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What Did I Do To Deserve This, My Lord!? 2 Review for PlayStation Portable (PSP)

What Did I Do To Deserve This, My Lord!? 2 Review for PlayStation Portable (PSP)

Your Best Weapon is… the Ecosystem?

If you played the predecessor to What Did I Do to Deserve This My Lord 2!? (titled, Holy Invasion of Privacy Badman, What Did I Do to Deserve This!?), then there is not much that I can tell you about this game that you don’t already know. Aside from some minor tweaks, veterans of the first game will already know exactly how they feel about this game. For those of you who are new to the series, this is the best time to get involved.

What Did I Do To Deserve This, My Lord!? 2 screenshot

This isn’t a game with much mass appeal. It is still only going to appeal to the hardcore niche that the first game targeted, but the difference this time around is a much better tutorial. Of course, that sounds like an immensely lame new feature, but the first game’s Achilles’ heel was that it refused to truly divulge to you exactly how to win the game. Instead, it reveled in hardcore, old-school sensibilities and mercilessly pounded you while you figured out most of the games intricacies on your own.

This time around you’re walked through slowly, and, step-by-step, all of the game’s processes are explained to you. It makes for an immensely more enjoyable play experience, and it will open the door for many new people to enjoy the game who were likely shut out of the first game.

Thankfully, My Lord 2 retains the original game’s amazing concept and hilarious sense of humor. There’s still nothing at all like My Lord 2 on the gaming scene today, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a game with more laughs outside of a Tim Schafer title.

As previously mentioned, the basic concept remains exactly the same. You’re the lord of an underworld that is constantly being raided by NES-era heroes. You’re the supposed “bad guy” who they’re all trying to kill for glory. All you want is a peaceful life! Nevertheless, they constantly march down into your depths trying to best your dungeon. From there it is your job to craft the perfect dungeon that will make it impossible for them to destroy you.

What Did I Do To Deserve This, My Lord!? 2 screenshot

At the heart of this is the insanely unique yet very complex “ecosystem” gameplay mechanic which underlies the entire game. It works something like this: at the beginning of each level the dungeon is simply a single cavern ready to be molded. You use your pickaxe to dig routes in the mud. As you do so, certain blocks will burst open with orange blob-like creatures. Those creatures will then seed the surrounding area with the potential to create caterpillar-like creatures that actually feed on the blobs… and so on and so forth. Each new creature begets the potential for the next tier of creatures and feeds on the ones lower than it.

Using this system, you need to craft your dungeon in the perfect way so that your creatures will have room to roam, enough to eat, and still be able to seed for the future. It’s really quite difficult, and it remains as imprecise (by design) as the first game. Since you have no direct control over your creatures, there’s not much you can do to fix problems once they come up. If you don’t maintain the food chain correctly and (for instance) there aren’t enough caterpillar-creatures anymore then by the time you create a new batch, the creatures that feed on the caterpillars may all die of starvation.

What Did I Do To Deserve This, My Lord!? 2 screenshot

By now I’m sure you’re starting to see how brilliant this system is, but the challenges are significant. The most astounding thing about the game is that the system really does work. When you build things properly, good things will happen and all of your creatures will coexist together in a mini-food-chain, circle of life kind of process. It’s really interesting to observe, but it’s hard to exactly call it “fun.” The nature of this system leads to large swaths of down time in which you’re merely observing the dungeons and hoping everything happens the way you want.

It may help to visualize this bizarre concept as essentially a tower defense game. Except you have only indirect control over which towers you get and where they can be placed.

What Did I Do To Deserve This My Lord!? 2 screenshot

It’s somewhat disappointing that the developers have chosen not to really update the graphics at all. Virtually all of the graphics in the game are retreads of what appeared in the previous game. The lack of an update is disappointing perhaps, but it’s not the end of the world. The graphical style was already quite perfect for the first game.

In terms of audio, again, much of this is a retread and what isn’t is hardly noticeable. That said, the quality is still high. The delightfully sardonic theme still gets chuckles out of me today. It’s an ode to the team’s love and understanding of these old-school games.

The biggest impediment to those who want to enjoy this game is the extreme difficulty level. As mentioned before, the ecosystem mechanic is intricate and delicate. Even relatively small imperfections in your dungeon design can cause you to get obliterated once wizards and swordsmen enter the place, cutting straight through your defenses. There’s not really much of a way around it either, besides practice – lots and lots (and lots) of practice.

Those who are interested in trying My Lord 2 would do well to try out the PSN demo before purchasing the entire product. It would be pretty much impossible for me to offer a blanket statement as to whether gamers should buy or pass on this game. The core gameplay mechanic is so intensely polarizing that every single person is going to have a different reaction to it. That said, I highly recommend you give it a chance to win you over because if it does, you’ll find a game that is unlikely to ever be duplicated as long as video games exist.

RATING OUT OF 5 RATING DESCRIPTION 3.5 Graphics
We wish there would have been some updates, but this retro graphics engine works very well for the subject. 3.0 Control
Almost the entire game is controlled with a single button, but that means there can be a lack of control over the game that can get annoying. 2.5 Music / Sound FX / Voice Acting
Not much has changed here. Most of this is a retread. 3.3 Play Value
There’s a large amount of content here, and the high level of difficulty will keep you playing for a very long time if you’re dedicated enough to stick with it. Players will either love or hate this game, so try out the demo to see where you fall. 3.5 Overall Rating – Good
Not an average. See Rating legend above for a final score breakdown.

Game Features:

  • The good guys are coming and you need a place to hide! With some thought, skill, and a little luck, you have to save yourself (evil Overlord) from invading heroes by creating the ultimate dungeon of baddies.
  • Over twice as many do?gooders to do away with, over three times as many monsters at your disposal, and four times as many levels to play through!
  • Missed out on the first entry in the series? The complete first game is included with What Did I Do to Deserve This, My Lord!? for free. Two games for the price of one!

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