Overlord: Dark Legend
| Overlord: Dark Legend | |
|---|---|
.jpg)
North American cover
|
|
| Developer(s) | Climax Studios |
| Publisher(s) | Codemasters |
| Composer(s) | Michiel van den Bos |
| Series | Overlord |
| Platform(s) | Wii |
| Release | |
| Genre(s) | Action role-playing |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
| Aggregate scores | |
|---|---|
| Aggregator | Score |
| GameRankings | 69.71% |
| Metacritic | 68 |
| Review scores | |
| Publication | Score |
| Game Informer | 7/10 |
| GameSpot | 5.5/10 |
| GameZone | 7.1/10 |
| IGN | 7.5/10 |
Overlord: Dark Legend is a 2009 action role-playing game developed by Climax Studios and published by Codemasters for the Wii. The game was released on 23 June 2009 in North America, 26 June in Europe, and 2 July in Australia.
Dark Legend is a spinoff of the 2007 video game Overlord, and is set as a prequel. The gameplay is similar to Overlord, but presents some differences. While the game does not have several features of the original game or its sequel, Overlord II, it offers some new content and a new gameplay style taking advantage of the Wii controller.
Reviews of the game are mixed: praising the humour, story, and controls of the game, but finding problems with the animation, short game length, and lack of complexity or difficulty.
Much of the basic gameplay is similar to that of Overlord. The four minion types (brown, red, green, and blue) and their abilities remain unchanged from the original. However, the game presents some differences in terms of gameplay design. For example, unlike the other Overlord games, the life force collected from defeated enemies and used to create minions is no longer colour-dependant.
The Wii Remote's nunchuk attachment is used to control the Overlord, while the remote itself is used to organise and control the minions, capitalizing on the controller's motion sensor and pointer capabilities. One of the new features introduced for the Wii was the ability to grab a minion from the horde using the tilt and motion sensors in the Wii remote, shake the remote to imbue the minion with the Overlord's power, then release it to run at a target and explode.
"Dark Legend" is set before the events of "Overlord". The game features a new story line, with new characters and locations, written by Rhianna Pratchett (daughter of British novelist Terry Pratchett) who also wrote for the other games in the "Overlord" series.
Instead of the unnamed Overlord introduced in the previous game, Dark Legend follows the story of a new Overlord (named "Lord Gromgard" in-game). In the form of puppet show-esque cutscenes, the Overlord's story is told (with Gnarl doing the narration). Lord Gromgard, as a child, was told by Gnarl that, on his sixteenth birthday, his destiny would be fulfilled. As the years passed, the kingdom suffered many problems in the form of blights, poor crop harvests, Halflings taking the local food, bandits stealing from the populace and wolves eating or destroying what was left. Desperate to reclaim his fame, the Overlord's father, the once mighty Duke Gromgard, set out on a quest to acquire some of his lost assets, only to return with nothing and to find his wife, Duchess Gromgard, had run off with a rich and strong nobleman from a neighboring kingdom. On his sixteenth birthday, Lord Gromgard is left alone when his father sets out on yet another quest to reclaim his fortune, leaving Lord Gromgard with his extremely unpleasant older siblings, Lord Greenville and Lady Gerda (in a reference to Cinderella).
...
Wikipedia