The first part of the game involves stepping out onto the global stage, via a board game style interface reminiscent of Risk or Diplomacy, and fulfilling side stories that involve kidnapping specialists who allow you to create new minion types, as well as meeting a welter of criteria which eventually enable you to build a doomsday device.Įvil Genius 2 doesn’t kick into top gear until you’ve built and test fired your doomsday device: it’s all very well having the ability to erase cities from the Earth with a giant death ray, but there’s still an awful lot to do before you can parlay that into total global domination.
Research is a fairly glacial process, so it pays to have it going on in the background at all times. This includes your operation on the global stage, the overall quality of your minions, and the dastardly traps with which you safeguard your base from invading superspies.
Research is usually dependent on the types of minions you have generated along with individual items of laboratory kit and lets you upgrade various aspects of your base.
You must build a vast array of different room types to accommodate the various types of minions you will eventually have at your beck and call, fronted up by the cover of a casino. Your first big decision is which evil genius you want to play as: there are four, each with their own distinctive storyline, and three islands on which you can build your base, each of which presents different architectural challenges. A word of caution is required for console owners attuned to more instantly gratifying gameplay, though: Evil Genius 2 starts relatively slowly and requires a lot of initial patience if you are to prosper in it. While that control scheme means it occasionally takes slightly longer to reach some of the items you need to build, it quickly becomes intuitive, enabling you to relax and concentrate on Evil Genius 2’s deep and utterly moreish gameplay.