Evil Genius 2: World Domination

I still have a boxed copy of the original Evil Genius. Even allowing for the haze of nostalgia, I confidently recall it being reasonably entertaining and stylish, though certainly not flawless. This though, is just *dull*. It has the feel of an idle or freemium game, constantly waiting for timers to complete and having to do small variations on the same thing over and over and over again. There's little thought or strategy involved, it's just a matter of persistence through the painfully drawn out campaign. Unlike those idle or freemium games, though, there is a layer of micromanagement required which compels attention despite how tedious it all is. A small detail left overlooked can quickly cause things to fall apart, and the game is terrible at communicating things. For instance, there is an auto-rebuild option for items, but you have to click it manually for every...single...item. Easy to forget when your base is filled with many hundreds of items. I missed it for a particular item which disposes of body bags, which was quietly destroyed in one of the interminably repetitive fires which plague bases. Soon enough, half my minions deserted because they went into a morale spiral due to a single body bag in an obscure part of the lair. It meant little in the scheme of things - just a lot more tedious waiting for timers - but I was so bored that I didn't notice. It may have only cost $1 in a bundle, but it wasn't worth the time.

A lot in the game screams mobile game design. Timers, shallow loops, and UI choices that genuinely feel like the game was originally meant to be a free to play mobile title. It all disappointingly plays like a dumbed down version of the first game: less depth on both the world map and in the lair, simplified trap mechanics, simplified minion management and an overall strangely hollow gameplay loop. It’s not unplayable it has the humor and "eye candy" regarding the models and animations. But the game is just painfully underambitious and undercooked when they already had a really good recipe to build from and expand upon, which i think a "sequel" should do.

This game would be peak if they just added another year or two of proper support and playtesting and feedback updates. Unfortunately it's like a love letter lost in the trenches. Never to reach where its meant to be.

It is not a horrible game. I kept playing hoping it would get better but it just became more and more grindy. The setting, humor, art, graphics, and sound are all great. The base building is fun. Defending it is fun for a bit but it gets repetitive. The side quest system is repetitive. The main quest is repetitive. The world map is not fun at all and guess what? that right: extremely repetitive. The core gameplay is good but the video game built around it is not.

Evil Genius 2 confidently delivers the core fantasy of the series: you are not just building a lair, you are staging a full-on cartoon villain show, where every corridor, every trap, and every control panel supports the same tone. And it shines the most in its visuals. The artists and animators absolutely nailed it: the style is sharp, readable, and packed with detail, and the animation is full of life, with little gestures and comedic pauses that sell the humor. It is especially fun to watch the objects in your base and how minions interact with them. Even the most routine tasks turn into tiny comedy scene. The story is another big win. It is not trying to be serious, but it stays entertaining and fits the classic spy movie vibe perfectly. Each Evil Genius also gets their own narrative flavor. The mission structure may not be radically different mechanically, but the presentation and story framing changes enough to make each campaign feel distinct. More importantly, the geniuses have unique quirks that go beyond their basic descriptions, and those details genuinely change the feel of a playthrough. Emma is a great example: she cannot use a gun, so she fights in her own way, and it reinforces her identity as a mastermind who controls the situation rather than brute forcing it. Maximilian, on the other hand, is pure theatrical greed. His executions can turn characters into gold statues that you can literally sell, which is both hilarious and perfectly on theme. Replayability also gets a real boost from the island selection. Different islands are not just cosmetic. Their layouts affect choke points, travel distances, and how cleanly you can control infiltration. In that sense, islands can be treated like an extra layer of difficulty tuning. The configuration of the lair influences how agents reach critical areas, which makes planning more interesting before you even place your first room. Unfortunately, the game loses momentum in the late stages, and this is where it deserves criticism. The early pacing feels great: you expand, unlock rooms, experiment with traps, and constantly feel progress. But later on, progress turns into a long chain of waiting. You wait for minions to train into the right profession, then wait for them to run across the base, then wait for resources to be carried, then wait for schemes to finish, then wait for intel, fuel, and gold to build up. The problem is not difficulty. It is downtime. Too often you are not making smarter decisions, you are simply watching timers. This is where the first Evil Genius still has an edge in overall rhythm. Evil Genius 1 was rougher and less polished, but it felt more emergent and chaotic in a way that kept you engaged. The lair was a living machine that could break in unpredictable ways, and you spent more time reacting and adapting. Evil Genius 2 is the stronger game in presentation, animation, and overall comfort, but it also feels more scripted and more grindy near the finale. It remains stylish, funny, and charming all the way through, yet in the endgame it can start to feel less like running an evil master plan and more like waiting for the next progress bar to finally reach the required number.

Evil Genius is half a great game welded to a screensaver. The first stretch is a delight — building the lair, setting traps, actually feeling like a criminal mastermind. Then the wheels come off. The entire second half collapses into clicking regions on the world stage and waiting for minions to finish training, an endless loop of queue, wait, repeat that asks nothing of you and gives nothing back. There's no escalation, no new mechanic, no reason to think. Just menus and cooldowns dressed up in villain costume. And it's lazy in a way you can see. The endgame is the early game with the wording changed — the same handful of systems recycled under new names, over and over, until the credits mercifully arrive. Whether it was a deadline or a budget, something clearly went wrong partway through development, and instead of designing a second half they laid down filler and hoped nobody would notice. People notice. What starts as one of the most charming premises in strategy gaming ends as a spreadsheet with a countdown timer.

I've tried to review this ignoring my love for EG1, and treat it as a game in it's own right. I think the biggest problem for me with this game, is it's an idle game that you can't idle. So much of it is just... waiting. Agents come in waves every so often, you deal with them then you wait. You need to do research to progress. So you wait for that to finish. You can only do one mission on the world stage in each area at a time. So you wait. I spent most of the game on fast forward mode, with my vaults full and my base secure. You're only allowed to do one side objective at a time, so that just becomes a matter of queuing them up and doing them one at a time. You could probably finish the game in a few hours if you were able to do more side objectives at once. I do want to try and say some good things too - I really like the way they've give the EG a bit more personality and interaction, and kept some of the silliness of the original. But this would have done so much better as a mobile game that would run while I did something else, and could come back to once everything is complete.

A great game that missed out on an opportunity to satirize real life. For example, why can't you do what real evil geniuses do globally: - Dumb down the curriculum of public education in order to ensure that the plebeians will be obedient and efficient workers rather than individuals that question anything around them - Create various political entities that represent a spectrum of ideals that have been carefully manufactured, tribalize said ethoses, then pit the parties against each other while remaining in control of them all - Encourage the general public to support lose-lose situations and plans, whether it be: warfare, needless extra taxation, censorship, limiting rights and responsibilities, or consuming poison - Control thoughts and behaviour through all forms of media entities globally - Have people globally hate anyone and everyone around them except for the individuals that are truly responsible for their problems - Create issues, then profit off of them by offering solutions of my choosing and personal benefit (war, disease, resource depletion, etc.)