At the start of the game you have only your brown minions, and you can only summon a few of them. As you progress through the game, you’ll need to undertake some rather long and involved quests to find the hives of the three other minion types, red, green and blue, to make them available to you also. Each minion type has its own strengths, weaknesses, and abilities, 
and they’re pretty much the same as the first game. Browns are the hardiest fighters; Reds can both wield and extinguish fire; Greens can clear areas of poison, go invisible, and unleash a furious backstab ability if they can get on an enemy’s back; and the Blues are immune to magic, can render themselves immaterial, can pass through water, and can damage magical creatures.
It gets even more complicated as your minions now have access to mounts: creatures they can ride which allow them access to even more abilities. The Browns, for example, can ride wolves, which allow them to jump across small gaps and to break through lines of Empire troopers who are standing in a row with shields locked. You can just imagine how much more complicated this makes the puzzles. You can also find ships which allow you to sail to distant lands. These ships add a whole new dimension to the game as you find yourself engaging in maritime combat with other ships, ramming them, and boarding them, if they get in your way.
Like its predecessor, this game is a visual feast. Not only is there a noticeable performance increase, but the lands and creatures are simply beautiful to look at. It’s also nice to see that they’ve kept the paradigm-shattering design sense from the first game. For instance, the elf maidens, who are typically portrayed as slender, anorexic beauties in other media, are grossly overweight in Overlord II because they force-feed themselves to look like their goddess. They’re also seen as beautiful by the male elves: tree-hugging hippies with Rastafarian beanies, dreadlocks, and effeminate mannerisms. This kind of creativity is applied to every creature in the game, and it’s a hoot to see, really.
When it comes to sheer malicious joy, few games do it better than Overlord. It looks beautiful, is great fun to play, and there’s a heck of a lot to do in there. If you liked the first game, it’s almost certain that you’ll enjoy this one.
