If you happen to have been following my written work here on Phenixx Gaming for at least the past year or so, you may remember that I whipped up a roundup of every game announced at 2020’s PC Gaming Show last June. In the midst of that roundup was an upcoming title from Rebellion that was actually initially revealed at 2019’s PC Gaming Show, but seemed to need additional development time to ensure that it was up to scratch. The game in question is known as Evil Genius 2: World Domination.

Evil Genius 2 didn’t get much time in the limelight during last year’s PC Gaming Show, but the gameplay trailer Rebellion had to show for its efforts at the time most certainly piqued my interest. Based on what I saw in that trailer, the game struck me as what could happen if Dungeon Keeper crossed paths with Theme Hospital.

Evil Genius 2 seemed to put a more modern spin on those games, though. It’s almost as if their most prominent spiritual successors (War for the Overworld and Two Point Hospital, respectively) had had a fateful encounter, perhaps with a dash of Tropico thrown into the final result for good measure. With that knowledge in mind, Rebellion had me thoroughly hooked and ready for any and all news about the upcoming sequel to the original classic.

I am honored and overjoyed to report that I have been granted the opportunity to review Evil Genius 2 for you today. Let us waste no more time and get right to it, for we have quite a bit of ground to cover. I suppose it would be best if I were to start with the basics and build my way up to the more complex topics from there.

So, what exactly is Evil Genius 2: World Domination? Well, based on what I’ve experienced of its gameplay thus far, its title sort of gives the entire game away, so to speak. In this title, you’re tasked with choosing one of four titular evil geniuses and utilizing their unique abilities to create, maintain, upgrade, and capitalize upon global criminal networks until you achieve the ultimate goal of complete and total world domination.

I think it’s important to establish that you can’t exactly run a criminal empire that’s worth very much if you don’t create and maintain an extravagant, well-equipped secret lair to serve as your base of operations. If you’re unsure as to how best to construct such a hive of villainy, have no fear. The game starts you off by guiding you through what may very well be one of the most detailed and in-depth tutorials through which I’ve ever played.

I would argue that such a tutorial is necessary for a game like this, especially for new players who may not be familiar with any titles such as the original Evil Genius or its contemporaries. To give you a rough idea of how deep Evil Genius 2’s tutorial goes, I’ve played through it for a while and I’m still not quite finished absorbing all the knowledge it provides.

I want to emphasize though, that for all the detail the game’s tutorial goes into, I’ve never felt that it has held my hand too much throughout my time with it so far. Your experience may vary on this front, however. Some players may feel that the game’s tutorial goes on for too long without much in the way of “action,” for severe lack of a more descriptive word. I just happen to disagree with that idea because I personally prefer to know exactly what my options are when any such action arises.

What do I mean by “action,” exactly? Well, that question leads me to a topic that entwines itself with several other topics I intend to explain in more detail later on. As you build your criminal empire and its requisite networks across the globe, you’ll find that you can’t quite go about your nefarious deeds with no consequences. To that end, as you use your criminal networks and your hordes of minions to run what are referred to as “schemes” to do such things as acquire money, several global law enforcement agencies (known collectively as the “Forces of Justice,” or “F.O.J.” for short) will begin to monitor your activities.

You can discern the exact degree to which the F.O.J. is monitoring you by looking at how much “heat” has been generated by any of the criminal networks you’ve established around the world. This “heat” is accumulated by your minions carrying out whatever schemes you’ve told them to run at that particular network. When too much heat is built up without you making any effort to mitigate it, the F.O.J. will temporarily disable the offending network and possibly send agents to your lair to find out exactly what you’re up to.

When agents from any branch of the F.O.J. actually reach your lair, they’ll attempt to dismantle anything nefarious they see if they’re left unchecked. Their targets can range from gold pallets in your vaults to generators that provide electricity to your lair. The inherent excitement caused by the process of dealing with any pesky invading agents is what I referred to by my earlier use of the word “action.”

When you locate an enemy agent on your turf, you have three options as to how you can order your minions to deal with them. You can instruct your underlings to terminate the enemy outright, capture them alive so that they can later be interrogated, or use your lair’s cover operations to distract them and eventually cause them to think there’s nothing unscrupulous going on after all. As you might imagine, there are pros and cons to each of these three plans of action.

Now, I know there’s quite a bit to unpack in what I’ve just said. Fret not, for I shall now proceed to explain the gameplay elements I’ve just introduced as best I can. Firstly, the primary gameplay mechanic of Evil Genius 2 tasks you with using portions of the gold you accumulate from your schemes to build rooms in your lair which serve certain dedicated purposes. Among the myriad rooms to which you have access, you’ll find the Prison.

Within any Prisons you designate, you can build such things as holding cells and interrogation devices to be used on any agents or specialists who are unfortunate enough to have been captured by your goons. Do be aware, however, that F.O.J. agents can occasionally be skilled enough to escape captivity if you leave them to their own devices for long enough. I’ve had this happen a small handful of times thus far, and it rarely ends in my favor.

Secondly, an important aspect of each lair you construct is that in order for you to achieve world domination in relative peace, your domain must at least externally appear to be a legitimate business rather than the home base of a malevolent genius who’s actively plotting to take over the world as we know it. To that end, your lair features what are called “cover operations.”

When these operations are run properly, they serve to make your lair look like nothing more than an unusually lavish casino, in a particularly difficult-to-reach location. Disguising your lair as a gambling hall is typically enough to fool unsuspecting tourists who happen to stumble upon the secluded island that houses your base of operations. However, you would do well to bear in mind that agents of the F.O.J. aren’t necessarily deceived so easily.

As I alluded to a moment ago, there are advantages and disadvantages to whichever method you choose to deal with any law enforcement agents who manage to infiltrate your lair. Eliminating agents outright is, as you might expect, the most violent option available to you. As such, if you aren’t careful, going this route can result in your hired muscle taking significant damage to both their Vitality and Morale stats or worse if your target puts up enough of a fight.

Capturing agents and subsequently interrogating them provides your criminal empire with valuable “intel” that can later be used to advance your progress toward world domination. That is, provided the agents you intend to interrogate don’t escape your holding cells first. Even if they don’t, targets of interrogation within your lair tend not to survive the experience. Lastly, attempting to distract any inquisitive agents has a chance to fail and lead to havoc within your lair if your distraction target figures out what’s really going on. Thankfully, that’s one of the situations for which your “high alert” button exists.

I mentioned a moment ago that your hired goons have stats like Vitality, Smarts, and Morale. There’s actually a fair bit more to this gameplay mechanic than that. For starters, your underlings aren’t the only ones who have stats like these. Your chosen Evil Genius has the same stats, though usually in much higher capacities. Secondly, ensuring that your minions’ stats remain in tip-top shape is the designated purpose of several buildings you can add to your lair, such as the Mess Hall.

For example, you’re told in the tutorial that you should always have at least one Mess Hall in your lair because “food is an essential part of any minion’s diet. Without it, they’ll become less intelligent. Much less intelligent.” This is the game’s way of telling you that without a place they can head to for a while when they need to stop working and eat, each affected minion’s Smarts stat will begin to deteriorate.

I think I’ve spent quite enough time explaining how the game works. That’s what the exceptionally in-depth tutorial is for, after all. It’s high time I moved on to actually telling you what I like and dislike about Evil Genius 2, so we shall now switch gears for that purpose. I think we ought to start with what I dislike about the game since that won’t take nearly as long as the process of listing off everything I enjoy about this title.

I have only two gripes with Evil Genius 2. The first of these is that the game’s loading times are somewhat lengthy in my opinion. I’ve got the game installed on a relatively new, high-capacity solid-state drive, yet I’m still running into fairly long-lasting loading screens. I hesitate to imagine what I would experience if I had chosen to install the game on a standard mechanical hard drive in light of this.

I hope this concern of mine will be addressed in a future patch or something along those lines. Even if it isn’t, however, the unusually long loading times are by no means a deal-breaker for me. It’s unreasonable to expect any game to load in a matter of nanoseconds, after all. My second and final complaint appears to be more of a bug than a fundamental problem with the game itself. More specifically, when I click the “quit to title” button after deciding I want to stop playing, the game appears to crash to the desktop, rather than taking me back to the main menu.

As I said, these are genuinely my only two concerns when it comes to Evil Genius 2: World Domination, and I suspect that both of them can be easily taken care of in future patches and updates. By no means am I the least bit concerned about the fate of the game overall because of this pair of issues. The game could be in significantly worse shape in its current build, after all. To reiterate yet again, I’m quite glad to see that these are the only abnormalities I’ve encountered thus far.

In terms of what I like about Evil Genius 2, that list is a fair bit longer than my list of concerns. I’ve already mentioned that I greatly appreciate the lengthy and highly informative tutorial, but the list certainly doesn’t end with that. You’ll recall my mentioning near the beginning of this review that Evil Genius 2‘s gameplay trailer struck me as what you might get if there were a game that fused War for the Overworld together with Two Point Hospital.

I said that not just because EG2’s gameplay has several similar mechanics like lair construction and maintenance, but also because of its sense of humor, which easily rivals those of Two Point Hospital and War for the Overworld. Rebellion describes Evil Genius 2 on its Steam Store page as “a satirical spy-fi lair builder where you are the criminal mastermind.” As far as I’m concerned, the game absolutely nails the “satirical” and so-called “spy-fi” parts of that description.

Evil Genius 2 also has plenty of unlockable Steam achievements which, so far in my experience, are actually fun to work toward earning. Heck, I earned eleven percent of the game’s achievements just from playing through the tutorial. I’m most definitely looking forward to adding to that number. I elected to mention this topic because I suspect that it should keep you completionists out there quite happy indeed if you choose to purchase this title once it releases.

Alternatively, if you’re not quite as interested in all those Steam achievements and you just want to play around with everything Evil Genius 2 has to offer, the game has you covered there as well. It prominently features a sandbox mode which, although it disables achievements completely while active, allows you to build the secret lair and the criminal empire of your wildest dreams with little regard for such things as money.

In case I haven’t made this clear enough quite yet, I thoroughly enjoy Evil Genius 2: World Domination and everything it brings to the metaphorical table. I wholeheartedly recommend the game to anyone who wants to see what it’s like to be on the side of the evil forces who build the dungeon (or the lair, as it were), rather than the foolish heroes raiding said dungeon (or lair) seeking glory and loot. For once, the glory and the ill-gotten gains can be yours provided you know how to keep those dastardly F.O.J. agents at bay.

A PC review copy of Evil Genius 2: World Domination was provided by Rebellion for this review.

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Evil Genius 2: World Domination

$39.99

8.5

Score

8.5/10

Pros

• Exceptionally Detailed Tutorial will Help New Players Significantly
• Excellent Sense of Humor
• Sandbox Mode Allows Players to Experiment at Their Own Pace
• Achievements are Enjoyable to Strive For

Cons

• Some Players May Feel the Tutorial is Too Long
• Load Times Might Prove Longer than Expected