f13.net

Soo people were ticked off at Dungeons as it was not actually Dungeon Keeper. Now people might be pissed off at this because it IS Dungeon Keeper - with enough difference so as not to get sued.  :grin:

So, you dig out rooms, mine gold, slap creatures with the Hand of Evil Terror and so on. I'll just list the differences with dungoun keeper - you buy creatures instead of them walking in, you have a population cap, you can upgrade creatures into new forms, you only have 4 base creature types for each of the 2 sides (Horde and Demonic) you can play (not counting workers), Instead of sleep and hunger, your creatures have a boredom and Thirst need, you can mine Mana as well as gold, and you can selectively research stuff. And, not least, you can fill in stuff you have dug out which helps with setting up room efficiency. And you have a sarcastic "narrator," who is quite frankly hilarious and will tell you off if you screw up a mission or take too long to "progress my story"

The big innovation is that you can send your creatures into the overworld, at which point the game turns into Warcraft 3. The story is mission based with you having to send your creatures into different caves or kill or grab things up there to progress. Once on top you can directly control your creatures A la Drag and click. You can also see and intercept Heroes on the way to the underworld. As you kill stuff the landscape Morphs, from Sunny and Green with floppy bunnies hopping about, to Dark and twisted as you clear sectors in the overworld.

The way the game handles the over and underground is very simple - it has a minimap on the left hand side for the overworld. If your creatures are in another dungeon they access from the overworld there is no minimap for that but you can hop to your creatures a couple of ways including the creature icon that appears over the minimap.

Anyway. I'm really enjoying this. Buy it

gameplay video - though the guys voice is irritating and does contain mission spoilers of the first mission or 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju-1m6-z3Y0

I have always had an intense dislike of hard unit cap mechanics (as opposed to some sort of soft limit based on upkeep).

Also, none of the dungeon keeper games are actually any good. I played them a tonne because I wanted them to be good. But they really weren't.

So, is this better than dungeon keeper?

Its a hard question to answer, honestly.

Firstly in the third mission when you get the mana room you can stat upgrading your population points there so its not set in stone at all. It can go up as long as you are willing to throw money at it.

One of the critisisms of the game is that it can be a little slow in progression and moving forward. To that I say... did They ever actually play Dungeon Keeper? 98% of that game was just tunneling around for gold and secret entrances to enemy compounds while your creatures sat in the training room till they were finally of a high enough level so as not to turn into Raspberry jam when you threw them at the enemy.

Also people say that the Campaign is a little short. I don't know about that, I'm just at the 4th mission (which I just lost spectacularly)

In terms of entertainment though I'm having a blast with it for now. A lot of it is the Narration which is beautifully voice acted and is genuinely very funny. (Its the same voice actor as "the Stanely Parable") Its rare that I actually have a grin on my face while I'm playing something, but I am with this. The Overworld mechanic works very well in terms of giving a purpose to the tunneling around and it makes it a lot easier to have fun missions without sacrificing underground real estate with enemy keepers and such.

I think I'm enjoying it more than Dungeon Keeper to be honest so in that respect its a better game. The Pacing is better, the art style is good, again the voice acting is fantastic, and the game is just good entertainment and is fun to play. I cant guarantee that you would like it but I would say that it might be best to look at a playthrough of a few missions before you put down the cash. That's the best answer I can give you.

If you liked Dungeon Keeper though I would call it a definite buy. I've read that an average score online is a 5 which is a ridiculously low score for something this entertaining (probably shows how hardcore some of the DK purist fanboys are out there). I'd give it probably an 8.5

I just spent a month working closely with an Italian hardware vendor....flashbacks.