Impire

The best part about this game is that it’s so dead and abandoned that nobody is going to find it – let alone read this review. But if you did read this then you’ve already wasted more time than the game's worth. Just exit this page immediately. Exit and never look back. While you’re at it, do yourself a favor and block Paradox Interactive. If you’re not convinced yet, I will try to make a short review. Is the game – objectively – really that bad? Not really. Overall, on a scale from 1 – 10, it’s probably a 2 – maybe even a 3 for some. There are two reasons this game should be permanently forgotten – promises and scam. [b]Promises:[/b] When the game was released a decade ago, it was praised as the successor to Dungeon Keeper. I wouldn’t even use the analogy "apples and oranges" with Dungeon Keeper and this game – more like apples and expired fish. When it was released and several weeks afterwards you couldn’t even play the game. In almost any instance the game crashed. Several years later it does seem like they've fixed most of it. A huge disappointment with the game is that it [u]does not feature skirmish play vs. AI[/u]. That’s right, you get a repetitive and cringeworthy short campaign and that’s it. But oh wait, you can play skirmish and the campaign in co-op, that’s what they say on the store page! Except you can't. That’s where we come to the [b]scam:[/b] they closed down the server a mere two years after release. The game is directly DESIGNED for multiplayer. In fact, every time you initiate a mission in the campaign, you have to choose whether you want to do it in a private lobby or online. But you can’t play it online. Even if you tried to invite a friend who also owns the game, nothing happens. The amusing part: the multiplayer system is peer to peer. This means they just need a server to administrate lobbies. An old laptop could manage that for a small indie game like this. Additionally, the game features skirmish games as player vs. player, but as the multiplayer has been cut off, that part of the game is also broken and unavailable. [b]In short: half the game is not even playable.[/b] So, you get a campaign and nothing else. Is the campaign good? No, it’s as generic as you can imagine it to be. The cutscenes and dialogues are extremely cringe – at best it can be compared to bad 90’s and 00’s comedy Hollywood cliché humor. The story is extremely random, and you never really know what the overall point is. The gameplay is not super bad, but it’s filled with tedious and clunky micromanagement. It’s not your traditional RTS gameplay. For instance, you have to assign your units to squads – constantly one by one. It gets very wearisome after just a few missions. If there’s one positive note about the gameplay though it’s that the combat engagement can be rather fun. As for your base, you can’t be creative and customize it to your personal playstyle. The game is nowhere near that deep. There’s really just one way to build your base. And be careful, you can actually block certain paths and entrances in the game with buildings and break your mission. Just remove the building? No, that feature was apparently too difficult for the devs to implement. So yes, it's not just because the game is bad – there are plenty of bad games – but because of the scam and their greedy intentions. They solely made this game as a cheap and quick cash grab based on nostalgic Dungeon Keeper vibes. Then they closed down half the game to reduce negligible server expenses shortly after release, but keeps the price tag at 20 EUR. From what I've read, this is an intentional "business strategy" by Paradox Interactive - even when it's illegal to advertise with features that don't exist. So, I can't express this enough: Do yourself a huge favour and [b]BLOCK PARADOX INTERACTIVE[/b]

Nah, don't even bother to give this thing a try , better learn from my mistake. I dont even think this thing deserves to carry a literal 3 digit price tag, but what a devaluation of money it is that. You can say the game is not my type but No, the game is literally not anyone's type for Goblins and demons sake. Though there were no visual crashes and bugs, but there is not a single factor or inch of a Pros I find in this game. Lackluster campaign, clunky and god-knows-what-they-actually-want-us-to-do type controls and objectives (Seriously, the only objective to either uninstall this or hammer-smash your system out of frustration), no story whatsover (atleast I didn't get any idea of entire campaign), combat, gameplay, camera controls, movement (Trash in every respect) Many-a-times you just don't know what to do, how to do it, because there is no such thing built in the game that will let you track the useful stuff and instead giving you useless pieces and bits of information all the time serving no purpose at all. At some points, You don't even know why you are even where you are. Maybe they could have just released this project as a demo game first for the testers and players to stop the developers into its completion, the world would have been a better place to live for. But Not anymore. Give yourself a piece of mind and avoid this.

Had it for ages, replayed it just now and honestly it is weak, Dungeons to Calypso is so much better The buildinig of rooms is less free than that of Dungeon Keeper, War of the Overworld or Dungeons. The ha-ha humor is annoying, the mechanics are clunky and annoying. and still I liked it a lot better before I played the Dungeons series. It is mediocre and average down to the tiniest detail... I really wish someone would make a dungeon builder villan game where you actually are a twisted evil voldemort style or at least Sauron from LotR without trying to softing the dealio so much by 4th wall breakiing and bad cheap shot humor. do not get me wrong even at thumb down it is only in the sense of compared to other dungeon builder games, it is still better than many building/managment sims. But it is being judged against Dungeon Keeper and Dungeons and falls flatt on its behind.

I was enjoying this game, right up until the puzzle with the colors and the switches. I have memory issues from a TBI, so when the advisor gave me the clues, I wasn't able to memorize them so I could solve the puzzle. I didn't realize I'd purchased a memory game and wouldn't have spent money on this had I known the developers put these types of puzzles in their game. Sure, I could google the solution, but the issue is how early it showed up; there's bound to be more of these types of puzzles. Aside from needing to memorize the clues while fighting, with fight sound effects drowning out the voice of the advisor, the puzzle requires putting colors in the correct sequence with a series of switches. The switches each only increment the color one time, from blue to red to yellow or or some such, I don't remember the colors. This means you need to click the levers around a dozen times if you know the correct pattern. If you are guessing, changing two colors could take two minutes, especially since your character runs off after each switch pull. This to say, the puzzle is very clunky in execution to begin with. Add to that the very poor design of combat during the instructions and the developers thinking that they are cute giving the hints only once, then factor in that there are likely more puzzles like this and you have a reason not to play this game. Of course, if you are the kind of person who enjoys very tedious puzzles, or are the kind of person who always googles the solutions to puzzles for whatever reason, then this game is probably for you. Otherwise, don't waste your money or time.

Very cool game with funny comedic plot where you can control dungeon development and multiple minions. Make raids, protect your dungeon from intruders, expand dungeons, do missions and attack various beings on your conquest. Unfortunately, can crush and kill your quick save making you start a chapter over, but main save didn’t suffer.

It's a good Dungeon Keeper clone, although my biggest problem was the dungeon creation... Literally 0% creativity when it comes to designing your own dungeon. The rooms are preset to certain sizes and layouts, so all you do is find a spot and plonk the room down. I also had issues with the story and the pacing of it. Honestly though I would recommend this AFTER you've tried every other DK-esque game.

Not the worst game ever, but still really bad.

Even though this game is pretty bad, I feel like the developers could learn from the issues people had, and then develop a game using the parts people enjoyed, and the parts they changed to give people more fun. personally I liked the artstyle, and I hope they change it from rts squad manager, to a full on dungeon keeper esque game where we evolve baal and can do stuff like the newer games from the dungeons series hope to see this come true. I like this game.

Impire. A game with mixed reviews but something I've come to love and enjoy plenty, having taken 73hrs to complete my first campaign, albeit I admittedly took it slow and attempted to get every single side-quest I possibly could. The game has a lot of character and I love the style of it, it reminds me of dungeon keeper at all points albeit you will have more control over your squads of your minions which honestly I prefer a whole lot more, so on that part it feels like an RTS at times with being able to move squads of your minions around and deciding specifically where to put them at. You can also send them out on quests to get resources (or side-quest/story items). The game's graphics are slightly dated now but I still quite like the style. With Baal you can take him down three routes of deciding how to grow him into full power, I chose to have him on the fighter side of things, but next game I do plan on taking him down a support/magic route rather than the direct fighter. You do get to make a lotta choices throughout the game but admittedly I do believe the one that makes the most impact is the decision at the ending, not going to spoil that however, it's up to you to play and decide for yourself, but it's all the more reason to play the game a second time or more! Really loved the game and I am sad that it doesn't have that much love to it, it's one of the more niche games of Cyanide's.

Bought it for 5 bucks and liked it enough to finish it, which took like 24 hours. I don't think it's as bad as people here say, it just isn't a good game for most dungeon keeper fans, which is ironiclly the people most attracted to this game. In dungeon keeper things run by themselves if you set things up correctly, this is not the case here, you're in charge of pretty much everything. Every weapon a unit equips, every time a unit goes to eat, or train...you'll have to do it all manually. The building of the dungeon itself also feels a bit more like a game of tetris rather than anything else. Some of these rooms are huge and your play area is just filled with stuff that'll get in the way. So sometimes you just plop it down wherever it'll go, because effeciency doesn't matter much apart from the workers (imps), since everything else gets teleported around by you anyway. The start of every mission feels a little too slow, and once you figure out what works and what doesn't there's no reason to just repeat the same strategy over and over. There's also a second faction that you barely get to play for some reason? I liked the cutscenes, it is novel in this genre eventhough the humor can be a bit hit or miss. I like the rooms, some of the concepts are kinda cool, though some of them quickly fall by the wayside as they aren't really needed. One of the more cool things that feel very dungeon keepery is how heroes are a resource that can be turned into many different things. No dungeon keeper style conversions though, oddly enough. Games with this vibe are rare, so I took a chance on it. All in all I enjoyed it enough and don't regret playing it. .. the ending sucked though.