Dungeons 2

Come for the dungeon management, stay for goofy minions like Jayzee, Am’Adamss, and Kato. We’ve seen a lot of “spiritual successors” to Dungeon Keeper, but none have lived up to that genre-defining product. Dungeons 2 is the culmination of a lot of hard work, and it’s great that Kalypso and Realmforge could finally deliver on that often-promised and hardly-delivered goal. Sure, we may not always know what we want, but when somebody shows up and does it right, you immediately know.

Maybe Dungeons 2 plays a little safe by ditching some of the more intriguing aspects of the previous game (I still think the idea of using overconfident adventurers as a form of drainable resource is a fantastically twisted conceit that could have been fleshed out further) in favour of going back to the roots of the dungeon management genre, but it’s hard to criticise Realmforge too much for that when the game is this enjoyable. While it is fairly simplistic, the overland RTS game provides ...

The life of a dungeon lord isn’t easy – you have a legion of snotlings complaining about their wages, lazy orcs getting drunk off the dwindling beer supply, and your mana reserve is dangerously low. The do-gooders above ground are upset at your subterranean digging and delving, and they keep sending armies down to upset your rule. In Dungeons 2, you won’t let that stand; you grow an unstoppable army backed by powerful magic to decimate the overworld and turn the happy-fun flowers and unicorns into your own hellacious design.

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Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Dungeons 2. It may be a bit easy for hardcore RTS fans – each level could be completed by over-preparing your dungeon before even setting foot in the overworld – but the addition of multiplayer adds a potential new challenge to test out your evil skills against another human. It may not be the deepest or most concentrated strategy game on the market, but its style, comedy and fun gameplay makes Dungeons 2 a great game.

Dungeons 2 is two so-so games that could be one great one. The idea of building an evil empire is an intriguing one, but things could be so much more fleshed out. Those with a penchant for cheeky humor will find much to love here, but those looking for some speedy, depthful gameplay best take heed.

Taking it to a new level.

There was something promising about the way the developers put Dungeons 2 together but they didn’t really follow through with that promise. Instead we got a game that seemed as though the developers stretch themselves too thin.

It’s a shame Dungeons 2’s above-ground RTS battles are so primitive and poor, because the underground dungeon-management stuff actually works fairly well. It’s nothing new or special — another would-be Dungeon Keeper successor — but that’s not the worst idea in the world. Dungeons 2 could have been a nice, if uninspired, Dungeon Keeper clone, but it reaches to do more than that, trips, and falls flat on its face.