Evil Genius 2: World Domination is a real-time strategy, simulation video game developed and published by Rebellion Developments. Evildoing has never felt this good as the second installment provides you with an abundance of tools and resources to use in order to take over the world. While the endearing stylistic choices and simulation gameplay mechanics will grab your attention, there are a few minor issues that may sour your global domination experience.
The basic premise of the game is doing whatever it takes to achieve your ultimate goal: conquering the world. In the beginning, you have the choice of one out of four different supervillains, who all have their own special abilities, strengths, weaknesses, and evil backstory. After building out your base and training your overly enthusiastic henchmen, you’ll be given a series of side stories and objectives to complete in order to progress further in the game’s overall story. This mostly includes kidnapping political aides, interrogating scientists, and conquering continents, which all leads up to your super villain’s master plan to build a doomsday device.
While playing as the villain could turn off some players, Evil Genius 2: World Domination doesn’t take itself too seriously with these issues and won’t make you question your moral values. The colorful and cartoonish art style combined with the humorous Austin Powers-like dialogue during the cutscenes will keep you invested. When you think about it, Maximillian is basically Dr. Evil at the end of the day, which should already show you that taking over the world can be a fun time.
Building out your lair is probably going to be taking up 90% of your time since Evil Genius 2: World Domination gives you a limitless amount of room options and facilities to work with that all function differently. Whether it’s a vault to keep all your hard-earned gold safe, a barracks for your henchmen to rest their weary bodies, or a torture room to punish your enemies, every one of them is critical in keeping your lair fully operational. One little caveat is that every room is pre-set in its design, which can limit your creativity in some ways, but it’s still enjoyable to sink a few hours into building out the floor plan of your perfect base. Just make sure to leave room for your supervillain’s golden office, because they’ll need to plot their schemes and stroke their cats somewhere.
Once your lair is where you want it, it’ll be time to access the world map where you can start getting the ball rolling on conquering the world. The first step is by setting up a criminal network by scouting a portion of a continent and after that’s completed you can start doing schemes. Each scheme will come with its own costs and requirements in terms of gold/henchmen, but it’s all worth it for the end result. Many of these schemes are important for completing main and side missions, so be sure to keep building out your network over time. However, keep an eye on the Heat gauges above each criminal network because after a while government officials will become aware of your nefarious deeds and will try to put a stop to it by either temporarily locking down your network or sending investigators to your base.
Speaking of investigators, lair security is crucial for world domination, and you’ll occasionally have some unwelcome visitors who’ll penetrate your cover business and try to steal your secrets. The best way to combat that is by upgrading your security force and base defenses through research projects. Research projects are not only vital to the security of your base but to the growth and reliability of your criminal networks, so prioritizing the training of scientists is never a bad idea. Once these pesky intruders show up on your doorstep, there are three ways in which to deal with them: you can either distract them with booze and gambling, arrest them to interrogate later, or just put them out of their misery. Personally, I found distracting enemies to be the most unhelpful out of the three, as I noticed these investigators will just try another attempt later. Interrogating an intruder can also be very useful as they can provide intel that can be used to complete schemes.
There’s a lot to enjoy with the core gameplay elements in Evil Genius 2: World Domination, but one of the main issues is with the beginning portion of the game feeling like a very slow grind. Even after a lengthy tutorial, there were still many mechanics that weren’t properly explained that I had to figure out on my own. It also can be dull after a while because progression hinges on how much time you dedicate towards research, which can take a lot of patience as each project can last up to 30-45 minutes of real-time. This isn’t factoring in the time wasted putting your lair on high alert every time government officials try to take over your base, which can also become repetitive. Lastly, the controls on Xbox are awkward, both when constructing your base and doing basic commands. After struggling to construct my second power station, because my base ran out of power again, I realized that this game desperately needs a mouse and keyboard to control.
Evil Genius 2: World Domination may have its share of technical issues and can also slightly test your patience at times more so than most other simulation games out there, but after sinking in enough hours, you’ll overlook these few problems eventually. The game’s quirky sense of humor when dealing with such a sinister game premise will keep you going from start to finish. If you’ve ever wanted to put itself in the role of a classic Bond villain, I can see no better place than Rebellion’s most recent installment.
8/10
For more information about Evil Genius 2, please visit EvilGeniusGame.com
Related: Evil Genius 2: World Domination Review for PC
I've loved playing video games ever since I first played Battletoads on the NES when I was a kid. Since then, I've played a wide variety of games on different systems, including Xbox One, PS4, Switch, and have mostly gravitated towards open-world RPGs and action-adventure games with amazing storylines and character arcs. I'm passionate when comes to writing and interested in working as a narrative designer.
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