Evil Genius 2: World Domination

What a blast! Being unfamiliar with Evil Genius, I just bought this one and had loads of fun with it! A super fun base builder set in a fast paced criminal world, you have to build an efficient criminal base that will allow you to obliterate your enemies with hundreds of minions working for you.

You also have to grind around the world to complete criminal schemes that will provide the funds needed to build the ultimate weapon inside your own base!

While this is basically a base building game, the game provides a very interesting mix with tower defense style games, where enemy agents will constantly invade your base, with you having plenty of means to distract them, capture them or kill them on sight, while also using different sets of traps which will keep attackers at bay.

Having a hidden underground jail where you can interrogate your prisoners by tickling their feet can be such a riot! The game is definitely worth it, but a slight price reduction would be much appreciated for future players.

Particular observations:
- I love the training system for minions - this should be used in plenty other games: just hire them and train them - they will act accordingly.
- World grind can become boring and tiring. Some automation with preset criteria would be much appreciated.
- You NEVER have a true moment of peace, with enemy agents invading your base at most every five minutes, which can be a turn off for slow players who just enjoy base building - there are trainers, though - haven't used them.

Lots of fun and tons of bright, somewhat innocent humor. Worth it!

I had a lot of fun playing this through. It was a fun style of game that brought some unique aspects to this type of genre. I got it for a very low price which also considers the great value I got out of this game. Having a story line that lasted me 25 hours of game play through my first play through is great (and i did not do all the side quests). It has replayabilty value too with different characters to play with that have different perks. Highly recommended!

I'll give this a lukewarm recommend for simulation/base-building fans. I think for me the biggest problem is the design decision to have AFAICT, the entire game take place at a single build site, with you progressively unlocking more floors. This means that you need to repeatedly redesign and rejig your full base, which doesn't scratch the "fresh start" itch that most base builders do by letting you complete a level then throw new challenges and unknowns at you in the next level.

Amusing game with surpising depth. Graphics are a bit simple, but still immersive.

While it doesn't hit the high highs of Evil Genius 1, it's still a good little base management game with a twist and decent gameplay. It is much, much grindier than you will expect and I feel like the majority of the game I'm fighting against some contrived features but I actually like the core gameplay loop - I just wish there was more to it, especially the minions and henchmen.

Overall, well worth the $4 I paid for it and I think most people who find the concept appealing will get enjoyment out of it.

I like this game, it takes neat ideas of base building and being on the villain side as well as combating enemies who get more powerful as the game progresses, this game is jam packed with content and goofy yet cool scenarios and replay-ability as a side point.
i'm new to this series and there's a bunch a can say about this game but i'd like to see more if possible.

i Though this game is really good. overall this game is entertaining and is fun to play because of the missions a base building style of the game. so i would say you should play

Fun game that scratches the classic James Bond itch!

It's not that bad, but it's not that good.
Kinda easy to feel broad on this one.
Anyway, lets hope they could do better.

Great game PERFECT for people who love strategy and building games.

A great sequel to the classic. I can't imagine why reviews are mixed. The game mechanics are vastly improved from the original. No longer do I have to wait an hour for my minions to get simple things done.

This game is so fire, ive literally learned germen from maximillian, 10/10 whould recomend

Bought Deluxe (Game and DLC) for 5€

Makes for 10-15 hours of good fun.

Was hoping for more.

Gets really slow "later" on.

Fun for first 15-20 hours until you build everything needed and expand base, but its a chore to remove heat on all countries, you just upgrade networks and run schemes, you need to click on eeevery country and click scheme and run scheme, kind a chore after a while. But for $3.99 nice game for first 15-20 hours.

Really disappointed in this. I had a love/hate relationship with EG1 basically having two modes: "Spend All Your Time Building Trap Loops", or "Extremely Hard". I really wanted to enjoy having more levels and shapes of bases, but so far it still basically drowns you in enemies even when you're not even sending people on missions, and on top of that the game keeps wedging itself into unwinnable states by having some byzantine maze of missions you have to do in *exactly* the right sequence (which it doesn't tell you) or you're just completely locked out - literally no way to win other than going back ages and ages ago in your saves and trying to guess a different path through the mission maze.

It's fun for a few hours, then it's just grind that the devs made deliberately annoying, presumably beause "more grind == more content" somehow. :(

So far, I'm loving this game. It's highly addicting. The graphics are great, that pause button is a life-saver. The game is good if you're looking for something somewhat chill with constant upgrades, and lots of building options. DO NOT FORGET TO RESEARCH. I did and hit a wall. I totally forgot about the research tree. Haha

While it can be a little repetitive and one does spend time waiting for missions to complete, there's always something to do. Building and re-organizing your Lair, going after Nosy Parkers, going after some Loot.

I find the game relaxing and engaging compared to 1st- and 3rd-person shooters. All in all, it met my expectations for being a charming and fun game,

Not recommending it for Steam Deck right now even though it's Verified. UI text and controller icons mostly are so tiny that you only can guess. Hoping for an update with an UI scaling option that actually helps with that.

As a teen I played games just like this. Dungeon Keeper and Dungeon Keeper 2. I love the base building style where it's rooms you have to plan out. Feel kind of like planning a fortress. I also love how you play as the bad guy, and win! Rare is the game I've found that let's you play as the evil, and do it well. I may only have 8.9 hours clocked, for now, but thank you for modernizing my childhood fantastically.

No. This is hard for me to say being a veteran of the first. But, at some point, you have to ask how much nostalgia strings are they pulling to make a sale? If they would have just made it a little bit mod-able, they might have created an ongoing community again, but, instead they chose to go the same route Rebellion always does. They would be huge if they just did modding. No matter, this version of EG is stuck in time further back than 1 simply because it can't be modded. It's worth the $3.99 it's currently at, for a weekend adventure, maybe. I don't know. You do you. I had a couple of weekends of fun with it. But, it's not 1, and without modding, it will never be 1. My 2 cents...

Honestly a bit overhated, its a pretty good sequel but the expectations where sky high.

I loved Evil Genius. I wanted to love Evil Genius 2.

It is more shiny, with better graphics, but at the expense of fun. It is a lazy game. It could have been so much, but instead the developers decided to gut the gameplay of Evil Genius and dumb it down.

You build a base. You have to progress in the story to get the research options you need, so expect plenty of remodeling once you can remove certain stones.

You can build traps. You can't set doors to certain security levels, so all your minions are stumbling through your base, even though they have no reason to be there. They don't fall into your traps, though, so that is fine. The super agents don't fall into your traps either.

You train your minions. Then you send them off to do dastardly deeds on the world map - and tell them to stay away and not come back. While EG1 had your minions come back, and some die during the mission, here your minions are mainly just a form of cash. This mission costs 6 guards, that mission costs 4 technicians. And since they are gone, you have to retrain them.

I really wanted to like the game, but I get to a certain point and then can't be arsed anymore.

In addition, there are some glaring game breaking bugs. To get a certain henchman you need to capture the RHINE burglar, who tries to sneak into your base to steal your gold. Not a problem - except he sneaks through the back entrance where I stationed a bunch of guards, and he does not survive the encounter.
Now what? Will the burglar respawn? No. Can I cancel the mission? No. Can I take another mission? No, I have to finish the current mission, which is impossible, because the guy I was supposed to capture got himself killed.
And there are several of these bugs.

Minions - minions have become more boring, and you can only have between 100 and 300. Given the vast amount of space you can create, this feels like a poor joke. Especially if you have the DLCs where you can build robots and monsters - but they are counted against your cap.

All in all, I wanted to love this game. I gave it several chances. It failed me every single time.

the most fun base builder and strategy game I have ever played and I waited 3 years to get this game and to play it and it was worth the wait.

Its just very boring. I never played the first one, but I did not enjoy this at all

I enjoyed the setting but unfortunately I'm just not patient enough to keep at it long enough to win. Every time i think I'm on the right track I see new ways to improve and end up starting over. Just not the right cycle of improvement/advancement for my brain.

Game runs like hot garbage. Is it fun? NO. The game runs like soooo badly it isn't even worth playing. I wish I could get a refund.

I Set Out to Rule the World… But Mostly Just Yelled at Minions

I started Evil Genius 2 with dreams of global domination, an impenetrable lair, and an army of loyal minions. What I got was a base constantly on fire, henchmen who take coffee breaks during hero invasions, and minions who seem more interested in getting stuck in doorways than actually doing evil.

But you know what? I had an absolute blast. Designing ridiculously over-the-top traps (because nothing says "evil mastermind" like sending spies into a never-ending pinball machine), watching agents bumble their way into certain doom, and somehow still managing to keep my villainous empire afloat—it’s all weirdly satisfying.

Sure, my minions are about as reliable as wet cardboard, and my lair security is mostly based on hoping intruders trip over furniture, but that's just part of the fun. If you’ve ever wanted to run a secret evil empire while questioning your hiring choices, this game is for you.

10/10, would definitely build a doomsday device again. 🔥💀

LOVE THIS GAME!!! absoluty beautiful, especially the new DLC, very reccomended fr

fun, wait a min, is that an intruder

alright, here's my verdict on evil genius 2

the game has a few interesting mechanics, like using characters as a form of currency you can use to pay for missions.

the problem is that that's all the game has, and instead of being content with being a small game, the game's remaining mechanics are all designed around obfuscating how little there is in the game.

most of the game's narrative content is organized in "side stories". almost all of the other mechanics in the game are just a fancy name for waiting for a literal timer to elapse. some of the wait times are an hour. in this singleplayer game.

the side stories deliver narrative content in a cutscene where two characters stand opposite each other on a 2d background and emote at each other while cracking bad puns. that part is fun. but in between those cutscenes, the game only has four things it makes you do:

complete a research project (which awards you with a dialog box that contains the description of the research project you already read while starting it, and is essentially just waiting)

interrogating a specific type of character (which sometimes doesn't spawn for several minutes after the objective is given, and consists of two button presses once the character has been automatically captured and sent to your jail)

killing a specific type of character (which has the same problem as interrogating but doesn't require the two button presses)

complete some objective "on the world stage" (which consists of finding an icon on a map of the Earth and clicking it and then clicking confirm and waiting)

and because you can only run one side story at a time and progressing the main objective sometimes deletes side stories, the primary mechanic of the game is waiting for the game to allow you to complete some simple one or two button press objective

the game claims that there are four evil geniuses and four secret lairs you can pick between, and to its credit the secret lairs do slightly change gameplay by giving you differently shaped areas to build your base, but every evil genius has exactly the same objectives in its story, and often exactly the same dialogue, just spoken by a different voice actor.

the "world stage" offers a variety of missions you can send minions on, but apart from missions that literally just check off a box in a main or side story objective, the only thing the world stage has to offer you as a reward is money, something that you can easily max out passively without even trying

the game tries to obfuscate this with a variety of differently colored icons for reducing the heat in an area that passively builds up and locks the area for several real life minutes, getting the aforementioned money (both of these mission types typically take a real world hour to complete unless they are blue), getting fuel for your doomsday device which is essentially just a less efficient way of getting money or doing research or whatever, raising the number of tourists who visit your base, which affects nothing, or lowering the number of tourists who visit your base, which also affects nothing.

the game is about being evil and dominating the world and the way that manifests is by making a lot of money and killing a lot of people, something you can find in basically any game where making money and killing people are mechanics (these might be the two most common concepts in video games as a whole). except that in this game, the money you make has a hard limit of how many shelves you have to store it on. many objectives (including all(?) optional objectives) have a reward of money, which I'm usually maxed out on when I complete the objective so I get literally nothing as my reward.

Don't get me wrong: there are far worst games out there than this one. But this one had a very high potential and it took me while to accept it but that potential mixed with a few serious flaws only result in way too much frustration.
First off, let's adress the obvious although the problem didn't really affect me in particular, it is true that the Denuvo DRM could bring your PC down on its metaphorical knees.
Then there is the game balance. By now it is clear the game won't be updated anymore and in its final state there are a lot of overpowered as well as underpowered features which limits your already few options in the course of a campain. There are also a few bugs that are not blocking if you just wanna roll over the game but can be frustrating if you want to fine tune your experience.
Which brings me to the most frustrating of all: the pointless-because-badly designed features, including, of course, the minion traits. In the game, you gather a lot of people to work for you and those people can come with some "traits" supposedly changing the way they behave in good or bad and according to the role you assign to them... except... there are no in-game info about what those traits do and you'll only find some hardcore fan's speculations here and there... And worst of all, assuming you still wanna try to guess what they do and micromanage your "minions'" tasks... the assignement system is completeley clunky and buggued... So if your dream is to micro-manage them like a true evil human ressource manager, you can forget it... the feature is there... but it's impossible to use it.
I'm late for that rant but, again I wanted to believe in this soft... I guess I shouldn't have.

The first Evil Genius game is a classic, and this sequel had big boots to fill. It improves in some aspects (having a multi-floored lair for one), but I feel it detracts in others (the world map where you plot your schemes is largely a "control-set" to bring in cash, overriding the previous world board which was open to failure in heist attempts). Overall, the original needed a graphical overhaul and this one also encourages you to win through strategy, not just management - so its a "thumbs up" from me.

I am a genius, but a good one. it is nice to know what evil is like. "Ich Bin Pooped."

It was ok, about as much as ill give it, the stupid amount of space you have to work with and the incredible ease of getting funds means that once you're out of the early game any and all problems you have are preemptively solved. At no point did the mid or end of the game feel like a challenge so much as hitting fast forward while i built yet another collosal vault and power station to power ever more totally redundant traps.

I played this on my xbox when it was on game pass, then got it on playstation. Now PC with every dlc. It's got a spot on my desktop forever.

Fun game, tutorial is very long tho can be annoying at the start of the game. Other then that, games looks great I like the AI, feel like its not so repetative.

I love the game but I feel like a third one should be made using some new stuff like new Villain's, customizable aspects of Villains and Henchmen, new base area's, more tech, more minion's and number of minion's, and a Villain creator that the player can make their own version of a villain and backstory. Also I think adding aspects that make the Hero's able to work with the Villain in deception missions and plans.

play this game comorade its really good

A soul-less copy of the first part.
World-Domination-Screen just sucks. Base building is clumsy. The cool trap combination stuff: gone. Some nice new ideas (i.e. submarines) cannot safe the game...

I love this game have had so much fun playing it. It has improved a lot of aspects from the original game: loot, henchmen, (especially) research, how minions specialise, the minion maximum, base building. However I find it lacks a certain charm that the original game had (maybe its just the old graphics). Still think its a great game, and both the original and this game are great

😈 Evil Genius Review 😈

Playtime: 7 hours
Recommended: Yes ✅

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🎮 Gameplay:
A fun base-building strategy game where you play as a villain plotting world domination. Manage your lair, recruit minions, and defend against pesky agents trying to foil your plans.

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🔥 Pros:

• Unique villainous theme
  
• Entertaining humor and style
  
• Satisfying base-building mechanics
  

👎 Cons:

• Can feel repetitive after a while
  
[*] AI behavior is sometimes frustrating

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🏆 Verdict:
A must-play for strategy fans who love a good dose of humor and chaos.

Rating: 7/10 – Being bad never felt so good.

Very bare bones game with no real challenge or difficulty feels more like a moba game that a full PC game, if you're a fan of strategy and puzzle games this is not for you.

Would not recommend unless you like watching grass grow or paint dry

I love to take my anger out on h.a.m.m.e.r when im angy. "WHEN U ATTACK MY BASE YOU SHALL PAY"

It's a fun base building game overall, and I like the humor, but it has a number of problems. The way they increase difficulty is boring, and the special enemies get out-paced by the normal enemies. The traps effects are inconsistent when comboed into each other. The standard villain voice-lines were clearly made with only Maxwel and Red Ivan in mind.Some of the DLC is so poorly made, it could be mistaken for a mod (and not the good kind). Maybe they were running out of money near the end?

Game starts off so well but by the end of the game it just gets so boring and annoying as the base gets raided like every 10 seconds and wipes out half your minions.

dont just dont if u like the first evil genius dont ruin it by playing this 1 even on sale its barely worth it its repetitive and tedious nothing else and very annoying

What the hell happened?
How do you manage to ruin something this spectacularly, when you have such a perfect blueprint to work from?
This game is built from that special over sized lego for "speshul" kids, that's not a choking hazard, it reminds me of a microsoft corporate presentation in its art style, I gave it a fair shot, but 50 minutes in and i wanted to stab myself in both eyes.

I am an EVIL genius, but apparently in this game, you are also a compasionate and caring boss, who has to micromanage the room temperature of every single room, so your minions dont get "a little bit chilly" in thier handsy-wandsies....

If you ever played the original, and liked it, then dont, for the love of god buy this game, it will only taint your memories and annoy you.

A little more complex but a lot more fun than Evil Genius 1.
Tricky build scheme for doors however, need to have 3 spaces attached to corridors then build out away from the walls so you don't have an entirely open room.

Lots to learn, so do the tutorial and enjoy!

Been pretty addicting for both me and the fiance as we alternate who gets to play it through the day. Trap chains are fun, managing the base is interesting, and sometimes it can get pretty hard too. Really glad I bought it, only shame is none of the science gadgets can be used as interrogation devices like in the first game. At least traps count as interrogation devices. Portal free dlc is pretty neat too, really getting use out launching agents into a portal full of a bee hellscape to get rid of pesky investigators.

Nah, this is my second time picking it up, the gameplay loop feels more like completing a series of quests rather than running an evil genius' base. If you were to just try playing with everything unlocked and no quests, i imagine it would be a horribly boring game, and the quests aren't too much fun either...