The Overlord series has never been seen as perfect. I’ve generally avoided it for that reason. Fallout 4 is never going to play itself. But it got sold to me as a fairly unpolished series full of good dark humour and Pikmin like minions. So I found it tempting enough to pull it out of my game catalogue.
However Fellowship of Evil has little charm of its own with only moments of entertainment. My interest is more in how this made it out of a door of Codemaster. The premise of the original games have been ditched. The game has fallen into a Diablo knock-off with only vague referencing to the any other game of the namesake. This game can be summed up as a serious button masher. Nothing more.
So you are resurrected as one of four evil-doers who died during their earlier evil deeds. You get summoned by minions and turned into their leader and sent to kill anybody who stands against you.
The mainstay of the game is combat, which devolves into smashing the attack button until the enemies are dead. While you can get a shield or dodge they are quite ineffective at defending enemy blows and it’s a lot simpler to just barrel your way through enemies whilst healing. Depending on your protagonist depends on whether you have melee or ranged weapons. Melee is a matter of patience. Hit the attack key constantly until the enemy is dead. Ranged fire is far more powerful than their melee counterparts though the gameplay feels slow and boring when using them.
You do get the minions of the original games though they are no longer being commanded by you. They behave autonomously when summoned which would be fine if the AI wasn’t awful and you didn’t have to collect them from weird towers. The minions can get stuck in the floor, randomly disappear and stand around only to get splattered by enemies. The only useful minion available are the blue ‘medic’ minions which can heal you. However enemies sensibly target them over others and they are far too easy to kill. The introduction of ‘golden’ turns the game’s defining concept into a liability. When minions come in contact with golden they turn against you, making any level with golden pointless to use minions in unless you want extra enemies.
The game is designed for multiplayer as it definitely is not balanced for solo play. When solo enemies tend to surround you and it’s a matter of luck and how many medic minions you possess. It doesn’t help the checkpointing is awful and the game seems to throw champion enemies at you in every encounter. Overall it makes playing solo a torturous experience.
Fellowship of Evil feels like a very stripped down RPG. Everything runs on a similar formula with no special attacks or skill trees. Any upgrading which can be done to you, your weapons or minions is very linear and doesn’t improve the experience by a large amount.
This game has been taken in a new direction. There is nothing wrong with doing that. However the direction isn’t the problem. The problem is the poor quality of the game. The game could have been good but there is no substance in the game. The loot drops are poor, the combat doesn’t really expand and the combat is horrible designed. Plus there are some pressure-plate puzzles which made me want to die.
The game is a saddening motion for the series. It should be sold for an action-RPG for a person who has never played one. This is for people who have never played a video game before. For this poor effort the game gets a 0.5. That’s only because I can’t give it a 0.
Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.
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