Evil Genius 2: World Domination Is an Addictive Blend of Wacky Villainy and Strategy

If you ever wanted to feel like a classic James Bond villain and control a criminal enterprise complete with henchmen in jumpsuits and expansive secret lairs, Evil Genius 2: World Domination (EG2) is the game to satisfy those dastardly desires. Developed by Rebellion Developments, EG2 is a real-time strategy game where you play as one of four unique evil masterminds with the goal of taking over the world from the comfort of your secret island lair. However, the road to world domination is by no means an easy one, as you will need to master managing resources, avoiding the law, fighting off rival criminal organizations, and even villainous interior decorating.

Your global operations are where a majority of the game’s quests take place and involve sending minions to different locations in the world to carry out missions. Keep growing your enterprise until you are able to produce a truly nefarious device that will help you take over the world. In addition to these criminal networks, you will need to generate income to expand your lair and meet your minions’ needs, while also defending against rival agents from other criminal groups or the Justice. With your island lair also comes an abandoned casino that you will need to revitalize in order to keep the heat off of your operations and keep tourists coming.

Masterminds specialize in different areas. Play to their strengths to achieve utter domination! Rebellion

The Four Masterminds of the (Evil) Apocalypse

To get to the point, I really like this game because it mixes together resource managing, building, and combat in a fun way that fits the game’s theme. Your first mastermind will help define the kind of gameplay you will experience and most likely will be a reflection of what kind of villain you would want to be. Each of the four masterminds you can choose from are unique in their personality, campaign story, and gameplay. We’ve got Maximilian the narcissistic despot, Red Ivan the heavy-muscle madman, Zalika the scientist zealot, and Emma the manipulative ex-spymaster. I went with Zalika for my first playthrough as we share the dream of world domination via the power of science (and green as a favorite color)! Masterminds themselves are playable characters with combat capabilities and special skills that change how you control your minions and lair. Don’t think your minions are working hard enough? Have your mastermind execute them in typical villain fashion to “inspire” your other workers. Have your mastermind perform public demonstrations for people you want to impress and support you. In addition to special abilities, all of the masterminds have their own inner sanctums (I call them “throne rooms”), diabolical campaigns with different endings, and ultimate devices used to enact global control. Each campaign is satisfyingly long, where I only had enough time to complete Zalika’s story before writing this review as I spent time doing side missions (yes, side quests in a strategy game!) and fully building upon my island casino lair.

If minions aren’t living up to their expectations, execute one to inspire the rest! Rebellion

Build a Lair that Fits Your (Evil) Persona

From laser walls and shark pits to beds and barracks, you have control over everything from where your minions sleep to where your enemies meet their (deserved) demise. The lair building in EG2 is definitely my favorite part of the entire game, and I think I spent more time building, breaking down, and rebuilding my lair’s layout than actually pursuing criminal activities. Your base of operations requires power, minions and their living spaces, traps, command centers, prisons, security rooms, vaults for gold, and of course your own personal throne room to host your closest henchmen. Hosting hundreds of minions understandably takes a lot of resources, so perfecting your lair’s layout as soon as you unlock every room type gives you the best possible advantage to conduct criminal schemes and defend your own base from enemy agents. As mentioned before, your lair will also have an abandoned casino that you will need to fix back up in order to attract tourists and provide investigating agents with distractions. With three different islands you can start on with varying pros and cons, there is quite literally an endless array of customization you have to create the coolest, dangerous, most unnecessarily complicated lair of your dreams.

Build your own lair filled with traps, torture chairs, and beds! Rebellion

My (Evil) Criticisms

While I had a lot of fun with this game, and I wholeheartedly can’t wait to try out the other masterminds, I had a few gripes. Combat in this game is less strategy and more “throw minions at a wall until one of you is left standing.” While in the beginning of the game it makes sense that your weak and puny minions won’t be able to stand against stronger enemies, I never felt that my minions truly got stronger even after unlocking the muscle minions or even giving them weapons. I wish that there was a function where you highlighted which minions you wanted to engage individually or as a group. This is possible with your mastermind and the henchmen, which are essentially additional masterminds with special abilities and stats, but the minions control their own fights (and often lose unnecessarily).

The global stage where schemes were carried out was the least favorite part of the game for me, as taking care of the schemes didn’t feel as though I was making any real nefarious decisions. Sure, every scheme has a nice name for what you’re doing and requires different personnel, but I made the actual choices of which schemes to carry based upon which one payed more. I think a Civilization-esque approach of building rapport (or distrust) with other criminal factions based on your decisions would’ve been a really cool function and jazzed up these segments. Some quests have these aspects of building animosity between groups, but it’s all scripted and has nothing to do with your personal choices.

The global stage is where you will conduct your criminal schemes and complete quests. Rebellion

Finally, every new game has bugs, and EG2 is not without its own share of them as well. In the earliest quests where progression was completely reliant on minions carrying out their duties, I had several issues with unresponsive minions that would get stuck on certain tasks. Since, again, you cannot directly control your minions and which tasks they did or did not do, it is up to their programming to successfully do anything. These glitches don’t worry me, though, as from the Day One patches it’s clear these developers are responsive when it comes to addressing issues with their game.

Final (Evil) Thoughts

Evil Genius 2: World Domination approaches global tyranny in a lighthearted and zany way that will entice gamers of all ages and gaming styles. The fresh meld of building and managing resources with unique masterminds and island choices makes replay not just possible, but mandatory if you want to fully experience the game and its characters (I’m eyeing you next, Max). Having the freedom to build a lair of my choosing, the attention to detail in regards to the mastermind’s activities, and the variety of side quests that actually improve your gameplay are what keeps me coming back to this game. While I could do without the global scheme setup and with a little more enhanced combat and some better minion control, I think the future of this game is still bright. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to be a villain, control their own lair of foolish minions, and toss nosy spies into the depths of a shark tank.