Evil Overlord

Introduction
The Evil Overlord is a Role-playing game made in the RPG maker engine but it looks wonderful. I have played version 0.92, this means the game is not yet fully complete. The developer is working really hard on the full release of his game.
In this game, you are an heir to the throne of a castle that is run by your father but the castle is attacked and you will need to escape the castle. The game uses front view battle and it is fairly balanced but some battles can be harder than others.
In the Evil Overlord, you are the bad guy who is bent on conquering the world and avenging the death of his father.
In this game you can make choices that will change the story, one example of this is choosing if you are going to pillage a town or let the people live. If you let the people live, then you can buy their equipment in the town. You will track across the land capturing cities while letting people join your legion or kill them if you don’t want them to join you. The game uses a lot of humor that I can appreciate. There are also beautiful drawings for cut scenes.
There have been some flaws that I have encountered but the developer is working really hard to get this fixed before the final release! I know he has beta testers looking hard to find those pesky hidden bugs in his game.

What did I think of Evil Overlord before playing?
The developer contacted me with his game and wanted me to review the Evil Overlord. The concept of being an Evil Overlord seemed really fun. He told me used Overlord as inspiration but I do not know the Overlord game series.
The games Overlord and Overlord 2 are on my to review list but I have not gotten to the part yet of actually reviewing them. This role-playing game looked really fun before I started to play.
The graphics looks like the older Japanese Role-playing game like the Final Fantasy series. I did not have much information to go on before playing but I was very excited to try this game made in the RPG maker engine.

Story

Spoiler! If you do not want the story to be spoiled please skip the story section!
At the beginning of the game you can choose between two characters to join you, for the story section I have included Jeeves.


The story begins in the castle of the father of Heir and it seems like a normal day. Torturing some people and petting your pet dragon named Fluffy. Suddenly the soldiers attack the castle and your father decides to take the army head-on.
This gives you the opportunity to escape the castle through the sewer. You encounter some soldiers but Heir and Jeeves manage to take care of the soldiers that try to stop them. After you have managed to escape through the sewers you will need to find monsters that can aid you in your cause to conquer the cities and find the people that are responsible for your father’s death. In the forest, you find the monsters that are willing to help you fight against the humans. With their help, you are able to destroy the outpost and conquer the city called Westeroth. With the resources from the city, you are able to build a small war camp to conquer other cities. Heir heads over to the Dysert town to find more information about the weak spots in Dysert town. In Dysert town Heir and Jeeves find a person named Hassad who is leading a rebellion against the king, after sharing this information with Eris the leader of the war camp they decide together to invade the Dysert town. Hassad joins Heir and Jeeves to attack the king of Dysert town but they get thrown in a pit where a Minotaur lives. After taking care of the Minotaur Heir and his party quickly leave to find the king once again. After an intense battle with the king of Dysert town Heir and his party are victorious. Hassad claims the throne and Heir decides to plan his next steps.

The bridge to the next town is heavily guarded and Heir and Eris come up with a plan to take the bridge, Heir will sail around the bridge and attack from behind while Eris will attack from the front. Taila has a ship ready for Heir to sail around and flank the soldiers, he does not want to tell you where he got the ship from. Heir gets attacked by pirates but he and his party make short work of them. After sailing through the seas what seems like ages the ship gets attacked by a giant fish!
Meanwhile, Eris attacks the bridge like planned but there is no sign of Heir anywhere, Eris manages to defeat the general with some of the strongest members in the legion but the bridge is still guarded by too many soldiers.

Heir wakes up inside the stomach of the fish and cannot find his party, luckily Taila shows up and throws him a rope to get Heir out of the stomach of the giant fish. Together they decide to find the other party members inside the giant fish and to try and find a way out. After finding everyone Heir manages to find other survivors inside the giant fish and they have a working ship but the captain is not willing to help you. After Heir defeats the captain he falls into the stomach acid of the giant fish.
Heir takes over the ship and finds a plan for escaping the giant fish but he needs more gunpowder for this plan. Heir delves deeper into the giant fish to find the barrels of gunpowder and returns to activate the plan. The ship fires away through the throat of the giant fish and on the sea near the beach and the ship breaks but everyone ends up on the beach close to Easoth town.

Jeeves tells you that Easoth town holds arena matches with the monsters they capture. Heir wants to kill the king of Eosoth town and decides to brew a plan to achieve this. He finds the centaurs near the town who are willing that are willing to help you but they do not have the forces to attack the city. Heir finds one of the hunter camps, Heir kills the hunters and he sets the harpy free that they wanted to ship off to the arena. Heir travels to the mountains to find the harpy nest, they help Heir to get over the mountains across the border. Heir meets the giants in these snowy lands but the giants refuse to help Heir. After an intense battle with the commander of the giants, Heir comes out victorious. The giants are now willing to help you stop the king of Eosoth and his arena. Heir defeats the guards at the border with the assistance of the giants. Heir leads all monsters to a full-scale invasion on Eosoth. Heir clashes with the King and defeats him. With Eosoth now free, Taila finds another ship and once again asks you not to ask where they come from. Heir sets sail for the bridge where Eris should have been a long time ago. Heir finds himself once again on land but the road is blocked.

Heir travels to the east to find a castle with a village that seems abandoned. After an investigation Heir finds two keys that open the door to a tower in the village. Before Heir knows it he is zapped by a ball that shrinks him and his party to tiny size.
He finds many people here that all have been shrunk by an evil witch. Heir sets out to gather all the people in one place and destroy the crystals that the evil witch uses for her power. When Heir has destroyed all the crystals he rallies all the people to fight against the witch. One of them, named Charles, tells Heir about a secret passageway in the road that is blocking Heir from reaching the bridge. After defeating the witch and destroying her last crystal all the people return to their normal size.
Heir finds the nearby village called Fiishis(no not feces) and wants to rest at the inn. Jeeves tells him something weird is going on in this city. Heir investigates and finds out Racuda is controlling things. Heir finds him in the city and engages in battle but Racuda runs away and tells the ogre to fight Heir. Heir easily disposes of the ogre and set chase but Racuda escaped. Heir finds Racuda hiding out in the thieves guild and he defeats him there.

Heir finally meets up with Eris and they decide together to take the main city of this land and defeat the king. Tinir also helps you with a strategy for taking the castle, the three of them think of a plan to infiltrate the castle. Tinir, Eris, and Heir meet up with the king after infiltrated and prepare for the battle but the king has different plans. The ground shakes and the castle rises upwards into the sky. Heir falls down leaving Tinir and Eris behind in the floating castle, luckily the harpies manage to catch Heir and the party. Heir travels to the swamp to find his scattered troops.
Heir wants to go through the forest to find more help to reach the flying castle, Heir finds the lost forest and decides to find his way through. The fairies keep them lost and let them fall asleep and also want to steal their memories Heir wakes up just in time to blast the fairies into pieces. Heir takes some of the fairies and he finds some spider people that are willing to help. Together with the spider people, Heir conquers the elven city blocking that was blocking the exit of the forest.

When Heir exits the forest all he can think about is getting an airship, there is only one place where you could find an airship, in the dwarf city. The dwarfs will let no one in, Heir needs to come up with a plan and he meets up with the kobolds.
With help from the kobold named Bitey, Heir defeats dwarfs that are occupying a camp. Bitey shows a secret entrance to the dwarf city but the dwarfs are still in the way. Heir goes back to the camp that was set up just outside the forest and finds the harpies, Heir commands them to launch a full-scale assault while Heir sneaks in through the back. With the help of an inside dwarf named Pyrite, Heir upsets the balance and manages to overthrow the dwarven king and conquer the dwarven city.
Heir takes command of the airship and sets sail for the flying castle.

To be continued

Gameplay
In the Evil Overlord all of your choices matter for what your story will be, there are many party members to unlock but are you able to find them all? The first one is like Pokemon, you can either choose Jeeves or Lupa to join you. If you pick Jeeves you cannot get Lupa later on, the same goes for if you choose Lupa. All characters have different skills to learn and different stats. The games use front view battle which means you won’t get to see your sprites in action, you will only see them on the world map.There are many places to explore for side quests and additional items. Not every equipment you find can be used by anyone, everyone has a preferred weapon that they use. Heir has the most selection of weapons available to him, the gauntlet even gives him a special attack. You have special attacks and magic attacks and they either cost mana points or technique points or both. It can be confusing sometimes to find out where you need to go but that is the fun in a role-playing game. If you ever need to find the way you can use the A button on the keyboard and you will receive some information from either Jeeves or Lupa.

When important events happen you can make the choices if you want to kill someone and absorb their life force or throw them in the dungeon. In what dungeon you ask? As you progress the game your minions will build a new castle for you, this will start as a small tent but as you continue the game it will eventually become a castle to house all your minions. If you throw them in the dungeon you can find them in your castle and harass them and even still kill them. When you conquer a village you can choose to pillage or spare the villagers. Become plain evil or pure evil! There are also many side quests in which you will need to choose what you are going to do. What fate will you choose for Heir?

Sound and graphics
The graphics for the Evil Overlord are very good, there are also many drawings that you will encounter and some of these are also animated. I really liked them and the effort that the developer put into the drawings.
There are some sprites that are duplicated, I hope these will be replaced in the main version of the game when the full version is released.
The sound effects and the music used in the game are perfect and I have not heard any out of context music.

What did I think of the Evil Overlord after playing?
I was really amazed at what the developer has achieved, the world is small and compact but also large and filled with places to visit. There are many things you can do in the world and many non-linear side quests to follow.
There are a few things that need to be ironed out for the release of the game but I can really see this becoming a hit that many people would like.
It looked so good on my screen my wife also wanted to play it! She is currently one of the beta testers to get rid of those pesky bugs! I can’t wait to see this game on Steam.
I have really enjoyed my time playing the Evil Overlord and it took me longer to complete the game than I had expected, it took me around 15 hours to finish this version.
My character levels were around 30 when I finished the version and I hope the game will eventually expend that my characters will end around level 50. What will happen to Heir when the game continues?

My personal rating for the Evil overlord is 8.5 and it will most likely be more when the final version is released (I need to know how it ends!)

The pros and cons

Pros
– I think the story is really great.
– Your choices have consequences in this game.
– There are many party members to unlock.
– There are many objects that you can interact with.
– You can build your own castle throughout the story.
– There are many sidequests to explore.

Cons
– It is not yet finished I need the final version because I want to know the ending!)
– There are some bugs but they are being worked on to be removed before the full release.

I really have enjoyed playing this game and I hope to see the ending soon, it really felt like my choices matters in this game. I really recommend the Evil Overlord to anyone looking for a role-playing game. You can download the 0.92 version for free at the end of the review.

I give this game a …drumroll…

8.5

Leave your thoughts in the comments or rate the game for yourself!
You can download the game here for free: https://www.mediafire.com/file/lwwoqedttjp0y4s/file
I hope you liked reading this review, I hope to see you in the next review!