Overlord

The overall theme of Overlord is one of the best I've seen in a video game, ever. The game creates an absolute farce of common fantasy tropes: Halflings are wicked little drunken miscreants; Elves are lazy emo assholes who piss and moan about the loss of their magic forest; a virtuous little woman I rescued from a dungeon wishes me luck on my evil quests. Oh, also, I subjugated some maidens from the village of Spree, so now there are a bunch of half-naked chicks in my throne room. It's good to be the overlord!

As much as I love the ideas of the game, though, I'm still having a spot of trouble with the mechanics. Overlord really needs a map: the overworld areas are sprawling and difficult to navigate - the teleport locations don't appear to follow any pattern - and some dungeons are scarily labyrinthine. Some of the level design in these areas is pretty good, but often I feel like there are corridors just for the sake of making me get lost.

The minion controls have something of a learning curve, although I think I'm starting to get the hang of it. Blue minions can resurrect fallen minions; but only if they're placed nearby on a Guard Marker, which I had trouble figuring out for a while. It would be immensely helpful if something in the game clearly illustrated their effective range - since there's a small window of time for them to revive minion bodies, if they're too far away, I won't really notice until it's too late.

Also, while the minion pathfinding is excellent - I'm really impressed by some of the routes they're able to figure out - it's not always clear when they'll pathfind or when, instead, they'll follow you to their doom. I have no problem with my store of summonable minions, but if my entire fighting force dies at once, it can put me in a real pickle.

Progress: In the sewers of Heaven's Peak