Have you ever dreamt of becoming the next Felonious Gru, Dr. Evil, or any of the 24 iconic Bond villains? Or maybe you’ve pondered how these evil overlords can construct these elaborate lairs. Is there an architectural firm that specializes in volcano lairs; are there special construction crews that build them, and what temp agency actually supplies the hundreds of minions required to stay operational? And most importantly, why did my school guidance counselor never tell me about this whole minion thing? Evil Genius 2: World Domination has arrived to answer (or ignore) all those questions and more in what has become my favorite base-building sim in several years. Speaking of “several years”, it’s been 17 of them since the original game; one that I personally didn’t review, so I was excited to step into the role of the monocle-wearing, purple-suited “hero” of the sequel.
Regardless of whether you’re a building-sim aficionado you should probably explore the multi-hour tutorial that showcases everything from basic base building to more advanced functions like expanding your empire around the world. Your evil actions will not go unnoticed, so prepare for lots of secret agents who will try to infiltrate your base and gather proof of your nefarious schemes. If you thought running an evil empire was tough, just wait until you have to combine it with hotel/resort/casino management skills.
Once you are comfortable with the basics of world domination you can choose from four Geniuses, each with their own unique design and skillset that mirrors popular movie villains. From there it’s off to your headquarters, a virtual lump of clay waiting for you to mold it into a high-tech super-fortress, all lurking behind an abandoned resort/casino. As is typical with the genre, things start off slow but ramp up quickly. Every base has essentials like a vault for your gold, generators to power the base, barracks so your henchmen can rest and a cafeteria so they can eat. Later they’ll need a workout room to move up the ranks, a lounge to relax, and a sickbay to heal. Your Genius will need a control room to run the place and of course you’ll need a detention block with torture devices to interrogate intruders and defectors.
All of this construction is handled in “real-time”, so after you modify the map with your cursor you get to see actual workmen come to hollow out a part of the mountain and build the designated room. As the base becomes more populated the game turns into this elaborate ant farm that you could watch for hours; at least after you have achieved equilibrium between resources and their consumption. Sadly, with so many plates spinning at once you have little time to sit back and enjoy the show, which is a shame because the delightful animations of your minions is perhaps one of the best parts of the game. Those that aren’t under direct orders will go about their evil duties with little bubbles above their heads indicating their dreams, wants, and desires. These are often subtle visual clues as to what you need to build next, unlike the entire base shutting down when you don’t have enough generators. There are icons for sleeping and eating as well as stress and injury. If conditions are poor morale can plummet and minions will try to escape.
Building your base is only part of the experience. You will also need to visit the World Map that is full of missions and activities that will earn you money and intel that can be used to further enhance your base. It’s quite the vicious circle, one that will generate heat from global law enforcement who will send agents to your base to find out what’s going on. This plays into the third aspect of Evil Genius 2: World Domination, distraction. Attached to every base is a defunct casino that you get to renovate into something that will hopefully distract any curious agents. Design your own casino floor, complete with gambling, bars, and stage shows; anything to keep the Bond-wannabes from getting past the “Employees Only” door. But if they do there is an awesome assortment of fiendish traps to thin out their numbers. I enjoyed the enemy agent interactions, but they did seem to occur too often, and until you have built guard posts and installed traps these invasions will distract you from your other evil administration duties.
Evil Genius 2: World Domination can take a long time to play and the differences between the four themed villains is mostly superficial, so only the most evil of gamers will likely play through the game four times. While fun during the early stages of base building and world scheming the game turns into a bit of a slog after a couple of hours when it seems that you are grinding to feed an insatiable beast. More power…more barracks…another roulette wheel…more guys to do more missions so we can get bigger and bigger. And poor planning in the early stages of base building can lead to lots of demolition, redesign, and new construction.
Technically, Evil Genius 2: World Domination looks and sounds great with fantastic 4K visuals that are loaded with details and wonderful animations best viewed with the closest zoom before pulling back to view the entire base in all its bustling glory. The UI is nicely designed with tidy menus and well-placed pop-up notifications. You can play with mouse and keyboard or a gamepad and both work equally as well, although the mouse offers slightly better precision for some activities. The sound, music and voice acting are outstanding and add greatly to the overall experience.
Aside from the mid-game lull in pacing my only other minor complaint is the lack of immersion with my minions. Why can’t I optionally change the names of my minions to make things just a bit more personal, or why can’t I assign minions to specific tasks. Sometimes it can take minutes after clicking a task before some random crew show up to actually do the work, and if you have multiple tasks the AI might not prioritize them properly.
Perhaps even more fun than the core domination mode is the Sandbox mode where you are given plenty of resources with the simple focus of designing and building the best base and casino without all the stress and grindy progression of the main game. For those who can’t get enough megalomania in their life there is already a Season Pass that will keep you fully stocked with another Genius, more stuff to put in your lair, and more minions to boss around. If you enjoy these elaborate building/management sims with all these tightly integrated rules that determine cause and effect, all under the premise of becoming an evil world ruler then you’ll feel right at home in your very own personalized lair in Evil Genius 2: World Domination.
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