Overlord™: Raising Hell

Fable Pikmin

The Evil Always finds the Way

[hr][/hr]Expansion tries to cleverly recycle existing content and add a few more interesting places to visit. It succeeds at that, but reinforces all the bad habbits which original game had while addressing very few of its shortcoming.[hr][/hr]

🌈Expanding on the Good🌈

Game is noticeably better on original's strong points. Levels are more varied, filled with more interactive content. It has more puzzles, more dialogue. Enemy design is more lively and they even do stuff in some areas before you come in. Levels are also great, as each hell has its own theme. A an eternally bad play which mocks and tortures elves with mockery of their beliefs and its crappiness was especially good. Though, levels sometimes can get confusing of where you need to go and what to do.

Forge also had received an upgrade. You can forge unique weapons and armor for your character. Now you get extra effects and can have a choice of forging non linearly scalling weapons. Previously, you needed just to keep on smelting your minions to upgrade percentages on your weapons. It wasn't very fun even if it was potentially better. Now you have a simple forging mechanic of pre-determined minions. You can get powerful weapons and armor without sacking multiple armies. It was much needed addition and it is little bit sad that only this area of a game was improved, especially considering the price of an expansion at the time.

☠️Doubling down on the Bad☠️

The issue with this expansion and why some players hate it is that it doubles down on all the worst aspects of the orginal. Were controls bad? Yes, but back then you weren't expecting to do demanding tasks with your minions. Here however a lot of puzzles and boss fights are designed around intricate and quick control of your minions. The last boss is especially problematic as it requires you to control all your minions to go to a specific spot quickly. However, there are always stragglers which take boss aggro. Timer and positioning also doesn't work as you get constantly attacked and you need to get attention of a boss who also is very inconsistent with who he is attacking. Essentially, you are combining finicky controls with inconsistent behavior and active pressure to make a right proper frustrating mess!

This extends to level design as well. Before final boss, you need to open doors which require you to do multiple things with minions. However, minions don't have controls at all for those tasks. If you put a command group, you can't order it to move from its position. Removing command group removes all of them and is slow. Your minions don't understand that you want to interact with an object if it is behind terrain. As an result, you frantically are running around and trying to press all the buttons. It is a complete mess. Likewise, objects with which you need to interact like a cart doesn't register half of the time and you can't do Melvin related pinball mini-game. Game doubled down and made its puzzles and bosses dependent on fine control of your minions which was the weakest part of the game. It takes a certain level of clueleness to do that and I'm glad that we have developers who against all odds keep on being ignorant. Such a dedication to their craft!

📉Plays Worse!📉

Developers managed to make expansion to play considerably worse than the original. The issue is that they doubled down on all the frustrating and unfair BS. There are a lot more enemies who can wipe entire groups of your minions in one shot. It also puts this content in a middle of existing levels. What if it is your first and only play of an Overlord? Since this expansion is a lot harder than a base game and you need to come to pre-grinded, you are setting up players for a frustration. This expension is meant to be done after main game, but it is put right in the middle of main paths. First to distract and severely lengthen the level with unrelated content. Then to mess players progression up. It just makes game flow and gameplay worse. Expansion even crashes for some reason while original was rock solid!

📋More of the Same📋

Raising Hell does very little in improving its story. It gives little reason to go into those hell gates, even less reason to collect those stones and to fight those villains. You are not even doing it for personal gain. It reinforces on story telling flaw where you as Overlord have no motivation and for some reason serve as a puppet for forces of good, risking your life for pleas of lazy peasants.

Likewise, there is very little choices to make. You can burn or save scarecrow guy, but it is all meaningless anwyay. They reincarnate there constantly and the choice itself is made in such confusing way where you don't know what to do. I often picked the evil option in original game and here as well by simply having no clue what I'm doing. Game needs to explain a lot more clearly what you are doing and present more meaningful options. Raising Hell expansion dropped the ball with those all together.

In the end story is left utterly unsatisfactoy. Your joker is actually evil. But what it even means? I'm the evil Overlord afterall, isn't he on my side? He escapes at last second while leaving me in hell to rule there. Like, alright? Did I ever wanted to claim hell as my domain? How imprisoning me serves as giving me power fantasy and pay off? You could had left me at least with some lovely succubus ladies! Game just keeps on failing to please you and leaves you wanting for more.

The Amplification

[hr][/hr]Expansion amplifies its good and bad aspects. It is more polarizing experience than the original which serves only to emphasize its pain points more. At the end, I had lost my patience with the game and last boss for all its shortcomings. It would be good if only it didn't doubled down on its own worst aspects, but it did and for that it is just overall worse experience.[hr][/hr]
Calicifer's Reviews
[quote]If you are interested reading full review or want to discuss something with me, please follow the provided link. I don't allow endless discussions under my reviews. You will be warned and then your comment will be deleted with my final say on the matter.[/quote]

i love this game

old classic, brings me back to playing it as a kid, well worth it

A fantasy world without an overly large, stereotypical demon villain would be far too nice, pretty, and sweet. According to Overlord: Raising Hell, fantasy realms need more evil. In fact, the want is so great that the game flips the typical demon antagonist into the main protagonist. The playful mix of satire, commentary, and terrible accents resulting from the flip is enough to delight even the most pragmatic gamer.

Yet, peel back the skin of the nefarious protagonist and charming little minions and what you’re left holding is a mixed bag. While Overlord is a decent romp through a series of missions aimed to make you laugh, think and fill the world with evil, there are also some particularly glaring flaws. These flaws were on the PS3 platform during the original launch and are still noticeable on PC and can be real deal breakers, which is unfortunate considering the promise of Overlord: Raising Hell.

When I think about antiheroes, Richard B. Riddick instantly springs to mind. Riddick’s menthol KOOLs, “eyejob,” and knack for going against the moral judgment always get my blood pulsing. My love of the nefarious recently led me to get my hands on the Steam port of Overlord: Raising Hell. Overlord is a game of controlling minion hordes, abusing civilians, and conquering a fair-minded fantasy universe. Usually, these things are all perfect in my book, but I found myself questioning the real intent of the game. Am I an evil-doer, or am I just an evil looking protagonist? It’s a conflict that really shouldn’t be so readily apparent.

However, my doubts about the quality of evil content were often pushed aside by the strong satirical commentary the game provides. The ever-eager minions give tons of good laughs through both their guttural, but comedic speech, and their tendency to utilize mundane objects such as pumpkins for armor. Beyond the humor, the game’s take on heroics, honor, and shadow is worth anyone’s time. That’s not say that I was still not confused when confronted with saving a village as opposed to burning it down.

The game begins with an opening cut-scene that explains the history of the character aptly named the Overlord. Apparently, the Overlord was given some grief by a few heroes and subsequently killed for his actions. It’s no matter, though, because the minions restore him to his previous glory and hand over the reigns to the player. Besides dicing up the Overlord, the heroes also trashed his tower. At this point, the game becomes a rebuilding effort to return the Overlord to what he once was that takes him across the fantasy world. In the process he has to battle gluttonous halflings, elves, dwarves, and a few surprises.

The game is a mix between strategy and action. The Overlord has a few simple actions available to him. There is a simple attack, as well as a basic magic system consisting of a total of four spells. The Overlord can mix it up with the enemies of the land, but it is not suggested. The most important asset to the Overlord is his utilization of minions. Much like a building troops in Starcraft, players can lock onto spawning pools and draw up minions from underground. There are four different kinds of minions, each with specific utilizations. The brown minions are the warrior class, the red are the fire, the blue can swim, and the green are the stealth variant. Each class has its own special abilities outside of just the obvious utilizations as well. The minions are spawned within a certain cap, and special orbs need to be collected to replenish the supplies.

The majority of time, the player utilizes the minions most with the puzzle activities of the game, which almost always consists of clearing debris or carrying an item back to the tower teleport. This is where the game started failing back on the PS3. The controls in Overlord are fickle, and the camera can be highly annoying as it swings and twirls in all the wrong places. There are two ways to control the minion horde. The first of which is simply jamming on a trigger in the direction of the object of interest. Most of the time, the minions will gather up the appropriate object, except the inexactness of the maneuver can lead to several miscues involving the minions going for a stack of plates instead of a treasure bag. Thankfully, there is a lock-on mechanism for easier deployment, but the poor path finding and typically dumb AI can still lead to cataclysmic hiccups. When you’re hitting everything right, the game is really fun, but when the minions start running around like chickens with their heads cut off, the game just starts to break down.

Players can also manually steer the minions with the right analog stick, which is needed in certain sections of the game. This process is usually arduous as the minions don’t respond well to this control scheme or auto-lock on the wrong objects on a consistent basis.

Visually, Overlord is showing its age. What was once fresh now looks bad by today’s newer standards. I only bring this up because it looks like the game was just perfectly ported from the 360 version. If there was anything updated or detailed more thoroughly, my eyes missed it. Even though the visuals are a bit wonky, the music, voice acting, and sound effects still suffice.

When everything is accounted for, Overlord: Raising Hell is an occasionally fun game that is rarely engaging, but always funny. The flair of the game has a tendency to overshadow the majority of its problems, and that’s the big catch; Overlord: Raising Hell is special in regards to its satire.

I can see some people that really dig the humor enjoying this game immensely. At the same rate, the game feels old and controls miserably.

Verdict: 7/10

The game has native support for ultrawide (21:9) & super ultrawide (32:9) resolutions! :)

A classic game for sure. I haven't played it in many many years. Decided to remedy that in 2025. Had such a great time with this. Slight issues on modern hardware but nothing too terrible. Can't wait to dive into Overlord 2 now that I've finished this.

Evil pikmin, Best dark fantasy satire ive ever played, replaying this as an adult brought back alot of childhood wonder

🌟 Follow Ainsel Reviews - Curator for the weird & lovely 🌟
Ah, Overlord... sweet cradle of chaos, how gloriously crooked you still stand!
Stepping back into Raising Hell feels like dusting off a cracked crown — the one you stole, probably — and marching barefoot through smoking ruins with a gleeful scream.
The minions are still idiots. Beautiful, devoted idiots, who would rob a peasant, strangle a chicken, and leap headfirst into molten doom just because you pointed vaguely in that direction.
The new realms of hell twist their little brains into even stranger shapes, offering tougher challenges and blacker laughs. And yet, the heart remains pure — pure nonsense, pure anarchy, pure stupid, wonderful loyalty.
Raising Hell doesn't fix the clumsiness or polish the rough, jagged soul of the original. No. It sharpens it, makes it wobble on the edge of madness even harder, and somehow that’s exactly what it should be.
Here, villains aren't brooding masterminds — they're tired, slightly deranged monarchs trying to keep a straight face while their army sets itself on fire for the fiftieth time.
Long may we stumble, long may we burn, and long may the goblins screech our victory into the soot-stained skies.

Great addition to any library with easy to learn controls. A true timeless classic

This game is one of the best games I have ever played

Fun old classic

An old Childhood game that I used to play back on the PS3, so glad I can relive my childhood dream of terrorizing peasants, robbing the poor, and laying waste to the innocent as an agent of darkness evil and despair!

The reasons my Overlord playthrough had so few hours on it was because I installed this updated version halfway through without realising it was just going to take over the same files or somesuch...
It basically is just Overlord. Just with a bit more or something.
And Overlord is awesome... ergo this is awesome. Same comments about light-and-soft villains vs actually bad villains applies.

Knew about this game because of my childhood, it's still the fantastic and unique game I remember it being. I would say it sucks that the game's so unknown, but I'm selfish and would want to gatekeep anyways lol. (imagine Moai emoji here)

I won't lie, I played this game mostly because Mark Silk's voice is nostalgia to my brain. The gameplay's fun though, Pikmin but evil is a fun pitch.

Overlord: Raising Hell is a glitchy, darkly humorous expose of what happens when you give a flawed human absolute power in a pixelated world. It’s a guilty pleasure that doubles as a subconscious therapy session. Just don’t look too closely at the cracks in its digital throne—it might reveal your true self.

absolutely amazing game with a great story and jokes i highly recommend it plus after you beat the game on normal you can try playing legendary and its like a whole new game where any mistake can make you lose everything

PS Evil always finds a way

I really wish this series got revived. It's been a decade since the last game went down like a sheep on fire.
Honestly even if it got a proper reboot i wouldn't mind so long as it won't be forgotten.

Absolutely fantastic game! The only problem is you have to grind forever to get gold and minion souls in multiple playthroughs. Other than that, highly recommended!

old game but fun for the minion / evil lord playstyle

whatever , go my chudlings .

looks like Fable
plays like Pikmin

Fun for awhile and nostalgic but eventually youll notice the only real difficulty is increasing the time it takes to replay a challenge with each given area. At that point the fun drops off and only tedium remains.
I bought the entire series for i think 4 dollars though, so it was definitely worth the value.

This game is a true gem and has very unique game play. But, you get lost in the great fantasy world that overlord has, that you have to take a step back and realize how unique the game controls actually are. For a game that came out in 2007 and still handles well. This game is the TRUE definition of a hidden gem because not that many people talk about or have heard about this great game.

insanely jank and unfun, the concept is very cool but the game is just terrible.

Basically evil Pikmin, and I love it for that

Old but gold, you know.

WAY better than the base game

It sucks that this game was discontinued after the second game in the series because this game is funny as hell but saddly sense EA own Codemasters they killed this franchise off too early another franchise ruined by EA No More Sheepies No More Minions but at least the game got ported to PC in a Complete version unlike OVerlord 2 Which is annoyingly missing its DLC T_T

very good game, highly recommend, minions are the best

Remember when games were fun and didn't feel like a second job? I pull overlord out of archives every few years just to remind myself what gaming use to be. Is it perfect, no, does it run 100% stable, most of the time, does it have top of the line graphics, nope, is it fun, absolutely.

So so so fun, im biased because i played this as a kid, but game is so good and so well designed.

Very underrated game, better than the more famous 2nd overlord game tbh

=)

A fantastic game.
I enjoyed making an army of goblins.

good game must play

Completed and played this game elsewhere. This will also have to count as my review for Overlord, the base game, since I cannot get it to launch enough to have the playtime to review.

The base game is great, its a fun pikmin esque romp though a generic paint by trope fantasy land, but still manages to have plenty of its own character.

Raising hell is more of the same but honestly I'm not sure it was needed. Its okay but just feels a bit like putting a hat on a hat.

Raising hell works good on PC and steam deck. Be sure in the launcher to select gamepad.

The base game on the other hand in spite of being verified as playable (amber/yellow) displays an application launch error on Steam Deck and one on PC.

I recommend you just get the one and done package from the other site if you do want this game, there are no achievements or trading cards or anything really adding value to this particular framework here.

It's fun and relaxing to spend an afternoon with your minions, bashing and smashing your way through the game world. Totally worth it.

Consider this a review for Overlord and Overlord: Raising Hell. As this game's DLC came out before it was properly implemented into steam, it is treated as a second game.

A cult classic from the golden age of gaming, Overlord is effectively what many would call "evil pikmin". You control a growing horde of minions of 4 different types to take revenge and collect objects. We like objects. While the game is absolutely dated in many ways, and some of the visuals are hard to respect, and saving is kinda annoying and regaining health also annoying,
I personally find it to be one of the better games I played both as a child and an adult. If you can't stand the older era of the emerging Xbox 360 titles, this game is not for you. But if you relish in that era like I did, and even carry a heavy dose of nostalgia, it is absolutely an incredible experience.

i grew up playing overlord 1 & 2 on the PS3 and you should definitely buy this game its a master piece

yes yes

One hell of expansion pack. It gives the original game the best addition of story that perfectly connect original with the sequel

If you enjoyed Fable, or Pikmin, or both, you'll likely enjoy Overlord, too - Finally played through, and was glad I did - quite charming for what it was, and way more content than I'd expected. Looking forward to trying Overlord 2 after this.

Shame I haven't heard of anything from the series - this has immense potential as an IP. If Overlord ever got a modern rendition, it could really do something amazing with modern tech, as they already went several impressive miles with the insanely limited hardware of the time.

It's really just fiddly controls, unresponsive minions and a slight grind for the later equipment holding this game back from an A-grade. Evil halflings is instant comedy.

Played this way back in the day on Xbox as a kid and finally replayed and beat it this time around on PC. This surprisingly holds up well even in 2024!

Overlord is such a fun game! You get to huck evil little gremlins at people, what's not to love?

Literally ME

classic

One of my favorite games ever.