Hello Friends,

Today i will review the game Evil Genius 2. This is a sequel to the game Evil Genius 1. Made by the same publisher company that made the original game called REBELLION. The game also has the cartoony aesthetics as the original game, but also goes down the DLC route making many DLC's to charge extra money for the game. They also added some free DLC too, which reference other games like Portal and Team Fortress 2.

As for technical issues with this game, i ran into some crashes using the Vulkan version of the game. Players can also opt out and use the Dx 12 version. I did not test the Dx 12 version and used only the Vulkan version. I did post the crash report on the forum, and i also sent reports to Rebellion when it popped up with the crash report, but i am unsure if anything will be done with these crash reports.

The game plays very similar to the first game. The player chooses a evil villain, then a island to set up their base, and then start to build a evil lair full of traps and rooms so their minions can evolve into stronger minions also using training. Also, the player must provide facilities for their minions to be happy such as break rooms, mess halls, and medical rooms. In fact, there are much more rooms the player can build in this compared to the original game. Some of the charm of the original game is lost in this game, but it still has funny things that can happen. One thing i personally miss from the first game is the moonwalking when interrogating enemies.

Compared to the first game, I found the difficulty of the second game not as bad. Perhaps the developers made it more accessible to more players by changing how difficult the game is on. Regardless, I personally played the game on easy because I thought the game would be as hard as i had on the original version. If a player wants it to be harder, there are settings to make it harder, such as a difficulty setting in case some players find it too easy. Anyways, here is my pro and con list:

PROS:

- A new evil genius game with easier playing of it compared to the original game. It makes it more accessible for everyone.

- Cartoony aesthetics and silly things can happen in the game.

- Build your own evil lair and try to control the whole world.

- Players can choose their own mastermind villain. The game changes events depending on what mastermind the player chooses.

- A big selection of henchmen to hire to help with security in your base.

- Ability to upgrade minions to better positions to help the mastermind to control the world.

- Lots of rooms compared to the first game. More furniture and decor to add to each room. Also the ability to make items be auto buildable in case somehow they get destroyed.

- Works on windows 11, but did have some crashes.

- Players can use a controller, but it works better with a keyboard and mouse, and that is personally the way i played the game.


CONS:

- Some crashing may occur if you use the Vulkan mode. I have reported this to REBELLION using the auto report feature in the game. I also posted it on the forums in a couple places.

- Some of the magic from the first game was removed in the second game, such as the moonwalking henchmen during when you interrogate enemies in the lair.

- Some DLC to add more stuff increases price of game. Buy the season pass on sale if you want them.

Do I recommend the game? Yes i do, but be aware i personally crashed several times playing it, but only using the VULKAN graphics settings. The other setting i did not test out, and may not crash the game like the Vulkan setting did. The amount of DLC also shows the developers went the route of making as much money off the game by releasing alot of dlc. At least there are some free dlc. Some of the magic of the first game was lost with less funny interactions, but they replaced this with others. The game is accessible to even me, who is disabled, as i found the first game to be very difficult, even on the easy setting. I do think the game is a improvement of the first game, but long time fans maybe mad about the removal of some funny gags that were in the fist game. Also, from what i read on the forum, people do not like the new world map. Still, i liked the game and found it to be better than the original game.

I originally played the first one (with mods to up the minion count) and absolutely loved it. Two I then started, mostly enjoyed, got to the mid game roughly, and then took a break for a year to come back to. While two definitely improves on some things that the original had, I think it took quite a few missteps.

The Good
1. 300 by default cap is great, I still wanted more as this was easy to hit in mid game, but it was great.
2. Being able to train higher classes without having that class is very nice, forgiving possible mistakes or bad luck.
3. The island has multiple floors allowing for lots of building space if needed.

The Bad
1. I really don't like the decision of the guys you send to the map never coming back. It has you churn through minions and not really care about them because they can quickly and effortlessly be replaced.
2. The quest system and having to only be able to work one at a time (one main and one side quest) slows down the gameplay for no real foreseeable reason. For explanation with the mid game to completion I just had the game running at 2x speed the whole time and would just click to either hire minions or send them out to things. Not much honestly changed at that point besides clicking buttons to progress honestly.
3. The decision to not be able to build outside of the island. I LOVED the original one with being able to build fake huts, having the agents running around the island and trying to do things. Having multiple fake entrances filled with diaboloical trap combos. Here you have two entrances really, the main one where tourists come in and the helicopter one, this is the one 95% of the enemy agents come through, you can't do anything about them besides put traps and cameras along this entrance. Same for the front entrance the 5 percent of the time they come from there. It's just so disappointing because all I ended up doing was relying on my security to take them out as I came in, then minions replacing them to prepare for the next wave. I really didn't have any notable threats or events happen to me that required some fun creative thinking. The traps themselves can get disabled now by agents which is also lame and makes them seem a lot less useful than before.

Overall it's really a strong start, but a disappointing ending to this, I miss the first one.

Two things to understand about the early ratings:

Many of the players who played the 1st game wanted a 100% sandbox experience, instead of this one which was largely narrative driven. Just like the Campaign is the way to play Tropico 4, the narrative is the way to play this game. It works. Don't let that detract you.

Second, the way global missions work was overhauled. Gold was harder to come by when the game first launched, and now it is a bit......TOO easy to fill your vaults. Morale was also impacted way too harshly for having dead bodies around the base. I believe that was a bug, and it was fixed, but those ratings often never change as we all know.

If you are okay with narrative driven base builders in the vein of Tropico 4, give this game a try. It's not perfect, but it is a unique, fun, and engaging experience, with decent replay value due to the 5 different Geniuses and 4 different hideouts. The voice acting isn't perfect, but it is very high quality. The side missions see all the geniuses having the same dialog, and it gravitates around what Max and Ivan would say. I would play those two when trying to get achievements they can all get like every Henchmen and every Loot item. But their main stories are all voiced well enough (Maybe Polar is a little weak, but I've seen people who like her the most so........)

The initial model to the game didn't actually favor what they wanted to do this game enough, which was intended to be one where it went for several years with several seasons with lots of different additional minions, loot side stories, henchmen, hideouts and geniuses added. But when you look at Polar and her DLC, it's clear they didn't structure it properly. With that said, even with only a quarter of the addition content this game was wanting to do, I would consider it rather complete as it landed. Even at it's listed price of $60 for the deluxe addition with net you 100s of hours of play (more if you are like me and watching an infant so the game runs while you are tending to the baby lol)

This comes highly recommended as a unique experience. The game could have easily been better in a myriad of ways, so people playing this game and showing there is a market for it may get us the 3-4 different directions someone could take a game like this.

Imagine a game where you are playing Cobra Commander!! There are plenty of other layers of "bad guys with a secret hideout" that could be explored in the gaming world