If you're sick of playing the hero in your virtual adventures, gratefully hug Dungeon Keeper 2, where being really bad is where it's at.
Steve Owen

Peter Molyneux's swan song at Bullfrog was to finish Dungeon Keeper, a pet project that he had personally toiled away on for four years. Despite being one of the most original games the PC had ever enjoyed, even 48 months wasn't enough to complete it, and the levels became somewhat repetitive.

It's taken another two years, this time sans Molyneux, to create the near-perfect Dungeon Keeper 2. While it may have the benefit of a '2' stuck on the end, this is more a Dungeon Keeper Gold, where the ideas of the first game have been polished and sharpened, sculpted and corrected, updated and caressed. It's an example of 3D polygonal gorgeousness on one hand, and a spectacularly realised strategy game of subtly increasing complexity on the other. It is, in two words, rather good.

DK2 is a kind of darkly humorous Dungeons & Dragons, where your control is limited. In contrast to typical realtime strategy, you can only influence the behaviour of your units, rather than directly selecting and ordering them about. In this case your tribe of servants are a range of traditional, middle earth types.

You don't spend gold on creating creatures to man your dungeon, but rather blow your dough on building the kind of dungeon you think the beasts would like to live in. They are mercenaries, where the leather-clad Mistress is attracted by a Torture Chamber, the Troll likes to toil in a Workshop, and the Dark Knight will only show up if there's a Temple to pray in.

Even once you've 'hired' your army you can't tell them what to do. The limit of your control is to pick them up and drop them elsewhere (but only within your claimed land). Dropping them near the enemy, for instance, is likely to get them fighting. Dumping them in the Training Room is sure to improve their fighting abilities.