Game Review: Evil Genius
evil genius is a world domination
simulation with a sense of humor
both the super villains and heroes
agents are more like jokes than people
and that’s the point it’s a cartoony
parody about super villains with a dark
sense of humor
but uh especially due to events since it
was made
sometimes it’s even darker than intended
you have some special henchmen who aid
you and who seem to care about each
other which is evil sweet
you can upgrade your worker minions into
specialized minions
and you send your people off to go do
nefarious deeds
you also build a base and manage it
fitting in what you need and keeping the
forces of good
out except for when you want to torture
them because well
evil it seems as if the people who made
the game cared about adding depth to it
there’s an amazing attention to detail
staying zoomed out is normal because
it’s easier to control your minions that
way
but if you do you’ll miss much of its
spirit
if you zoom in then you can see that
little details are all over the place
there are different animations for
various npc actions too
of detail is nice
for example check out this boat scene
the ocean seems
serene and the song tranquil
is so good for the moment or should i
say
so bad when your minions run to it
then you can even see a realistic moment
as they get onto the boat
they all carefully step down as they
board as if this wasn’t enough attention
to detail
as the boat takes off check out the name
evil one moments like this feel like
little easter eggs hidden throughout the
game
and there are many of them so i was
disappointed that i disliked the
gameplay itself
i disliked it because of two big
problems
the first was map related causing busy
work which ought to have been
unnecessary
and made the game feel horribly tedious
the second problem had to do with the ai
zamap a player has to have minions in
the field
stealing on the map is the only way to
make money
and building up notoriety by doing
missions
is how to advance the plot but the only
way to know if these minions are okay or
not is to check the map every few
seconds
because minions die to agents if they
don’t hide whenever one pops up and
agents
pop up randomly if these minions die
then you have to retrain new specialized
ones
that takes time then you’ve got to send
them out
all over again so it’s worth keeping
them alive as
much as possible deaths are setbacks
but being punished for not doing
security monitoring is annoying
if you’re busy with other tasks then
they’ll die
and this also made no sense in game
because there’s no sense getting the
boss involved in the security detail
my minions are already analyzing all of
this map data
and as the evil genius i’ve got no
special insight here
you the evil genius only get the
information by manning these consoles
with minions
plus i’m supposed to be focusing on
world domination
giving orders not this menial
surveillance work
the game even notes that this is the
sort of work that the minions were hired
to do
the boring stuff you won’t be doing any
of the menial work around the base
yourself
so your first priority should be to
recruit some minions
as if that’s not bad enough it also
shows you that this is something that
minions should
handle because minions can
handle security alerts for intruders in
the base
and they do this by watching camera
monitors
and they can’t handle giving the same
sort of alerts for the world
map monitors
the ai itself wasn’t much better than
this construction workers must first go
to the strong room to get money to buy
the construction materials
they will then go to the depot by
dynamite it was a mess
in so many ways your unique henchmen die
permanently
if they lose to super agents three times
you’re warned to be cautious when
engaging them in combat for this reason
however the henchmen will auto fight
them unless you babysit them
and lead them away by the hand this is
bad
because if they’re out for a smoke break
or a walk
then they can lose a life very quickly
you can’t control individual minions
either and they often
run to their deaths for instance if
there’s a fire
then your weak little social minions the
ones with no combat skills
decide to run toward the fire with fire
extinguishers
even when the minions see that there are
hostile enemies in the room
then they still stand in place and get
killed as they try to put out the fires
there’s no way to stop their reckless
bravery
unless you manually lock the doors also
while objects on fire will explode
there’s no threat beyond that these
minions aren’t really helping
because the base doesn’t get harmed it’s
not in jeopardy
it’s also not as if he’s going to save
the object which is currently being shot
at
it’s on fire because it’s being shot at
so this is really really stupid
another example happens with traps
minions should know where the traps are
especially when they have a regular
routine of collecting the bodies or
confused people from them
they’re also seeing the confusing ones
on a daily basis however if an agent
triggers one
then the minions get hit too because
they can neither ignore these surprises
nor see the obvious coming and step
aside
the best they can manage is not setting
off the traps by themselves if they’re
attentive enough that day
there were other issues too but they
weren’t as bad as the ai and map issues
for instance the base building is
restrictive you can
add room space easily but you can’t
destroy
any existing space unless you destroy
the whole room
i would have liked to have been able to
destroy individual square tiles in a
room
instead of the entire area to both
maximize and minimize my rooms areas
as needed you get new items as you
research and
what you discover doesn’t always have
room in the room
i played for about 19 hours on medium
difficulty
but then stopped i knew that i could
eventually beat the game but i hated the
feeling of taking one step back and two
steps forward
over and over again minions die retrain
minions minions die
retrain minions after 19 hours
this just wasn’t any fun anymore i
looked up how long the game takes to
beat and different sites said it took
25 to 30 hours depending on whether or
not
someone wants to be a completionist
playing for another
6 to 11 hours wasn’t appealing to me as
for what was going on that disappointed
me
i was having special agents attack my
base and kill my minions since i
couldn’t issue orders to either
individual minions or minion types
for example i would have liked to have
been able to tell the social group
run away instead all i could do was tag
an enemy to be handled in a certain way
kill capture confuse or ignore
but stay away wasn’t an option and
as i mentioned the ai wasn’t good
meanwhile my minions also died on the
world map because i was fending off the
special and regular agents
and trying to babysit these minions
instead of monitoring the monitors
and babysitting those minions as for how
the game looks and sounds
as i mentioned earlier the attention to
detail is great the special henchmen
even get catch phrases and individual
animations
some things could be better sure but
it’s good overall and i liked it
the soundtrack is pleasant it did more
than just blend in when i was playing
there were moments where i noticed it in
a good way because it meshed well
but also sounded cool in the moment the
soundtrack was a free extra with the
game
i gave it a listen after playing it’s
not something that i like enough to
listen to
outside of the game but i tried to
because it’s great in the context of the
game
the game and the music add to each other
well it’s worth noting
that a sequel is actually coming out
this year this review
is being posted in february of 2021 and
evil genius 2
is set to release in march i probably
will check out the sequel
via let’s plays and see if the flaws in
the gameplay have been fixed
after all if the flaws that i disliked
aren’t in the next one
then i might like it it was the flaws
that really distracted me
because the gameplay didn’t match the
fun atmosphere that had been generated
i just felt like it was a hassle unless
a player
really loves base management enough to
overlook the game’s problems
then i can’t strongly recommend this
first version of evil genius
despite its good points i really didn’t
enjoy evil genius due to its gameplay
flaws
it looks and sounds nice yes people
clearly cared about making a fun game
with detail and atmosphere but i didn’t
feel like a criminal mastermind issuing
orders
being unable to issue even basic
commands
like avoid or selecting groups of
minions
was annoying having to micromanage them
like a babysitter wasn’t fun
it was as if instead of evil genius the
game should have been titled
minions because they were running the
show
not the player their constant deaths and
idiocy
led to just repetition i understand the
trope that minions are bumbling but
not being able to control them well was
a different matter and
really affected my enjoyment of the
gameplay at the very least
the evil genius should be able to
command them
you
