Name:
Dungeon Keeper 2
Release Date: June 1999
Developer:
Bullfrog
Publisher:
Electronic Arts
OVERVIEW
Dungeon Keeper 2 is the sequel to Bullfrog's excellent Dungeon Keeper. It is more or less a remake of Dungeon Keeper, as it does not really take the game in any new directions. Bullfrog more or less modified/added/removed a lot of things from the original to arrive at this game.
THE GAME
The play style is more or less the same as Dungeon Keeper, so I will concentrate on what has changed. Dungeon Keeper 2 is now totally 3D, using Direct 3D, with polygon models for all creatures, objects and rooms in the game world. The effects system was revamped and is now much more colorful and elaborate. The game now features several different game modes. There is the usual single player campaign where you build a series of dungeons, and in each one conquer either a Lord of the Land or an opposing Keeper to obtain a portal gem. Once you have conquered the various regions in the game you win. New in this game is the My Pet Dungeon mode, where you build a dungeon and fight off incoming waves of heroes to amass a certain number of points to win. And of course, there is the multiplayer mode that we all know and love.
The user interface has been revamped, and it is now easier. It is possible to see how many creatures are happy, unhappy and mad. The "computer assistance" from Dungeon Keeper 1 is now gone. One of the most important changes is that there are now two different resources, gold and mana. Gold is still obtained in the same way as before, but is now only used to build rooms, traps and pay your creatures. Mana is used to cast spells and fire traps, and is regenerated by "owning" dungeon tiles (1/turn) and mana vaults (100/turn). This is *much* better than Dungeon Keeper as you constantly ran out of gold casting spells unless you had 20 imps digging a seam of gems.
Creatures now gain experience by being in combat with the enemy. Imps gain experience by doing their normal chores of fixing walls and mining gold, so you no longer have to toss them in the training room till level 3.
Dungeon Walls are no longer the impenetrable thing they used to be. Your imps can break through enemy walls, it just takes them a long time to dig through them. You can also weaken enemy walls with the new tremor spell.
Creatures now take up actual space, and can block each other from moving down a hall or across a room. Creatures also become stunned now after you drop them, during which time they can be struck and rendered unconscious. This reduces to a great degree the "drop-fest" Dungeon Keeper was.
CREATURES
The set of evil creatures in Dungeon Keeper 2 is slightly different, as Bullfrog removed a lot of the ones from Dungeon Keeper and added a few new ones.
Gone from Dungeon Keeper are:
- Hellhound
- Beetle (useless)
- Spider (was useless besides the Freeze Creature spell)
- Demon Spawn and the Dragon. This is really a shame. The demon spawn and the dragon were great creatures and I don't understand why Bullfrog took them out. Plus, you could always train the demon spawn past level 10 ..
- Orc
- Ghost (good riddance)
- Tentacle (not sure why this was in Dungeon Keeper anyway)
New in Dungeon Keeper 2 are:
Returning in Dungeon Keeper 2 are:
The
Horned Reaper is now sort of an
NPC in the game, and you cannot obtain him through sacrificing a set of creatures in the temple. Now there is only one, and you
summon him if you have 100,000 mana and you point to where you want him to appear. He then goes on a killing spree, so be sure none of your creatures are nearby. He is virtually unstoppable, and can kill 20 or 30 heroes at a time. The drawback is he sucks down mana VERY fast and he may be around for 20 or 30 seconds before you run out of mana and he disappears again.
Bullfrog still did not provide a way of keeping the imps from roaming about and attracting attention if you didn't want them to.
ROOMS
The rooms were also changed up quite a bit, with some new and good additions. The Dungeon Heart now acts as a treasure room, holding up to 16,000 gold by itself.
Bullfrog fucked up the Training Room in Dungeon Keeper 2 by making it impossible to train your creatures past level 4. To train them any farther, you have to build a Combat Pit (new room) and manually drop your characters in there, and perform a bunch of micromanagement to make sure there are always creatures in the pit, and imps to pick up the unconscious ones. This is one of the few gripes I have about Dungeon Keeper 2.
Added rooms are:
- Combat Pit: Necessary to train your creatures past level 4, unless they are are in combat.
- Casino: A way to make your creatures happy, and a way to earn back your creatures wages. Nothing like seeing a Salamander : Job: Drinking ...
- Wooden Bridge/Stone Bridge: Gone is the "bridge" from Dungeon Keeper. Wooden bridges are only good over water; Stone Bridges must be used over lava.
The Scavenger room was removed from Dungeon Keeper 1. I really hated the Scavenger Room, since you had to keep creatures in there all the time to prevent your friends from stealing them. I guess Bullfrog figured this out, too.