Before I begin assessing the charms of Overlord II, I want to share a tale of woe with you. It won't be a tale of "Whoa!" unless you're the type of person who's perpetually shocked, so woe will have to do. I started playing the original Overlord some six months ago on Xbox 360, put a fair few hours in, and then my disk developed a crack in it that stopped it from working. So I never finished the original, but hopefully I picked up enough insights along the way to share why this is such a solid sequel. You'll note that the experience has also sent me running into the strong, manly quad core of a PC version for the sequel. Won't see any cracked disks on this machine (I hope).

So, here's what I learned from Overlord during the blissful hours before my 360, jealous of the fun I was having, took it upon itself to crack the disk. You play the eponymous Overlord and it's your duty to spread evil throughout the kingdom. You're actually something of a wuss though and need the help of minions to do your bidding, mischievous little blighters that bear more than a passing resemblance to the gremlins from the film of the same name. Not all minions are created equal, however; brown ones are your standard brawlers, green ones are poisonous, blue ones can go in water and red ones can deal with fire. At this point you may think you're reading a review from 2004 for Pikmin, and it's clear that Overlord owes a lot to that Nintendo gem. To conquer the realm you need to use all of your minions carefully in order to solve puzzles and power your way through enemies. The game even becomes something of a real-time strategy in places, as it allows you to select where and when to use your various minions. It is quite hard to define Overlord, but it was a genuinely entertaining experience with a few key caveats - the AI wasn't great, the gameplay was a little on the repetitive side, and it was very easy to get lost thanks to the lack of map and a camera with a mind of its own. It was also surprisingly un-evil as far as I could tell, with you spending an awful lot of time following the instructions of others.

Straight off the bat, Overlord II goes out and out for pantomime evil, having you harvesting the souls from the cutest baby seals you could ever imagine. Fortunately, it's all so cartoony that you can't help but find it quite amusing, especially with the controlled anarchy of the minions doing most of the legwork for you. The minions are very much the stars of the show, managing to be grotesquely cute; they giggle, chant and generally make mischief, totally prepared to destroy anything out of unwavering loyalty to their master. When they return with treasure it is with a sycophantic "Treasure!", "For you!" or "For the Overlord!", and if they weren't so plentiful it would be very easy to get attached to them. Moreso in this sequel actually, because minions can not only mount other creatures (wolves, spiders and salamanders) but they level up over time as well. You're saved the Cannon Fodder style grief though, as downed minions can be revived with a quick trip to the underworld. Still, the levelling up is one of many subtle improvements to the gameplay's moreish mixture of puzzles and battle; ever wanted to possess an individual minion and explore their world to solve a puzzle? At times you can now do in Overlord II. Want to disguise your minions as enemies to let them slip by unnoticed? That's an option sometimes as well. The key phrase here is 'sometimes' and while the game is still strictly linear in terms of its puzzles and solutions, it does now include some much-needed variety.

There are also other real improvements to the formula of the original under the bonnet. The minion AI is much more refined and you'll seldom find your minions traipsing into water only to drown. In fact, if you leave minions alone in an area that they can't cross, they return to the Underworld, meaning that you should find the frustration of losing them if you die far less common. There's also a mini-map, which means it's a lot harder to get lost - especially as it highlights key points of interest. This was probably the worst thing about the Xbox original (though fixed in the PS3 version, I gather), so it's great to see it corrected this time around.

It's not all sunshine, lollipops and rainbows, of course: The AI is better, but still patchy - especially for the enemies. Taking out an army commander in front of his troops doesn't bring them rallying to his side; instead they just watch and await their own gruesome demise. The autosave system is also a little on the patchy side as well, so should you carelessly find the Overlord dying, you may be dismayed to see exactly how much old ground you have to recover in order to proceed.

Switching to PC brings all kinds of differences to the evil seeker, of course. The visuals - which were no slouch in the original - look very nice indeed, really bringing the fantasy setting to life. The graphics and sound are pretty good all the way through, and the characters in particular deserve plenty of praise; in a game like this it's the characters that inject personality, and the minions are wonderfully presented, evoking an image of mischievousness throughout. The cost of the PC's graphical niceties, however, is an overcomplicated control system that clearly owes its routes to the console version. Overlord was a console game that used every button, and when you throw each direction on the d-pad and clicks of the analogue sticks into the mix, there's actually a lot of functionality on your standard controller. Suffice it to say that binding functions to the apostrophe button isn't something that should be seen outside of early Nineties flight sims, where frankly getting a pilot licence would have been easier than dipping into manuals that could probably have gone through Windows easily enough.

It's not only here where the game shows its console roots, either; trying to sweep your critters across narrow pathways hasn't been easily bound onto the mouse and requires you to hold both buttons while moving the mouse along - a straight emulation of the analogue stick and missing a great opportunity for a genuine improvement with proper mouse pointer control. Suffice it to say, there are more elegant solutions and this doesn't really compare to the swoop of the thumbstick on the Xbox.

The game offers some interesting multiplayer modes, curiously playable in split screen mode as an interesting hang-over from console development. Invasion sees you and a friend taking down a centurion together but with limited resources and in Survival you and a friend must try to survive against waves of AI enemies. Then there are the competitive modes; Dominate is about capturing five points on a map and holding onto them while not spreading your resources too thin, and Pillage sees you each given a vault to defend with extra gold to collect. All of the modes are interesting for a while - provided you can find someone to play with - but in the greater scheme of things they're no match for the single player mode.

Whether or not you'll like the single player mode depends on what you thought of the original Overlord. If you felt, like me, that it was an underrated but flawed gem then you'll find that Overlord II papers over many of the cracks to deliver an overall more polished product. However, if you found it a repetitive and unfunny grind, I don't agree with you but you sure as hell won't see much here to change your mind. It's a tough job balancing action, adventure, puzzles and strategy, but Overlord II managed to juggle all of these disparate pieces and very rarely finds itself dropping a ball.

Reviewed by Alan Martin for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).