appropriately dark and wry, although not nearly as great as some of the lines from Dungeon Keeper. Some of your quests also seem not to make any sense. You have to *save* people from slavery?? You have to get food for people? These don't sound like very evil acts to me. Then, when you run rampant in their town, they whine about the mess. They should be quaking in fear!

I found the Pikmin micromanaging a little annoying - an evil overlord shouldn't have to be telling his minions to clear the way to the next point of attack. I also found the camera to be quite more annoying at times.

Still, since there's no new Dungeon Keeper game on the horizon, this fills the spot admirably and does have a lot of fun in it. Well recommended, and for people who enjoy this type of gameplay who haven't played the Dungeon Keeper games yet - go buy them! See where this genre came from :)

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars all hail the Overlord!! <- man, that guy's annoying.., July 17, 2007

By 

Raul Duke "Gonzo HST" (Pittsburgh) - See all my reviews

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Overlord (Video Game)

ive had a pretty good time with Overlord so far (im about 15 hours in). i first heard about it a little over a year before it was released, and i had really been looking forward to this one. while it is a good game, and there isnt much selection for these types on the 360, it is kind of a let down for me. if only for the fact that i was hoping for a darker more mature, violent game than it's turned out to be. i was also hoping for a slightly deeper experience as well (huge Oblivion fun) but its ok, because this game is very entertaining, between the villagers cowering in fear before you, to you minions getting drunk and "relieving themselves" all over the place. thats still priceless.

as most people have already said, this sort of plays like a mix of Fable (Xbox) and Pikmin (GC). you control the overlord with the left stick, and you can use the right stick to navigate your minions to various locations.

the one thing i really didnt like about this game is the lack of any sort of in game map. there's a little one that comes with the game, but its pretty much useless. you can waste so much time trying to find your way around places, and you often end up walking in big circles trying to find your way around.

all in all, this game was a great buy, and i would encourage anyone into fantasy games, and anyone just looking for something a little different to check this one out.

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