Wildermyth

I have never encountered a game like Wildermyth.  Sure, on the surface it doesn't seem unique.  It's a game that describes itself as a party based procedural storytelling RPG with turn based combat.   So, fantasy X Com in terms of gameplay in a choose your own adventure story.  That doesn't sound like something truly incredible.  Something I'd love and buy, but, not one that would quickly become my favorite game.

But the descriptions above do not do it justice.  Wildermyth is a character building and myth making game.  Each randomly made character feels, not like a random name or even just a bunch of numbered traits, but a real character of their own.  But enough about that, let's get into the details.

First off, the graphics while easy to run on my non-gaming laptop, are fantastic.  They look like paper cut outs, in a great way.  They really come to life in the comic panels that act as cut scenes, and when in the tabletop like battles, where they do look like paper cut outs, and they hop around the board like an invisible hand just picked them up.  It's fantastic.

Whoa, guy in the middle must be a red bull addict.

There's no voice acting in this game, but the music, while good, is not great.  I'll admit I played part of the game with music off, so, yeah.

Anyway, at launch and the time of this writing, Wildermyth has five story campaigns in it.  This does include the generic three and five chapter campaigns, and while I hate to call them story less, they don't have an over arching story.  Each of the main story campaigns is themed around a main faction of evil monsters, and dear god, let me talk about the monsters.

I won't spoil anything here, but there are no generic undead, dragons, elves or vampires here.  No, instead we have the Gorgons, both serpentine, tentacled undersea creatures and horrifying nature corruption, the Morthagi, ancient clockwork machines that use body parts to create more of themselves, the Deepists, a cult of humans and creatures from deep below ground, the Thrixl, strange dragon/insects from another realm, and the Drauven, a race of earth dragons, that are more like a cross between Dwarves and dragons then pure dragons.  

The enemy factions are at the very least different then most other fantasy, and it could've been so easy to just flow into the mold of most fantasy for Wildermyth.  I'm so glad they didn't, and each enemy unit is a joy to look at and fight.  

But I haven't even talked about the characters yet.  Mechanically, a character is just a made up name, a class, which sometimes/usually you get to choose, and a set of numbers ranging from 1 to 100 for a set of personality traits, like Greedy, Leader, Hothead, and Intellectual.  But the comic like cut scenes have some characters say things differently depending on the personality traits, and different roles in story and events.  

I could continue talking about the mechanics of this, but instead I'll introduce you to Zarnoc, my aloof hothead and my fourth hero I created, counting the first three you make in any adventure.  He's appeared in two campaigns, and was always the first to do what needed to be done.  In the campaign that focused on the Gorgons, this usually meant going around killing anything that even smelled like corruption.  When the other party members held him back from doing so, usually this ended in disaster, so after that they let him have his way.  In the second campaign, he was mortally wounded by a boss controlling a Morthagi factory, and instead of being a COWARD and sneaking away to fight another day, he ripped that boss a new one!  And, died in the process.  I cried a little, it's true, when this happened

This is an example of what kind of character and how attached you can get, in the game of Wildermyth.  Also, this is  a showcase of taking one character and putting them in another campaign, turning them into a legacy character.  Legacy characters are required for some campaigns, and you can recruit legacy characters in campaigns instead of random peasants.  Legacy characters are characters who've survived one campaign in the past, and you saved them to become a legacy character to appear as a playable character in another campaign, albeit a younger one so they don't instantly die or retire from old age.

I see paper doll people...and they are fantastic!

On top of this, characters get into relationships, either on ones you choose, or via the luck of Random Number Generators, or the RNG god.  There's rivalry, friendship, and of course, romance.  And yes, gay is an option for romance sometimes.

While the storytelling potential of Wildermyth is god damn fantastic, what makes it even better is that if you don't care about storytelling (Get out of my blog, damn you), everything gives a boost to combat in some way.  Rivalry, for example, gives a high chance to 'stunt' or critical hit an enemy if your rival critical hits before you do.  Pets, which are additions to characters and not separate entities, give some extra damage or defense, and some events can physically transform your character, and you can choose how far the transformation takes and what abilities they get.

While I only played two campaigns of Wildermyth, both story ones, I feel like I got a good handle on the systems and can review it.  I was expecting the stories to be bland and generic and just be 'you hero, monsters bad, you kill!' and while this is true of the first one, the second one I played is not that case at all.  I won't spoil it, but it actually made me think about a topic that most storytellers make you think is pure evil.

Wildermyth is amazing. I will continue playing it probably until I reach the last of the story campaigns, if not longer.  It definitely earned a 5/5 stars from me.  It feels less like a video game and more like an storyteller telling you a story, or a tabletop RPG Dungeon Master letting you play with them.  In fact, it feels more like a tabletop game to me then most tabletop games converted to video games do.

Anyway, finally finished a review, will have a few more possibly -book- related reviews in the future.  Hopefully.

Jurassic World: Evolution

I love dinosaurs.  I mean, doesn't every little kid like dinosaurs?  I just never stopped loving dinosaurs and really animals in general, and I'm here still loving them.  I bet there's one franchise that really put dinosaurs into peoples minds...Jurassic Park.

Ah yeah!  Dinosaurs, here we go!

Do I even need to say anything?  I mean, it's -Jurassic- -park-.  THE ultimate science gone wrong, dinosaurs on big screens, lawyers getting eaten movie.  But I'm not here to review Jurassic park the film.

No, I'm here to talk about the Jurassic WORLD franchise and movies.  Which is....uh...well...okay, I've never seen them.  I stopped watching the Jurassic park films after Jurassic park three, which I liked but I was only a teenager at the time, so my opinion now might be quite different.

But as far as I can tell from what little I've seen and know about them, they're basically the original Jurassic Park film done over again, but worse.  I mean, the movie Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, ends with several hundred dinosaurs escaping into the world, and Malcolm from the original Jurassic Park just...showing up at the US senate saying it's a 'Neo-Jurassic' period now as dinosaurs now live with man kind.

Do I really need to point out the flaws in that?  I do?  Do I have to?  Damn it...fine.  One, all dinosaurs were female in the original film, right?  Sure, they got around that, but in the book at least, the 'disaster' of Jurassic Park was caused because everything that could go wrong, even if it was a less then one percent change of going wrong, went wrong at precisely the right time to make the disaster work.    In Jurassic World did they just...let all the dinosaurs breed whatever?  That seems like an incredibly dumb thing to do.  Two: The dinosaurs were made up of all separate species, so, the chances of a dinosaur even finding fellow dino of the same species are low.  three: They're all in a very small area, just, I don't know, bomb the area if your panicking about dinosaurs surviving in modern day.  And don't get me started on diseases affecting them, along with the whole lack of wilderness to survive on!

...Anyway!  I think that says a lot about my opinion about later Jurassic Park films.  Despite this, way back in or after 2003 I played the game Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis, which is a park builder where you remake Jurassic park.  I loved it, and though I own the disc still, I am unsure if it will run on windows 10.  But in 2018, another game came out, Jurassic World: Evolution.  And you better believe I bought that up as soon as possible.

Not again!

Taking place after the Original Jurassic World, but before Fallen Kingdom, you are tasked with building dinosaur parks across the Five Deaths, a fictional island chain in Costa Rico, or, off the coast of the country, rather.  

There are three major DLCS that add new gameplay to the game, and more that just add new dinosaurs, but, I don't own any of the DLC, so I will just talk about the base game.  

The base campaign starts off with Ian Malcolm complaining about life, you, and dinosaurs.   I'm not sure why Jeff Goldblum is here, but the character of Malcolm seems to be here just to tell you this is an incredibly bad idea.  The campaign is divided into five or six island locations to build parks in.  The reason it's five or six is because one was originally the only sandbox island you could play without worrying about money, but a later update made it so once you reached 4 stars out of five with any island you unlocked sandbox mode for that island.

Frontier, the game developers behind this game, apparently had 100 or so developers working on this game.  That does not seem like much, but I fully admit to not knowing how many people normally work on video games.  They also released updates after the games release, adding the above mentioned sandbox modes, challenge modes to reach 5 stars in the shortest amount of time, and other features.

I won't hide the fact that I admire and like Frontier, they make good games that allow a lot of sandbox creativity and freedom.  Unfortunately this is not one of them.

let's talk about the dinosaurs first.  You start off with one viable genome of a dino, and can send expedition teams to fossil sites to get more fossils to get more DNA so that one that's at or above 50% genome can be made into a living creature.  Annoyingly, you don't know what the creatures habits are aside from meat or plant eating until you make the first dino, so it's entirely possible to put in a forest loving dino with one that hates forests.

The dinosaur stats are put into 2 categories, health and comfort.  Health is put into thirst and hunger, self explanatory.  Comfort is more complex, divided into wetlands, grasslands, forests, population, and social need.  Wetlands means how much water is in the exhibit, grasslands is how much space -total- is in the exhibit, forests is how many trees there are, and social is how many animals of the same kind there are, and population is how many animals there are total. 

While it sounds confusing, it's actually too simple.  There's no difference in most dinosaurs aside form some like forests, some like open fields, some need to have one or two others of its kind, and some need to be alone.  There's no enrichment options, and when the game was released, no option to manually place trees and rocks, though there is now.  I fully admit that calling the need for total space, 'grassland'  is annoying.  And none of this is explained in the games very meager, and split up, tutorial.

Now onto the second most important thing in the game, the guests which...don't technically exist.  See, instead of making each guest a entity in the game, with needs and desires and money to spend, instead they focus on each gust building, hotels or viewing stations, needing certain buildings near it, food places, gift shops, restrooms, stuff like that.  While I fully admit this is a novel and new way to model guests in park games, I don't like it.  So I'm old fashioned.

 Another important aspect of the game is the Divisions. They are Entertainment, Science, and Security, and all three want your attention and to be number one in your inbox.  For some reason, doing a quest for one Division, means the other two now hate you, and will actually sabotage your park because they're having a temper tantrum.  But, leveling up one divisions meter will unlock cool stuff for you, and a special mission that unlocks more cool stuff.  There is nothing stopping you from leveling up one Divisions respect in you, then ditching them to get the cool unlocks in another division. 

It doesn't make sense that, the Divisions who you write the paychecks for, will sabotage THERE OWN EMPLOYER because...I really have no idea.  because they don't feel special, I guess.  And this would be a really easy thing to fix, call the divisions investors instead.  Everything could work the same way gameplay wise, just change some dialogue.  I feel like this was a decision made by Universal rather then Frontier, but I could be very wrong too.

So that's the game.  Take care of all way too similar dinosaurs, take care of guests that technically don't exist as individuals, and try to tell the employees that you love them all.  Once you finish one island, you move onto the next, unlock more dinos to research and make, and...that's it.  One island is very much like the next, and I got bored enough that I stopped played after island number three in the base campaign.

I have to say this was my first Frontier game, and they really dropped the ball on it.  I'm not sure why exactly, but I think it was a combination of small team or time frame to make a game, and also Universal making demands on what the game should be like.  I hate to say it, but this gets a 1.5 out of 5 stars.  I hoped that the free updates would liven the game up for me, but I did not get past even island one when I replayed it recently.

Anyway, that's all for now.  See you all, next whenever.  

I seriously need to set this to a schedule some time.  Oh well, later.

Reassembly

I love Legos.  I love spaceships.  I love Lego spaceships a lot.  

Surprisingly, despite my love of blocks that click into other blocks that then make buildings or vehicles, I never really got into games that are literally all about that, like Terraria or Minecraft, where you can build huge fortress and craft almost everything you can imagine.  I'm just not really a creative building designer, and most games crafting is rather dull to me.

But then I found Reassembly.  and I love it so much.

Avengers Assemble!  Wait, wrong franchise.

Reassembly has no plot, no lore, no story, or even any voice acting. But none of that matters because you have blocks that attach to other blocks that can become a spaceship and then can blow up other space ships.  There's weapon blocks, power generator blocks to power said weapons, thruster blocks that make you move, shield blocks and other stranger blocks that do other useful things.

You collect resources that are mostly found by killing enemy faction ships, exchange them for Credits at ships or stations with a factory and use the Credits to upgrade the power limit of your ship and unlock new blocks.  There's seven playable factions each with different blocks and aesthetics and weapons and the like.  There's also 'Agents' which are NPC's using other players ships that go around causing chaos.  There's wormholes, self replicating Fly-bots, and for some reason the Borg show up here as well.

And, uh, that's the game.  just going around building your ship and blowing things up.  It's not exactly a deep game, but it allows tons of creativity for making space ships.  you can take ship desgins and add them to your inventory, so they will be made by NPC factory ships, as well as yourself when you get a factory module.

I enjoyed this game far more then I feel like I should have.  I have 15ish hours on it, and might add even more.  The only problems I've encountered are that in my games Agents don't appear.  and I can't upload my ship as an Agent in other peoples games.  The third problem is most damning, all the factions play similarly.  This could be my fault, however, as I tend to go slow moving but powerful sheilds and long ranged weapons, no matter what faction.  Along with tons of fighters/drones.  

Either way, Reassembly is well worth the 15 bucks if you like space games, or building spaceships.  I would give it 4/5 stars, if not 4.5 out of 5 stars. 

The Karate Kid (2010)

Look, the only reason I watched this is because Jackie Chan is in it and I like Jackie Chan.  I'm...not sure why I opened this review with a defending statement.  But I feel ever so slightly ashamed I watched this film.  I'm not sure why, but as usual here's the movie poster.

Wait, is that Will Smiths son?

...Ah, now I know why I feel slight shame.  Jaden Smith, we meet at last...sort of.  I don't hate Jaden Smith, but I feel....slightly annoyed that he pretty much got gifted an acting career as a birthday present.  I never got that pony I wanted on my birthday.

Anyway, I've never seen the original Karate Kid, so I can't say how well or badly it is in comparison with the original.  But I have browsed the Wikipedia and know of the major plot points, so I can compare those.  Hopefully.

The premise of both films is that a kid moves to another area, having a single mom, and learns a martial art from a wise old teacher who appears to just be a old man at first.  there's several differences, but we'll talk about two right now; the move is from the USA to china, and the kids instead of being teenagers, are all under 14.  

Most of the film takes place in china, and I like it.  It's pretty cool to see the real places they set the film in, and it gives the main character kid real reasons to be unhappy what with now living in an entirely different culture.

The fact all the kids are under 14...is not to my liking however.  I found zero enjoyment watching the kids interact, mainly because the main character was written like an selfish idiot, even for his age.  

The acting...well, Jaden smith isn't actually a bad actor, nor anyone else.  the problem seemed to me not the actors themselves, but the direction they either took or didn't take their acting prowess.   

The shots and cinematography, are good.  I really liked it.  Jackie Chan was a joy to watch, both in acting and in the fight scenes.

Honestly, the films reverence of the Karate Kid original movie, harms it more then helps.  It follows some beats too closely, that if let go would make the film better.  the girlfriend parts, was excruciating to watch, to the point that I fast forwarded through those parts.  Keeping the bullies and the bullies martial art teacher as psychopathic jerks hurt the film rather then helped. The more the film strayed from the original movie the more I enjoyed it.

Despite this, I find myself giving it 3 out of 5 stars.  Why?  Well, Jackie chan saved this film from its writing.   One thing I have yet to talk about is that in this one, while both mentors have a troubled and tragic past, Jackie Chans character is still troubled and tragic in the present, and not only does the mentorship help the young main character grow as a person, it helps Jackie Chans character grow as well.  

Unfortunately I also fully admit I fast forwarded through at least one third of the film.  So I have to downgrade it to at least 2.5 stars, if not simply 2 stars.  I enjoyed it, but I also skipped a lot of the content of the film. 

Anyway, if the film had taken more risks from the original, and instead of a remake was instead a inspired by, I would've liked this film a lot more.  

Today is a two review day!  Above is another review, but both are kinda short, so I made them both today.

Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth.

I have always been in a weird place where I like 4X games...but don't like Civilization, the Sid Meier's Video game.  For those who don't know what 4X Means, it's a video game where you basically are contrlling a nation or empire, where you have to eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate.  ...could also be called 4E, but X sounds cooler.  Anyway, diplomacy, research, battle, and economy are all part of 4X games, along with several other features.

Anyway, nowaday disliking Civilization but liking 4X is easy. There's tons of different 4X games with different factions, stories, and most importantly, different gameplay mechanics.  

This was not the case before Endless Legend from Amplitude came out.  Before Amplitude, Civilization wasn't just considered the 'most popular' 4X game.  It was considered the be all and end all of 4X games.  Nothing could be better then Civilization, so everything was the same as Civilization, with just slight variations in gameplay, even if setting and factions were radically different.   I said this before in my Mandalorian TV show review, and I'll say it again: Don't think the current 'best' of something is the be all and end all, think of it as a starting point for something better. 

So I was an odd one.  I didn't like civilization but wanted to try 4X games and bought quite a few of them.  To be fair, it wasn't the gameplay that I hated about civilization, it was the setting and factions.  So I was easily pleased by just a change of scenery if not actual gameplay.

But then Endless Legend came out, and I realized how shamefully unfun Civilization had been.  I could go on all day and night about how much I love Endless Legend, but that's not what this review is about.

This is about Civilization.  IN SPACE.

Sid does seem to love his hex tiles...even the windows are shaped like one!

But any talk about civilization in space will have to start with Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, the original civilization in space, made way back after Civilization 2.  For reference, Civilization 6 is its latest installement.  But I know very little about it, aside from the fact that it has some very die hard fans and was apparently very good.  So Beyond Earth was said to be a spiritual successor to Alpha Centauri before Beyond Earth was released. 

Anyway, the premise of Beyond Earth is it's 2210, and earth is in bad shape.  So the current nations and corporations of the future-earth start building space ships to colonize different planets across the universe.  

You start the game by picking a sponsor, which include futuristic but familiar-ish names such as Polystralia, Peoples African Union, American Reclamation Corporation, and Brasilia.  That's only 4 out of 8 Sponsors in the base game, 12 total with the only expansion, Rising Tide.  

You might think picking a sponsor would completely change how you play the game, like Endless Legends did with its factions.  Nope.  instead you get a small  bonus to certain things, and that's it.  Really, the other options you pick before you start a game have just as much if not more impact, and none of them really change the game, only slightly change choices at the start.  As an aside, Sponsors also decide what leader you play as.  

Instead of  what you decide to be mattering, the idea is that what you do on the new planet matters more then what you were on earth.  While an idea I can get behind, they didn't go far enough with it.  While each building you build in a city get a permanent buff via a decision you make, the buff is small and only one option out of two.  What if it was three options?  What is, for example, you had the building the Rocket Battery be A: A orbital satellite slayer but weak against ground troops, B: An artillery platform that can decimate ground troops, or C: Somewhere in-between but not great at either.  

 Behold!  Beags Ville!

But I'm getting off track.  To bring home the idea of what you do ingame is more important then what sponsor you pick, there are quests that give you affinity levels in one of three groupings, Purity, Harmony, and Supremacy.   Purity ideology believes humanity was and is perfect, and anything alien should be rooted out.  Harmony believes to survive humanity must evolve with nature and become more alien like.  Supremacy is somewhat in between but believes that humanity can be perfected via machinery and that the new world must be dominated.  Different buildings require different levels of different Affinitys, and raising affinity levels are required to upgrade military units.  I will admit being able to pick different bonuses for military units is neat.

But this still isn't enough, it's not until late game that really differences in play happen, and even if Harmony, Purity, and Supremacy factions played completely differently,  that's still only 3 factions, a pitiful amount honestly.  

I do however, praise the tech tree, or rather, web, as it is a branching web instead of a linear tech tree.  The fact that two players can have completely different techs but still be the same 'power level' as it were is a nice addition, one I wish Civilization games had more like it.  

The base game of Beyond Earth is unfortunately, fairly bland and safe, even with the sci fi twist.  So I give it a 3/5 stars, at best.  Honestly 2.5/5 is more accurate.  But we haven't delved into Beyond Earth: Rising Tide.

Lady put your helmet back on!

Rising Tide is the only expansion to Beyond Earth, and as you might guess it revamped the games navy combat and water features, including the heavily touted floating aquatic cities.  But it also revamped diplomacy, added new sponsors, and added new 'artifact' system of gameplay.

Honestly Rising Tide's feature of upgrade water gameplay features was the least interesting and exciting upgrades to the game.  The diplomacy updates and introduction of a new currency used exclusivity in diplomatic international exchanges, were far more welcome, and in single player actually gives each NPC colony leader new life and lines and ways to react to what the player is doing.  

With Rising Tide, I give Beyond Earth either a 3 or 3.5 out of 5 stars.  It's a much better game, and a good intro to 4X games.  unfortunately, for a veteran at 4X games it's not that good.  I've heard it is a poor spiritual successor to Alpha Centauri, but having never played it, all I have is hearsay.

That's all for now, hopefully I'll put out some drafts soon that I've been (slowly) working on.  I'd say them here, but from those that remember my Evil Genius 2 review, I don't keep my word if I do. 

Howls Moving Castle (2004 film)

Dear Studio Ghibli, 

This is Werebeagle.  I am a new consumer in anime, having seen very little of it before seeing a major film of yours, specifically Howls Moving Castle.

I told you we shouldn't have let the scrapyard rednecks build a castle!

I have never read the book it is based on, but from what little I know of it, it's loosely based on the story, and explores different themes then the films.  Not that there's anything bad with that, a film adaption of a book can go a different direction then the source material and still be good in it's own right.  

The early 20th century technology yet still fantastical set pieces mixes familiar and new things to make a blend that is in my opinion, extremely refreshing and a wonderful setting for a fantasy story.

The basic premise of the story is that a young girl, Sophie, is cursed by the Witch of the Wastes into being an old woman.  So she sets off on a quest to find a wizard to remove the curse, and comes upon the titular Howls Moving Castle.  This story is set against the backdrop of two nations going to war over the disappearance of a prince.  This sets up anti-war themes for the film.

While I respect the anti-war themes and know you made the the film as a response to the USA invasion of the Iraq, and some of the metaphors I respect and understand (Like the wizards who turn themselves into inhuman creatures to fight in the war, and won't remember they were human after the war) but some seem to be a little confused.  Like Howl, who doesn't want to fight in the war in either side, ends up fighting both sides?  And this slowly turns him into a monster?  I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say here.

The plot and story, while slow to start, is pretty damn good...up until the second half of the two hour film.  then I start to get confused, and it seems like some scenes or pieces of dialogue were missing, which left it feeling rushed and me feeling confused.

It goes without saying the animation is beautiful.  Even for a film that is more then 15 years old, it is a joy to watch for animation alone.  It is gorgeous, and I could've watched it just to see things move, with no dialogue.

The English voice acting, is very good, with some big names for the time doing voices.  All but one of the voice actor (I won't name names, Blythe Danner, but I'm looking at you.) did a good job.  As I did not see the Japanese version, nor do I speak it, I cannot say how good it is in the original Japanese.

The music, while I hear got some awards for it alone, was mostly forgettable or unnoticed by me, sadly.  While pretty, it was at best unobtrusive.

While I give your film a solid four out of five stars, it did not make me want to watch Howls Moving Castle again, nor watch more of your films.  While I'm willing to try again some time, possibly with Spirited Away, I'm afraid for now I'm not a fan.

Your missed-chance-fan, 

Werebeagle.

Evil Genius 2: World Domination

Stop me if you've heard this before: An egotistical insane megalomaniac plans to launch a plan to become the most powerful man in the world, or even...destroy it.  It's up to the charming and plucky super spy to save the day and get the girl, whose name is...John Steele?  Wait, who...?  Where the hell is the right script...!

Apparently that was the right script, and today is not a James Bond film, but instead Evil Genius 2, a sequel to the 2004 game where you played as a cold war era...bond villain, pretty much.  And yes, John Steele was a James Bond clone.  As you might guess, you have to try to take over the world and become the most powerful criminal in the underworld, and keep the forces of Justice from stopping you.

I personally would trust this man who is holding a globe and grinning evilly.  Wouldn't you?

Evil Genius 2 does not deviate from this set up, although it takes place...uh...I really have no idea when it takes place, but enough time after the first one that a middle aged man turns into an old man and a child turns into a man.  20 years, I guess?

Anyway that's not important, what is, is the fact an Evil Genius did take over the world in 1, and then lost it.  I'm not really sure what's the point of that, but you can choose as four Evil Genius's, Maxmillion from the first game, the only genius returning, Red Ivan, a henchmen of the first game that is now a proper genius, Emma, an former spymaster for the forces of Justice, and Zalika, who...does...science?  

Despite my confusion on Zalikas motives, objectives, or why she does anything, (confounded even more by the fact I have an RP character by the same name.) each Genius does have a distinct flavor and even personality.  A weird thing is all the lines of the Evil Genius's are voice acted, but only the main mission ones have written dialogue just for them, all side objectives voiced dialogues all the same line, just different actors.  Anyway, Rebellion, the developers, claimed that each would have a unique play-style.  Do they?

Eeeh, not really.  Honestly I found the different choices of islands more game play changing then anything else.  But each island does feel, look, and force you to build differently.  For example, the firs toption island gives you ton of access on the first floor of the mountain, and you can safely build in a cluster keeping your rooms close by so minions don't have to run around so much.

In the second option, the island is separated into two islands that are bridged at the top, meaning you'll need to effectively make two bases of operation, but the corridor leading to second island can be filled with traps to kill or deter others.

The third island is called "The Donut".  And it is donut shaped, meaning I had to build three bases around it, because it takes FOREVER for minions to walk around it.  also unlike the others, I added a secondary door leading from my cover operation.

Yes, in Evil Genius 2 you get a cover operation, a casino, that starts off abandoned by soon will be filled with valets doing whatever you want them to do to keep the forces of Justice deterred and tourists clueless.

Minions are separated into four types, the basic worker, the Muscle minions, the Science minions, and the Deception minions that go from a simple valet all the way to a counter agent.  All minions start as workers and need to be trained up into one of the three types.

Anyway, onto my opinion on the game: The game is gorgeous.  It's stylized just right in a cartoon way, doesn't require too much space in the hard drive, and looks amazing.  While I can see why people would say the game took away the cold war super spy villain theme and feel, as to me it seems more like weekend cartoons now, I personally like it, even the bad humor, because bad puns and jokes are my jam.  

Building the base is also easy and much less of a hassle in this game then the first, as you unlock the ability to use the cover operation almost immediately, thus allowing you to plan your operation around that instead of it being unlocked after you've built your base in Evil Genius 1.

Unfortunately that's where the 100% good things in my eyes end.  The art style and base building are it.  The UI and hints and tips for how to do things are...extremely absent.  Despite the UI constantly going off and being very shiny and annoying, they do not tell you what to do much.  There were several times in the game I had to stop and think about what to do as the game never told me how to do it.

The tutorial also is extremely long, and that's okay, but, for some reason, the tutorial makes the game so much easier.  I had to restart one of my games because I failed at the start of it, my evil genius died. without the tutorial, your thrown into the deep end of the pool, with agents coming immediately after you instead of no agents until after the tutorial, and no way to defend your Evil self.

This loops into another problem, Investigators, the easiest to kill of all forces of justice, do not in fact, get killed easily.  they have 75 health to start with, that's 25 more thne your minion, they also take less damage then minions from attacks, AND they have guns that can kill a worker minion in one shot.  

Honestly I found it was much easier to just let the investigators go, unlike from what I remember from the first game, they do not summon tougher enemies, instead they just summon more investigators, which you can also let go.  Supposedly higher heat levels, aka, how prominent the forces of justice view you as a threat, mean more tougher enemies, but I have yet to come across anything.  Even soldiers are easier to kill then investigators.

This killed the game for me.  Why even bother if the forces of justice pose no threat?  But oh dear reader, there's so much more to complain about...

You might want to stop at the drink counter I built just for this.

The forces of Justice in both games are called silly acronyms, SMASH, HAMMER, SABRE, PATRIOT, and ANVIL...but in the first one HAMMER was obviously the soviet union, PATRIOT was America, ANVIL china, SABRE britian and most of Europe, and SMASH....was everything else, really. PATRIOT had all of north America and japan as well, HAMMER was eastern Europe and Russia, along with the middle east.  Sabre were all the British colones and western Europe.  Get the picture?  Well don't, because in Evil Genius 2, they just group them all by continent instead of by lore or political power like the last game.  So the British SABRE is now all in Africa, and HAMMER controls all of Russia, Europe, and Japan.  What is even going on?

To make matters worse, despite there being around a dozen henchmen in The original game, only two come back. This isn't a huge problem for me, but I could see why it would be for others: It feels like it's barely connected to evil genius 1 for some people.

Of course, I forgot the most important thing of EG2: The control room.  you use Radio relays to send minions out into the world, and this is how you get money.  The problem: The map quickly becomes cluttered and instead of being able to zoom in on an important missions, you have to manually look for one.  The lack of info on important things doesn't stop there, you are notified when a group of JUSTICE workers are coming, but never -where they are-, and sine there's no way to differentiate them aside from manually looking, unlike in the first game which had a mini map showing good guys trying to stop you, you just have to zoom in and look.

In original evil genius 1, the radio relays had to be manned to provide a bonus, but in 2 they do not.  I would be fine with this, if it weren't for the fact Minions will still man them.  and get tired from working on them, despite there being no benefit from it, and this stops them from working on things that DO give you benefit if a minion works there.

The simplifications of the evil genius formula, the ones not listed here, anyway, are hit and miss for me.  some work well, like not needing briefcases to carry gold around, some do not, like the above mentioned radio relay problem.

So why do I have 60+ hours on this game?  For one, the campaign is extremely drawn out, it took me at least 50 hours to complete it.  I didn't speed run, but I didn't dawdle either, and because of some insane reason, side objectives expire if you go too far in the campaign.  It's extremely annoying, and on top of that, the loot you get that is not just gold, examples being the Trojan Horse, a dodo, and godzilla's egg ,all are not worth the effort to actually get them.  this game is extremely grindy.

So, why am I still playing it?  Uh...well....shit man, it's merely because of Brian Blessed, okay?  He's the voice actor for Red Ivan, and he is amazing.  I mean, look at him!

I meant Brian Blessed, but this works too.

 So yeah, I'm playing the campaign for the second time just as a different genius, all for a voice actor.  Help.

Anyway, this is all for now, have fun and stay safe everyone.

Also, I plan on reviewing a bunch of games about evil characters being the protagonists.  While I have a lot more that I could use in the backlog of 500+ games I own, we're just going with Dungeons 1, 2 Overlord 1 and 2, Evil Genius 1 and 2, and Attack of the Earthlings.  I think 7 game is enough for now, and I am doing these in no particular order.