To be honest I did not really like original game. It was lacking something intangible. I think I know what exactly, now.
First thing that catches your eye is the art. Little minions strolling around, drowning in vivid colors. World of rabbits and unicorns darkening and changing as you, the Ultimate Evil, stroll behind them, casually destroying houses damaging them for 666 or 665 with each hit (the last one just because he became a bit tired and bored). Those little details here and there are just amazing. Even gold reserves are not just gold as in other similar games: they have precious stones, like rubies and emeralds.
After you come out of the shock from the beauty of the game you will dive into another shock: "What is this? RTS?" Do not rush to the conclusions yet. You do start by controlling your alter ego as in RTS, but then due to scenario you are diminished to an ethereal corpse.
And this is when you you become the keeper. There are some significant differences compared to classic dungeon keeper here, inspired by the same RTS genre. 1st of all, you do not "attract" minions, you buy them and there is a limit to how many you can, as in RTS games. 2ndly rooms are clickable. And for a good reason: they need some micro-management, too: you need to build "facilities" in there to help the rooms work properly, and some of them allow you to research stuff like new buildings and upgrade stuff, as well. You do not claim the tiles, too: you just clear the dirt.
Dirt is different here, too. 1st of all you can "raise walls" here. It is required to increase efficiency of the rooms: they need to be surrounded by walls for increase productivity. There are also 2 types of gold tiles: some give you a lot of gold, but get destroyed quickly, while others are virtually eternal and you can dig gold from them for quite some time, but slowly. Although, so far I never experience an urgent need for lots of cash.
Unlike other keepers minions here should be cherished. As mentioned, you have a limited supply of those due to population limit. Also they do gain levels, which makes them stronger. You can also give them medals, which add some "honorifics" to their names. Yes, they all have NAMES. Makes it more personal. It's also nice how non-worker types smash on walls when bored and there are also those pop-ups, that tell you some thoughts of the minions, like what they are doing at the moment.
I also like, how traps get restored here. When activated by heroes, they do not vanish freeing the tile, they stay there, waiting for repairs and once repaired, they can work again. If you have enough resources and build the traps wisely, you can generally forget about protection of the entrance, because it will be self-sufficient. And you will require some free time.
Because, you see, there are 2 maps here. Map of your dungeon and... Map of the world above the dungeon. You can take a minion, drop him on a certain building and... Her goes out for a walk in the forest. To crash some skulls. Here I am reminded of those old-school solo missions in StarCraft or WarCraft, where you can't build anything, but have a few units, that you need to control precisely in order to finish the objectives. It may even have some stealth elements. And again - these units continue getting level-ups, medals and stuff like that.
And all that is presented by a narrator, who keeps giving jokes close to what we could hear in Overlord game series. With some 4th wall breaking here and there. This is actually what original game was lacking (besides the amazing art-style). It gives the game a "soul", makes it even more alive, even though dungeon keeping still feels slow at times. Although, admittedly, minions here do seem a bit... Well, fat. In need of proper training.
So, this is a rally good game. There are lots of minor things, that make it stand out among the others of the genre. These details show, that it was developed with love. Only 2 cons I currently see is that dungeon keeping is quite slow and generally easy and some minor interface annoyances (like sometimes you have to hover over the tutorial or event notification, because otherwise you will click on the tile, not on the actual icon).
I definitely recommend it. 8/10
