Buy Dungeons 2

This game is pretty fun and really reminds me of Dungeon Keeper (which I loved). The only thing that really has me bummed is the constant crashing to desktop. I bought this on Steam Sale, so I'm not overly mad about it; however, this is getting to be a vey big nuisance. Overall, the game is very enjoyable though. If you liked the Dungeon Keeper series, you will probably also like this one. Pick it up on sale, just know that it has some issues.

apart from crashing every 15 mins its a really nice game

With mixed feelings, I'm recommending this game. Read on for the full review and gamer beware.

Dungeons 2 is a worthy heir to Dungeon Keeper legacy and also throws in some War Craft style RTS gameplay. The mechanics are incredibly polished and storyline is very tongue-in-cheek but amazingly thought out and scripted. Anyone who was a fan of the original Dungeon Keeper franchise, or RTS's in general will definitely enjoy this title.

Now for the issues which gave me pause. Unfortunately, I just paid $30 for a tutorial campaign. That is unacceptable Kalypso. I love your franchise and this was a COMPLETE DISSERVICE. After spending less time to complete than almost any other game I've played, it ended just as soon as it had begun, LITERALLY TELLING YOU 'Now comes the real game', and, oh yeah, BUY IT! As to why I say it's a tutorial campaign, you literally CAN NOT LOSE! The entire campaign was designed to familiarize the player with the mechanics and trickled just enough resistance to only slow you down before utterly overwhelming your opponent. Every level was designed to encourage you to easily research all upgrades and 'sandbox' your way to victory at your own pace. Also, ala Starcraft, you're given the opportunity to try 2 different factions and the third, which I assume wasn't ready for release, is destined for DLC. Again, the keyword is "TRY". Even the Heores of Might and Magic franchise provides secondary campaigns with it's admitedly easy to complete tutorials >_<

So yes, with a heavy heart, I recommend this game, but only bcause of what it could be, not because of the TUTORIAL I just completed. How about throwing us gamers that purchased this product a complentary, real, campaign?

So this is another occasion where the Steam reviews are irrelevant and leaves me with a feeling of distrust and cynicism that I often ignore them and have to find out myself whether or not a game is really of quality and not just some cashgrab or bug-infested mess.

In my opinion, some of the negative reviews are just blatant lies. I never knew that Steam reviews could ever get to a point of just being pointless to read. I actually wonder if half of the people who post a review really have a brain because some of the stuff that is written don't pertain to the game. I thought all those negative reviews that had around 80% upvote must of been valid since so many people upvoted, nope, some of their claims just doesn't pertain to this game.

All this review will serve as is a counter-post to the negative Steam reviews that I feel are irrelevant.

Again, this review will be to inform mainly those inquiring about the negative reviews, so downvote this review all you want, this is an actual review of my opinion of the game.

SPECS --Gfx: nvidia GT 640 CPU: intel i-3-2120 @ 3.30Ghz dual core Ram: 6.00 GB (5.88 Gb usable) --

Optimization: I can't confirm if the memory leak is real or not, but I've got a decent rig and the game ran very smooth, and I have not experienced any crashes from the hour I've been playing before writing this review. As soon as entered into the options menu most of the preset where set all to max except texture filtering which on default goes up to 8x instead of 16x, however, I don't even need it that high but I left alone to test how well my computer would handle this game. Everything else was on high, which was max for graphics settings, with SSAO on and Bloom, however, I turned V-sync off as I don't like my FPS being capped to 60. When I started up a random skirmish match to see how well my rig will perform, I was really surprised as I ran a minium 60+ fps without my computer breaking a sweat, and to remind you now it is just decent, as in, it can't run AAA titles released in 2016. I just wanted to add this as I was a little worried would my rig be able to handle this game comparing it to mimimum requirements, if your rig meets the minimum, it will run very well with this game and will say this game is very well optimized and looks beautiful.

Gameplay: the dialogue was actually entertaining and actually helped immerse in the game. Who ever did the writing is top-notched because it definitely fit the setting and a lot of the jokes were actually funny and relevant. However, if you don't like dialogue the options menu does allow you to control how much dialogue from everything, important, or none. The gameplay for Dungeons has a Dota RTS layout when fighting in the overworld as the "supreme dark one" whom you assume the role as, fights the enemies along with your hoard of "evil" minions against the "heroes" in much of the fashion of the game Dota. You have a main character, right-click where you want him to go, and you can use special abilities against tougher boss-like enemies and complete objectives and level up. While it becomes a semi-settlers + caesor; zeus; phaoroh affair when it comes to managing your dungeon. Clear out areas for create new rooms that will accomadate both your minions and curious heroes who stumble into your dungeon, only to be enticed by your treasures and then slain to fuel your econonmy. If you ever read the book Mogworld, the world is very much similar as the one depicted in the book, except you get to be the bad guy instead of the hero.

Final thoughts: Dungeons II is an excellent blend of RTS and management that actually works well. The price is steep but some patience will often see deep discounts that can't go wrong with a well fleshed out game such as this. However, if you can't wait I'll say 40 $ is a fair asking price for the quality you are getting, it is a well done game in my opinion. I really felt Kalypso has really outdone themselves with this game. However, to make it up to them I shall pick up all the DLC at base price once I experienced all that vanilla has to offer.

With that said, I do recommend Dungeons II to you all who may be reading this, and feel this is a really good game that deserves a playthrough. Thanks for reading, and happy gaming ^^.

dont judge a game by its title font

Game is fun when it's working. And it usually works for 10 mins before it crashes every single time. Wait until they fix this game before buying it. A lot of people have problems with this issue and it doesn't look like they'll have a solution anytime soon.

Edited for after I was able to find the last 2 levels....

TLDR: Get Dwelvers it's $14.99, and in beta has more content than this "completed" $40 game.

I'll start this review with what I did like.

1. It's a faithfull Dungeon Keeper clone. It's fun being a bad guy and fighting the forces of good.
2. I loved the artwork, graphics, way the characters look, etc.
3. The story is fun and well written.
4. It is a fun game overall, at a price point of say $15, I would give it a thumbs up.

Now for what I didn't like.

1. Too much handholding. For example "you are going to be attacked in 3:45 and counting, get ready here they come" on every single level for every enemy. "Here is a big exclamation of where you need to go and what you need to do" and the narator relentlessly pesters you to go there at a rapid pace, or "build these unit because you need them". I would prefer to be surprised when I explore and not have the game lead me through every minor step.

2. Way too easy, with no way to increase the difficulty. Build a trap chest at the end of a 4x6 room, preceeded by a swinging mace, and 2 tar pits.. and you can defeat about 90% of the enemies that enter your dungeon. There are a couple levels where more enemies come in, oh but they warn you well ahead of time so you just prepare for that. They do have an interesting mechanic where the enemies will send the bard in first to disable your traps, but if you put the trapped chest behind your traps the greedy good guys will bypass this and not wait for the bard because they want to get the treasure first, and they all die, every time. I would much prefer a color system, like a green bard can disable x and y traps, a blue bard can disable y and z traps, and no trapped chest that bypass the bards entirely. That way you would have to actually have an assortment of traps to handle different party configs. But no, the level 1 traps kill everything and there is no reason to even upgrade to the level 2 or 3 traps unless for fun and to just see how they work.

Surface creeps are equally easy, you pretty much just steamroll everything. I think the original concept was you should only bring half your crew and leave the other half in the dungeon to continue working? But you quickly find out that in every encounter, the 1 or 2 of your army that die are resurrected (with zero penalty) inside your dungeon and start working anyway. So anyone playing quickly finds out that you just take your entire army out and the few that do die can get the dungeon in working order for your return. The one exception to this rule and was an interesting surprise, in that your level 2 healers actually STOP healing when they hit level 3 and turn into pure DPS chars. So I did get decimated once and I was unable to ressurect everyone before they decayed and had to rebuild my army from scratch. But I quickly learned my lesson to just leave my healers at level 2 and never upgraded them the rest of the game.

3. Almost zero control over your troops. Example.. So you can make these cool assasins, they can turn invisible and with 2 or 3, pretty much kill a high value target. They get a a high DPS sneak attack when coming out of stealth. So let's say a group of enemies comes into your dungeon and you want to assassinate the bard. Is there any way to do this? Nope sorry! You either sound an alarm bell and watch your troops come in 1 at a time, or you manually pick them up drop them near the enemies and hope for the best. Zero control, they just kinda duke it out and occaisionally use the skills they have. Now the game is simply easy (to the point of trivial) so this is really a small complaint, but if there were any challenge associated with battles, and you wanted to actually kill specific high value targets in any kind of order. Like let's say kill the healers first... You can't. Now on the surface you get a little more control over your troops you can manually click the unit and position it, and use it's special ability. But when you have 12 units in a fight, clicking on each one giving it a command as it's running around is kinda pointless with such short battles. The only micro control you actually do is move the tanks to the front, healrs and dps in the back, and wade into the enemy and it's over very quickly. Ideally you would not have to click on each single unit. I would rather select my entire army, hit tab to select the blood orcs, have them summon wolves, hit tab to select my asassins, have them turn invisible to get a bonus attack from stealth, etc. But combat was seriously overlooked and as a result they just opted for short combats with 6 "good guys" against your 12 "evil" horde. It's simply a steamroll because there is no combat functionality built into the game.

4. Game sounds and narrator. At first when you start out it's very enjoyable. The narrator is a ♥♥♥♥ and yelling at you to do stuff. It's wonderful! But after the 19th time the narrator tells you to "Go make 3 orcs and go to this spot on the map I'm sick of waiting for you" it gets old. This also ties into the handholding. The narrator is better muted so you can explore the game and have fun. instead of constantly yelling at you and telling you exactly where to go and what to build next. The Demon mana generators also make the most annoying noise I have ever heard in any video game in a long long time. Mute, mute mute.. Ahh much better... The game noises are gone and play some Pandora, much much better.

5. Not enough content. If I didn't play through it 2x looking for the last 2 levels (small bug just click on the skeleton icon and it takes you there). I would estimate the game can be completed in 15 hours. For $40, I expect to get between 30-60 hours of gameplay from it for it to be a good value. Compared to their competition, a game named Dwelvers, which runs $15 and I have 30 hours into it on beta, this is not a good value IMO.

6. Spell system. With the exception of "recall to base" troops and the "go here" spell. The remaining 25 spells are useless and the entire system is not even worth bothering with. For example you shoot a fireball and it does virtually no damage. Shoot a metoer storm? Oh yeah area effect virtually no damage also. Again this is a minor complaint since a level 1 exploding chest does 90% damage to most units. But why even put it in there? The only use I could find for the spells is like a would see a fairie with 2 health left limping into my dungeon, and I wanted to shut the narrator up screaming "enemies in your dungeon!" and I could not be bothered to pick up an orc to kill them? Yeah I'll shoot a fireball to do 3 damage and kill that limping fairy who somehow magically managed to survive the 4 level 1 traps who usually dispatch most most enemies. But most of the time you just ignore the fairy, she will run into something and get one shotted soon enough. But yeah, it was nice to just to shut the narrator up and have him stop screaming at you I guess. But magic on the whole is innefective and useless.

Closing thoughts....

If there was maybe a way to make it more difficult so you don't just blow through it so fast and more of a challenge. It would have a lot going for it, particuarlly the enjoyable art and great dungeon building tools they have in place. I would also like to see an enemy evil guy to compete with, who breaks into your dungeon from a random place, but instead the enemies always come through the main door, 6 every time with zero challenge, run into your traps and die. Also when digging inot a new room full of spiders, have them get mad and charge in to to kill my guys, not just stand sit there until I can get around to farming them for expos. They had some great ideas, just a sad implementation and were probably on a limited schedule for release. It shows.

I've bought the game over a year ago, it was fun to play, but a little too easy. It is a RTS game which takes place in dungeons and the Overworld, gameplay is far away from Dungeon Keeper, but it is fun. Patch 1.5 came out in the middle of October 2015, from this day on the game was unplayable with 1 fps or slower. The developers admitted that there is a memory leak, but they like to keep quiet about it and blame everybodies PC. They have 5 answers ready how to fix your problem, mainly update drivers, but if drivers are up to date and the problem carries on you will be ignored from that moment on. I am waiting over 8 months now for a patch to fix the memory leak, but it doesn't look like anything will happen. They ported the game to the PS4 and promised a fix for the PC after they finished the PS4 version, but so far nothing. Take a look at the forum, there are many bug reports without solution, so unless there is a patch which fixes all the bugs don't buy this game unless you want to gamble.

Worthy successor to Dungeon Keeper.
When I write "worthy" I mean good. Not better, though.


+ Awesome compaign, was really surpised by that. Yes it is pretty easy. But worthwile by general design and feel - AND, most importantly, due to that awesome written and spoken narrator! Huge amount of jokes and references to games, movies and books.
+ Graphics are not breath taking but still quite atmospheric. As it is somewhat comic-lookie-lookie, I guess it won't feel "old" too fast, which is good in my opinion.
+ Overworld concept for SP
+ When "liberating" overworld areas, cool change effects to dark side (sadly no cookies)
+ Most creatures are useful on their own way, so it can make sense to not all upgrade them to highest variant (although you don't have to care on normal difficulty)
+ Different races
+ Gold variants make sense (normal, long lasting, infinite)


- Music. Pretty boring. Pretty fast boring. I recommend getting the soundtrack from Dungeon Keeper 1+2 (youtube helps) and play that in the background. Ten times better than ingame one.
- Glitches. There are no game braking bugs at least. But there's a ton of smaller stuff getting on your nerves: hardly being able to click a specific monster during a fight. No real feeling for where you drop one. The bright border effect for where you gonna drop/cast at is sometimes really weird. Can't pick up a specific unconsious monster, as the clickable area is not where it lies. Sometimes clicks on spell icons just do nothing, have to click twice.
- Performance. Seriously, this games runs slower than Anno 2070 on a huge map as soon as you have 10+ creatures. And weirdly this is CPU limiting here (100% usage on 4x 2,5 GHz), while my GPU (AMD 7950) was bored. Also when dropping couple of creatures in a row and when digging a new area, there's this "stutter" after every action/digged block. Really smells like badly optimized engine.
- Cannot beat chickens to pulpy messes :/


- Less stuff to build and do than in DK (i.e. missing prison and torture chamber)
- More casualized feel, e.g. traps damage (remember that huge boulder which just killed everything?), simplified "who works which room" and missing skeleton/ghost/vampire/... mechanics
- No VS mode against AI Keeper. Skirmish maps just drop stronger waves of heroes against you.
- Slower! I do like slower games in general, but sometimes in SP it can get really boring. Mostly due to slow workers (get's better after upgrading them, though)
- Some atmospheric stuff regarding the creatures is missing: monsters attacking each other (spiders vs. flies) or the wizards getting annoyed of all the commotion in the library
- No real "feedback" of higher level monsters. They can cast anything right from the start (after researched), so it feels like you do not have to take such care of them. Which is only partly true, as they DO get stronger. Still feels not as good here as when dropping a couple of level 10 wizards+dragons in DK1 onto the enemy :D (also any creature can be revived anyway)


Overall this is a good game. If you like the old Dungeon Keeper 1+2 go ahead and give it a try.
I had quite fun playing and guess will start again in the future. And of all DK like games, this is in my opinion the best successor so far.

In direct comparison however, I'd say I still prefer DK1+2 slightly over Dungeons 2.
(Sadly DK2 is not working on mine and many other rigs I know due to graphic driver issues :/ )

Almost but no dice.

Why do all these company’s just fail to create what they know we want?

This game is just lacking and leaves you wanting more Dungeon Keeper it really does.
It gives you the feeling like your about to have a great Evil dungeon master experience then falls short with limited rooms and limited units just limited everything.
It’s not an awful game it plays well responds well and the story is even fun. it’s just hard to enjoy when in the back of your mind you know its already been done better years ago and the entire time thats what your craving.