At some point in everyone’s life, there is a thought that maybe being bad would be fun, sure you could go the Dr Evil route and gets sharks with laser beams attached to their head, or you could go the drug lord route, but that usually has more blood. Thankfully, Rebellion have a series that lets you live out that idea, without the possibility of jail time, which is a blessing and though it has been a while, 17 years in fact, it is time now to unleash your plans for global domination.

Starting a campaign to take over the world is preceded by your choice of villain and while they generally play the same, they have their own little powers that may feel more blessed to one type of gamer, over another. Choosing who you will have as your boss is not something you need to invest a big choice in, myself, I went with Ivan and once that choice was made, it was time to select a location for my lair, as well as Casino, this can be a little more important. There are a few locations that you are given, each being tied to the boss you chose, and while each may seem similar, every location has multiple pros and cons and you will need to weigh up each, before you settle down. The biggest will be overall size, because if you choose a smaller island, your decisions in how to expand and what to put down will be impacted, but having made a choice, it was time to start building my lair.

Building things out is much like other games of the genre, games like the recent Two Point Hospital, you have to construct rooms that have designated purpose and then fill them with items to help serve that function. The thing you will build first is a vault for your gold, because if you have no gold, you have no chance for global conquest, from there, it really depends on how you want to proceed, you can choose to be a benevolent ruler and take care of your minions, or you can opt to work them right away and start building your criminal network. Each option has a pro and a con, which is beginning to become a trend and choosing which way you want to go, can impact how your plans change later on. For my first go through, I wanted to leave my network building alone and focused on building up a nice lair.

Balancing what you need, against what you can afford is a massive part of the game, something that the Sandbox mode removes, but even with the amount of freedom the Sandbox mode provides, that need to balance is still there. For every room you build, for every item you place down, there is a cost, both in gold and in power, without one you can’t build and without the other, you can’t run things and if you run out of power, you can’t generate gold from your casino. While you can prioritise one over the other, if you don’t keep up with the other, it will leave floundering at the most in opportune of times. This is perhaps the most insanely delicate balance of gameplay mechanics I have seen in sometime, while it can easily be a challenge, finding a good rhythm can make it a real delight.

Even with that at the front your mind, you still have to expand your criminal empire, beyond the confines of your island getaway. In order to begin that expansion you need to research and research, costs both gold and time, so you need to pick and choose your projects, because if one is going to take an hour, you need to ensure it is worth it. Again though, choosing what to research comes down to balance, in order to start your international campaign of evil, you have to build a communications room, once that is done, you can start expanding and part of that, means you can obtain specialists to help you train your minions to work on specific tasks. Being able to expand your workforce helps in a number of ways, the most critical is when enemy agents attempt to infiltrate your base, more on that later.

At this point you are managing multiple facets of your empire, there is the construction your base, the hiring and growth of your minions, the casino and the various opportunities within for people to lose money, your international expansion of your syndicate and dealing with any pesky agents that show up. While they will show up randomly, most of the time they will arrive, based on your exploits offshore, so if you spend time executing countless schemes to build your gold reserves, which is a solid plan, but then you fail to clear any heat generated by your minions, you will draw significant attention your base. Minions that you dispatch to boost your international appeal, will not return, so even electing to commit to schemes or heat reduction missions can sometimes, be a hard decision to make.

All these factors come together, to aggravate your plans, but none are more frustratingly inconvenient than agents, who attempt to sneak around your base. While there are times when the game will let you know they are coming, there are times when you can be easily distracted with a power shortage, or a lack of medical facilities, to pay attention to them. Setting up traps in your hallways, building guard posts, installing cameras and such are great ways to pre-empt any attempt at infiltration, but may not always succeed. While your average investigator will be caught fairly easily, the more devious will usually manage to slip past your traps and should you not account for that, you can find your gold, or important intel slipping through your fingers. You can build traps and doors designed for a specific type of agent, which is helpful, but for each that you build to keep one out, will allow another easier access, which again, highlights that need for balance.

Because the game has so many little system to manage, it can be overwhelming at times, having to deal with choosing what to research, what skills to train minions in, dealing with any gold shortages and any agents in your base, all at the same time, it’s a lot. When the game throws so much at you, it can be easy to ignore one thing, in order to focus on the others and while a solid approach, you have to ensure you pick the right things to focus on. The flip side to all of this, is that from time to time, there can be little for you to do, your minions will be doing their jobs, your gold will be increasing and there may not be any agents for you to deal with. These moments are a blessing, because it lets you take a moment to think and plan out your next course of action, the problem is that the game rarely sits in between those two extremes with ease, you are almost always having to deal with something, so when the game has nothing for you to do, you can feel like you are just watching now, instead of playing.

All that though and I haven’t touched upon the fact that you can also control your Evil Genius, while almost all of the rest of the game is more SimCity, this is the part where it is more RTS. You can dictate where they go, you can activate special skills and should they be approached by an agent, you can choose to engage them with the weapons. This is the part where I felt things were under used, being able to tell your genius to go into a room, or corridor is fine, but I really would have loved to have seen them wandering the base on their own. The other thing is that because you can control them, I would have loved to have been able to direct minions, being able to tell a guard to go stand at a point and not wait and hope they do, would have cut down on some frustration.

One area that the game removed frustration was in the presentation, it not only sports a 1960’s bond-esq style aesthetic, but it has a very catchy and welcoming musical score to accompany it. While the game is clearly taking inspiration from classic spy movies, like James Bond, everything has a Pixar overlay to it, in that rooms and objects all look 60’s inspired, but have a cartoonish quality to them, which means that when you are looking at nuclear power generators and in the same shot see a sushi bar, they don’t clash. While there isn’t a massive number of options for your casino, in terms of distractions for guests and agents, once you start filling it with plants, chairs and other accoutrement, it starts to feel like it could be a real place. Combine that with the sheer number of rooms you have the option to build and after managing to keep your base going for quite a while, the sprawling complex you can actually build, there is a lot to see.

What I would have liked to have seen though, is that the game let me build blank rooms, that would then theme to the objects I placed within. Having to build specific rooms, makes some sense, but I would have loved to have been able to make rooms and then add in items from different locales, to create my own unique locations. It did take me a bit, but I eventually realised that not every room needs an actual door, so being able to have the dorms without a door, did provide for more freedom, I still want to be able to build blank rooms and fill them in later.

On the sound side of things, the game manages to keep things more whimsical than serious and while there are moments, especially when you activate the base alarm, where things become more grounded, for the most part it is upbeat and fun. The best way to explain it, is if you put on the score for The Incredibles, when they are on the base for Syndrome, that grand orchestral spy music, is what is here. While the music does loop a lot, it never feels like it becomes a chore to hear, there were even times that I stopped to listen to it, whilst my minions did what they were tasked with achieving.

If there is a downside to the audio, it is the lack of fun from the geniuses, for the most part they are fun and campy, helping sell the charm of the game, but there is not enough variety in what they say. When you select targets to be taken out, or interrogated, there are only a handful of ways they say and sure, that makes sense, if you choose to eliminate all the agents in your base, hearing your genius state the same thing three times in one minute, is weird. The other issue is that there is no chatter from folks, either in your base or the casino, when I zoomed into the closet level I could, I was hoping to hear my minions talk, even if was Sims style gibberish, but I got nothing and it made everything feel hollow.

Evil Genius 2: World Domination is a game packed with a lot of systems that come together in a way that could have easily fallen over from the weight placed upon it, but it manages to carry it well and the result is a fun game. There are some issues with balance, given there are times when you can overwhelmed with things to do and other times when there is nothing to do but wait, but if you can find a decent balance on your own, they should be few and far between. With visuals that evoke classic spy movies and score that seems like it was taken straight from The Incredibles, the entire package is presented in a fun and charming way, that still maintains a design that feels grounded. If you are looking for a game that you can easily get lost in, Evil Genius 2: World Domination is one to look into, besides, you know what they say, it is good to be bad.