Overlord: Ultimate Evil Collection

The Overlord: Ultimate Evil Collection is a bundle of four titles from the same franchise, but treat it as two very different products sharing a box. Overlord and Overlord II are third-person hack-and-slash RPGs built around one gloriously demented idea: you are the villain, and your tiny horde of cackling minions does most of the work for you. The four minion types - melee-focused browns, flame-throwing reds, sneaky greens, and magic-wielding blues - each fill a distinct tactical role, and the original game's pitch-black humour and Dungeon Keeper-adjacent atmosphere make it one of the more memorable cult RPGs of its era. The first game sets up the minion-command loop cleanly; the sequel refines it with mount mechanics (wolves for browns, fire lizards for reds), a minion possession ability that opens up light stealth sections, catapult and naval combat sequences, and a Netherworld fortress upgrade system that adds just enough RPG scaffolding to keep the loop interesting. Neither game has deep character arcs or branching dialogue - do not come here expecting choices that matter past hour ten - but the writing has a confident comic timing and Gnarl's sardonic narration is the kind of thing you quote to friends who haven't played it. Raising Hell, the expansion bundled with the first game, adds substantial new areas and a revised corruption system, making it the correct way to play the original. Then there is Fellowship of Evil, and this is where honesty becomes an obligation. The spin-off ditches the third-person minion-commander format entirely for an isometric, Diablo-adjacent hack-and-slash with four playable Netherghul characters: Inferna (warrior), Malady (necromancer), Hakon (rogue), and Cryos (area-of-effect dark elf). The premise has some flavour and Rhianna Pratchett's script retains flashes of the series' wit. In practice, however, the minion mechanics that define Overlord are reduced to passive support roles, combat collapses into button-mashing with no meaningful skill progression, framerate issues and collision problems compound the tedium, and the whole campaign clocks in at around seven hours of grind. Steam user reviews sit at roughly 20 percent positive. Critics were not kinder. Fellowship of Evil landed as one of the most negatively received entries in the series, and the community consensus has not softened with time. It supports up to four-player co-op locally and online, which is the one circumstance under which it becomes marginally tolerable. For anyone buying this collection: Overlord and Overlord II with the Raising Hell expansion are a genuinely good time for fans of comic-dark fantasy action who do not mind some clunky camera controls and a combat system that rewards minion micromanagement over direct button skill. Fellowship of Evil is a cautionary tale packaged alongside them. The collection price often makes the first two games alone worth the purchase, but go in with both eyes open about what the third title actually is. Monika, Scout Team