Evil Genius 2 World Domination

“The focus on operating on the 'world map' draws your attention away from the base, and nothing very meaningful happens in either sphere - this game is a series of waiting for resources to refresh, and once you're a few hours in it stops feeling like a lair builder and starts playing more like a phone game - activate a mission that sends troops to do something (no gameplay there, just click yes), wait until it finishes, then do it again.”

“The game is full of bugs, both technical (crashes, sound not working, people who can't start the game at all), and in-game/gameplay (bugs, quests uncompleteable, undefeatable low tier agents, one henchman side quest in particular was hard to complete because my minions wouldn't capture him as required.)”

“The core gameplay loop is extremely repetitive, boring and hardly provides any challenge at all.”

“The game's graphics actually seem a bit buggy still 4 years after release.”

“There is literally no comparison; it is better graphically and traps are easier to use, not much more.”

“As someone who played the first game as a child/teenager, this one falls short in almost every aspect, even graphics.”

“It wasn't nearly as grindy, but the game is intentionally very slow and grindy. To do a single play-through without exploits was like 100 hours (on max speed the whole time) for what should have been a 40-50 hour game; everything is so grindy and padded.”

“The world map can feel like a tedious chore with numerous timers and micromanagement; many players reported spending excessive time repeating the same missions over and over, which leads to a tedious and slow-paced experience.”

“The game quickly becomes tedious with repetitive, grind-heavy gameplay, including micromanagement and long waiting times for timers, making progression feel artificially slowed and often frustrating rather than enjoyable.”

“Eg2 is trying to be funny, but in a childish, really not funny way; for example, you only have one chair for questioning, unlike EG1 where you could extract intel by putting your enemies into the bowl at the mess hall.”

“Eh... they took all the hilarity out of Evil Genius 1, and replaced it with dull, unfunny dialogue between the genius and minions.”

“One thing kind of needs to be fixed though... agents will kill your henchmen (for no real reason since I set them to distract people) and take pictures of their corpses as evidence... hilarious... yeah... but kind of not funny.”

“The soundtrack is also limited, with only about three tracks, and it seems like no effort was made to add more variety.”

“The game's musical score becomes extremely repetitive, something that the original Evil Genius addressed through an emphasis on ambience instead of the same loop of bouncy, cheery spy thriller music.”

“The music is fitting, giving it a spy movie vibe, but more Austin Powers than James Bond.”

“After a sketchy release with releasing DLCs right away looking like a money grab, a crazy amount of game-stalling glitches and bugs resulted in having to either reload from a previous save losing hours of progress or restarting the game entirely, making players mad as hell. The game has got way better since then.”

“Right now it is a buggy mess filled with so many ways to permanently softlock your campaign that it's not worth a cent.”

“I am giving a negative review hoping to contribute to the developers deciding to fix this game. As a long-time fan of the series and having spent nearly 60 hours in the sequel, it pains me to say the game is a buggy mess that has sucked most of the enjoyment out of it. This, coupled with tedious world map mechanics, made me stop playing until a major patch fixes the broken bugs and mechanics.”

“What's most unfortunate is that the game has no replay value at all.”

“Overall, I got my money's worth (on sale) but there is 0 replay value.”

“A genuinely boring game with absolutely no replayability, I found myself playing the original before actually finishing this game.”

“Furthermore, the game lacks basic optimization and automation settings: for instance, during the game you will have your equipment destroyed hundreds of times; a simple 'rebuild room as was' button would significantly improve the game, but no, very basic options are unfortunately lacking.”

“Edit: after finally working my potato computer for an infuriating amount of time I finally made it past the tutorial (the game is very poorly optimized) so where do I start?”

“As of the writing of this text (my 3rd review of the game) many components remain poorly optimized and badly balanced.”

“The DLC monetization for this game is also in line with making it feel more like a mobile game as they are locking content behind paywalls that honestly feels like it was just cut from the game pre-launch in order to monetize it at a later date.”

“I waited to write this review for a while, sadly I find myself agreeing with many others. I can't in good faith recommend this game following the latest DLC of the Abomination Pack. If it was a free update that would be different, but they were in the first game, so to see it cut and sold as DLC now is rather upsetting to say the least. I was a massive fan of the first game and initially enjoyed the second, but having given it great thought I would suggest picking this game up on sale if you want to play it. It deeply saddens me to see the DLCs which feel like nothing more than cash grabs. I hope the game improves and if it does I would happily continue playing and recommend it.”

“The largest drawbacks are the time investment per game, the requirement for a new game to see any DLC that drops, and the fact that the first item pack is blatantly cut vanilla core game assets repackaged as cash grab DLC to see if they can get away with it.”

“But it simply lacks the soul of EG1; less of an homage to over-the-top 60's spy movies, it doesn't quite hit the mark in terms of atmosphere.”

“But then we get to larger issues like the grindy, repetitive nature of the gameplay or the complete change in atmosphere that really kills it for me.”

“The sound effects and music are forgettable, doing little to enhance the atmosphere or immerse players in the game.”

“Irritatingly, the game has all the story, animation, character design and building block assets it needs to be a great game, but is let down by tragic game design and slow pacing of the campaign and world map - pain points that with some better easy design choices could have been lessened.”

“Character design is okay, but there are big minus points for all the geniuses having the same dialogue for cutscenes and for the lack of difference in how you can utilize them. All of them boil down to an efficiency boost, occasionally killing a minion, and having one flavor skill each.”

“The animations feel pretty generic in contrast to the character design.”