Dungeons 2 Reviews
Dungeons 2 tries to revitalize dungeon management games...and falls on its face in the process.
Some issues keep it from being a stand-alone great, but fans longing for a reboot of Dungeon Keeper could do a lot worse than this clever, enjoyable dungeon manager.
As a follow-up to 2011's Dungeons, this sequel is much easier to recommend, fixing many of the problems from that game and introducing new ideas that fit better with the genre. It's still only a partial success, however, and between the fussy menus and interface, and the speed with which you'll find yourself resorting to trudging repetition, this still falls short of the game it could be.
An effort that will please long-time Dungeon Keeper fans, with additional longevity provided by a variety of multiplayer modes
Dungeons 2 is a decent mashup of Dungeon Keeper and real-time strategy conventions, but oversimplification keeps it from being a keeper.
If Dungeons 2 was just a competent dungeon builder held back by a few technical bugs and some bad interface design, it might be something worth checking out. As a dungeon builder horrifically Frankensteined to one of the lamest RTS experiences I've played in years, its an unfortunate monstrosity that should be safely avoided.
Dungeons 2 is a bit of a missed opportunity, and isn't going to revive the age of the Dungeon-builder any time soon.
It's not to say that Dungeons 2 is a bad game, it's really not. But seeing as it has explicitly set itself up to compared to two fantastic games, it is difficult to look past how it fails to live...
Though I dearly wish it would calm down, and it's too messy to be as classic as its forefather, Dungeons 2 is the tinkerer's cave I've been waiting for.
It's a shame that there's such a reliance on cooldowns and it's an uphill struggle to keep resources growing, because RealmForge put together some real quality work here, and Dungeon Keeper fans have something well worth sinking their teeth into.
Come for the dungeon management, stay for goofy minions like Jayzee, Am'Adamss, and Kato. We've seen a lot of "spiritual successors" to Dungeon Keeper, but none have lived up to that genre-defining product. Dungeons 2 is the culmination of a lot of hard work, and it's great that Kalypso and Realmforge could finally deliver on that often-promised and hardly-delivered goal. Sure, we may not always know what we want, but when somebody shows up and does it right, you immediately know.
The dungeon aspect of the game is great and really sent me down memory lane even if the controls annoyed me a bit.
If you like playing as the bad guys in a fairy tale and have a love for real-time strategy games, Dungeons 2 is worth a shot.
Dungeons 2 is a witty and entertaining romp that adds a unique take to the dungeon keeper genre. Its combination of dungeon management with RTS mechanics is intriguing, though both systems aren't as fleshed out as dedicated games for each individual genre. Some of its niggles will also make you want to pull out your horns at times. Overall, however, its combination of humor with classic dungeon and fantasy elements makes it a nice diversion for aspiring evil overlords.
While the long-term staying power might be arguable, "Dungeons 2" gives some great mechanics, good animation, and mixups to the gameplay loop that influence how players approach each situation.
Dungeons II took over an hour to convince me that it was a game worth playing, but it was fun once I crossed that initial hurdle.
There was something promising about the way the developers put Dungeons 2 together but they didn't really follow through with that promise. Instead we got a game that seemed as though the developers stretch themselves too thin.
It doesn't quite capture the delightfully sadistic sense of humour that marked out Dungeon Keeper in its prime, but Dungeons 2 is still a worthy tribute, and well worth your time.
Dungeons 2 is neither a great RTS nor a great Dungeon Keeper game. It's just "pretty good" at both.
Unfortunately, what's new is simply the blending of two old parts that don't work well enough in conjunction.