Evil Genius 2: World Domination

[h1] Took Over The World Once And I Can Damn Well Do It Again... [/h1] [b] The Positive's [/b] + New Storyline / Villains + Multiple Lairs & Floors + Unique DLC/Expansions [b] The Negative's [/b] - Podcast Game - Minor Bugs [b] The Aspect Of The Game [/b] [i] After the world has been taken back by the forces of good and justice it's time for a new evil genius to roll up and take it straight back again. Build a lair hatch and evil plan and start world domination! [/i] [b] My Two Cent Review [/b] [i] There aren't enough games were you play as the villain of the story especially an Austin 90's evil genius style game. I did play the original years and have fond memories of it. Never finished just like I'll probably never finish this game due to the fact it's a podcast game where you will be sitting around most of the time waiting for s h i t to get done in the background. You send your henchmen on missions you don't get to see and hope for the best they don't bring every agency in the book to your doorstep. You of course get the opportunity to dispatch any do-gooder that happens to step foot on your island but killing them isn't the best option because send in f u c k i n g seal team six if enough of there mates go missing so it's best to work on your rip off casino and make sure they never make it to the backrooms and see your any incriminating facilities. You don't get to control any of the minions except the evil genius and right hand henchmen so prepare to tomfoolery with them usually walking or running into harms way getting themselves bodied by the forces of justice often. There are of course minor bugs with body bags glitching into walls and certain henchman noclipping through different levels of your facility but I'm sure they either patched that or abandoned the game at this point since Rebellion doesn't usually touch a game they make after a year of cashing on initial hype. They do have some interesting expansions and storylines which i'm surprised they got Team Fortress 2 & Portal to make a guest appearance in the game. You'll find valve in every other game nowadays instead of them making there own. I also enjoyed the multiple different evil lair islands even got an arctic one with an expansion which was cool to see with actual floors levels instead of just one big one floor lair which is a great use of space. [/i] [b] The Value Of The Game [/b] [i] I can't say the games worth the initial 60 dollars it costs to buy but for 25$ buckaroo's it's not a bad deal. You'll have hours of entertainment and it is faithful to the original. [/i] [h1] Final Score 83/100 Ranking B Tier [/h1]

I really wanted to like it. There's the core of a good game here, but ultimately it's just a shallow management game that substitutes difficulty with ridiculous stats on enemies and brainless tedium. You can keep your enemies weaker by constantly managing the world stage, sending minions out to lower heat in a region. The problem is, sometimes there's no missions to lower heat, because only so many missions will spawn. You can use intel to lower heat, be intel is capped at 99 and generates slowly. Or a super agent is camping the zone you want to work in, and the option is to lure them to your base and kill their agents (increases heat), or just do the job (brings the super agent to your base, see before), or just sit there and hope they go away in time. If you don't do these missions to lower heat, the computer will send 300+ health soldiers or regular agents to your base that will one or two shot your mercenaries. Your henchmen will get obliterated by them as well. You can't tell your normal work force to avoid these slaughter houses, so your yellow jacket normal work force gets massacred (fortunately you get these regularly and for free, and can purchase them in droves), you can't tell minions not to go to certain areas, they just wander around the base if they aren't doing a job. They'll interrupt enemies before they walk into traps (which do almost nothing in terms of damage unless you cheese it anyway), and drag others into the fight, so you can't even reliably use traps to lower enemy health. Another thing to note is there's a bunch of side stories you get, which is cool. They reward loot, let you eventually kill the super agents, or recruit henchmen, but there's no way to know what the outcome of taking on the mission will be. For example, taking on one side mission to recruit a henchmen had it constantly disabling my bases power. To stop this I had to do missions on the map. The map missions required specialized henchmen. To train those henchmen you need power. So once those ones were gone, I had to wait forever for new ones to train inbetween the power outages. On top of that, soldiers were attacking and killing guards, and guards were not replenishing. Corpses were littered around the base, as the bodies couldn't be burned reliably due to the power outages, so morale plummeted. Minions couldn't use the morale boosters reliably due to the power outages. It was one of the most frustrating moments in a video game I've ever experienced. It IS a management game, so managing the world isn't the worst thing. I just wish it wasn't so obnoxious. And the above issues are just a few of the problems with the game. This is on the hardest difficulty. Maybe it's a more enjoyable experience on a lower difficulty. Or maybe I'm playing it wrong, I don't know.

Evil Genius 2 is a type of game that's only good in concept, but in execution? It's an unbearably unbalanced mess. A singular fire outbreak in the power room (these happen INCREDIBLY often, your base tends to be 20%+ just power rooms) can take you back 2 million funds and about 2 hours of your life on NORMAL difficulty, and unless you already know perfectly what you are doing when you get into the game, you will suffer a lot. (My advice, separate every room into multiple rooms using walls. Being conservative with space sounds optimal, but it just results in you having to start over anytime ♥♥♥♥ burns) The game tries to tell you that you need to plan your base perfectly in a way that makes it easy for your minions to traverse if you want anything done ever, but you also are supposed to, according to the game, put in lots of traps, but to have those traps be successful, they have to be in areas where minions will probably traverse a lot, but if they travel where the traps are, they will inevitably die there and cause the traps to be unable to trigger in the first place. Another massive issue is... Most agents that come into your base in the first place are either invisible to traps unless you have all your guards on camera duty (which is incredibly difficult to do, since guards really love to abandon their posts more than remain there), or disable them immediately when coming into contact with them. I get saboteurs being able to do this, but why can investigators and soldiers do so too??? Like, surely there should be at least SOME agents who will simply succumb to traps but NOPE. But in the off chance that you DO just magically happen to damage an agent with a trap... Tis but a scratch. So, avoid placing traps. Plan exclusively with "My guards will take care of it" in mind. Also make sure you train 50% of your staff to be workers, or you may just die to a sudden dual-agent strike on your base. (I've had the misfortune of having to rollback one of my saves by about 40 minutes, because I couldn't train up my guards back up fast enough after a previous level 9 Soldier attack, and had to sacrifice what I'd have otherwise invested into power production for defense.) I am not at all kidding with how overpowered enemies can be. The level of micromanagement this game forces you into is insane. As I mentioned before, 20% or more of your base will be exclusively power rooms. A T2 (nuclear) generator is 4x5 in size, and provides 18 power. A base just before reaching chapter 2 of the main storyline will, on average, consume around 1500 power. That's like 85 of these 20-tile generators which also need access to a walkable path. Realistically, it's more like 25 tiles, but I'll still count with the 20 tiles, just to be generous. You need a 35x35 area just to power your base at that stage, walkways not included. Funnily enough, that just so happens to be just about how much space you can typically mine out without any mining research. You don't get better generators until tier 4 research is available. Then I should also mention- Literally every single thing in your base has a durability. A laughably low max durability, at that. If 50% of your workforce are guards, the other 25% have to be technicians to repair everything, and the rest are everyone else. They are slow, they can barely keep up, and they really really love dying to random agents taking a stroll through your lair. And then there's the world map. You constantly have to keep checking up on different superagents' locations, and if they just so happened to move to a location you were trying to make money in, you have to cancel all your plans there and start reducing your heat. If you don't check every 3 minutes, you may as well be saying "yoohoo, come and end me soldiers!!". This game is not even remotely enjoyable for a casual player. This game requires you to be a micromanagement SuperGod, one such that even Lobotomy Corp players would fear.

Poor UX, poor pacing, poor balancing.

I really want to like this game. Building an evil lair with the whole cartoony art style is super fun and when you first play with the systems, they all seem super fun and in-depth. I found the different geniuses really cool as well (Ivan for the win). However, the more time you spend with the game the more frustrating it gets. I understand that the stereotype is that minions are stupid, but they kicked it up a notch and the minions are retarded asf. They'll do one thing, then randomly do another halfway across the base, then die fistfighting some random dude, and you're back at ground zero (not to mention a pitifully low minion cap). If there was just a little more sophistication in this system (choosing which minions do what), it would go a long way. And that's not even mentioning the fatal flaw: one objective at a time. This holds the game back in so many ways I can't fit it into this review, but you basically do the same rinse and repeat mission (mixed with waiting for your minions to do what you want them do) tens to hundreds of times to progress the campaign. It's brutal. Really bummed as I enjoy building in sandbox but really not worth more than one playthrough (which already feels much too long as is). Will be removing this one from the library.

Let's get the negatives out of the way: - Mission progression feels very repetitive. A lot of it boils down to clicking icons on the world map, doing research that doesn’t meaningfully expand gameplay, or briefly interacting with objects. It gets especially noticeable because the game is intentionally slow and grind-heavy. - The pacing can be frustrating. This is very much a “wait for things to happen” type of game. - Traps feel underwhelming unless you spam a huge number of them, and late-game (especially on higher difficulty) often pushes you toward brute-force solutions rather than creative base defense. - Micromanagement is inconsistent. You can assign minions roles and manage traits, but you can’t directly control them beyond basic priorities. This often leads to situations where the wrong minions handle critical tasks—or worse, run into danger and get wiped out. - Balance is all over the place. Some threats are laughably easy while others on the same level can devastate your base. Super agents in particular feel wildly inconsistent. The meh: - The gameplay loop, while functional and fun, doesn’t evolve much over time, which can make long sessions feel repetitive. Now for the positives: - Evil Genius 2 absolutely nails its theme and presentation. The cartoon supervillain aesthetic, humor, and character designs are a big part of the charm. - The storyline can be really funny, in the oldie villains zany kind of stories. - Base building is genuinely fun. Designing your lair, organizing rooms, and watching your evil operation come together is satisfying. - The overall vibe is lighthearted and entertaining, which helps offset some of the grind and pacing issues. As a whole, I enjoy my time with Evil Genius 2. It’s not a perfect game, and my overall feeling leans more into the positive than the meh or the bad. If I have to score it, it's probably a solid 6.5 out of 10, which is very much a positive grade in my book. If you’re okay with a slower, grindier experience and like the idea of running a cartoon villain empire, it’s worth picking up the base game at the very least.

I really liked this game. Is it perfect? No, but if you love the two point games this will scratch that itch