Overlord Dark Legend is the first game in Codemasters’ Overlord series to hit the Wii. While the game is a fun experience, it sadly is not without its faults. So let’s jump straight into this.
To start off with, this game is not connected to any of the other Overlord games directly. So for newcomers to the series like myself, you can jump right into the game without any worries of being confused over the plot line. In this game you play as a new Overlord, who on his 16th birthday has his dark future revealed to him. Upon receiving a new suit of armor, he is given the task of taking back the reigns of his father’s kingdom while he is away by using whatever evil means are deemed necessary. In order to do this, you are given an axe for melee attacks and more importantly, you receive a horde of minions to do your evil bidding. These little devils will attack your enemies, smash crates, and retrieve items for you.
Perhaps the strongest point of this game is its presentation. The audio has great comical voice acting, be it the quips of your minions or the cries of your enemies, and keeps the story progressing along at a steady pace. The narrator of the game also acts as guide, aiding you with tips and idea of where to go next so you never feel lost or unsure of where to go next. In addition to this, the cut scenes and overall atmosphere of the game will remind players of something out of a Monty Python comedy.
The graphics are a complete mixed bag though, which is really unfortunate. When things are at a standstill, the game looks great. The characters are detailed as are your surroundings. Things start to falter when more characters are present on the screen. As more characters fill up the screen, the more the animation starts to get choppy. It’s not so much slowdown that will affect you, but the lag and choppiness in the animation can throw off your timing for attacks. While it doesn’t make the game unplayable, it would have been nice to have seen this issue worked on more before the game’s release.
Thankfully, the controls function well for the most part in this title. The nunchuck is used to control the actions of the Overlord whereas the remote is used for spells and controlling the minions. Controlling the Overlord is a breeze. The joystick makes him run, C focuses the camera, and Z or swinging the nunchuck makes him do melee attacks. On the remote, the dpad is used for scrolling through your minions and using spells, while A and B are used for recalling minions and sending them out to attack respectively. Using the minions are the meat and potatoes of this game or rather, the main focus. They basically function under a point and click premise. You aim where you want them to go and activate them with the B button. They respond well to your commands as I could only count the number of times they didn't react accordingly to my wishes on one hand. It’s greatly amusing to send a swarm of your baddies to smother an enemy.
You will have four types of minions at your disposal. At the start of the game you are given browns. They are used for striking attacks and are the strongest out of the four. Reds are weaker but can attack from long range and can remove fire hazards from the map. Blues are the weakest, but can go in water and can revive dead minions. Finally, near the end of the game, you are equipped with greens, who can remove poisonous traps that block your path. You will have to use all of them in order to successfully traverse throughout the game’s caves and castles. Overall, controlling the minions is a simple matter except for when using what the game calls guard towers. These allow you to leave a set number of minions off to the side to perform defensive maneuvers. It took some time to get this feature down as the first few times I tried to use it, I kept accidentally sending all of my minions to the towers. By the time you get all four types of minions, you should have a maximum of around 15 to 20 minions available to you. This is where the game gets really fun as you have more attack options at your disposal, but at the same time this is where things start to die off as well.
The one glaring negative to this game is its length. While there are a few side missions for you to complete, a single play through skipping these will only net you a little less than 9 hours of game play. This is not helped either by the fact that overall, difficulty is non-exsistant. The majority of the bosses can all be defeated using the same strategy: have the minions attack, aid with spells, then call them back to avoid big attacks before attacking again. Wash, rinse, repeat.
The game goes by so fast that when I was fighting the final boss in the game, I had no idea whatsoever that I was fighting the final battle. After beating him, an amusing cut scene played and I was hit with the ending credits. To this I could only utter one sentence: “That’s it?!” I’m sorry, but this reviewer was hoping for a little more bang for his buck.
