Pros: Good if crude humor, unconventional story.
Cons: Game play does not change much, lots of backtracking.
The bottom line: Maybe a better lengthy rental than purchase - there's little to no replay value to be had here, but it is a fun experience at first.
The premise is quite the twist from the norm. Welcome to a fantasy world where halflings and elves roam free. There are innocent animals and people in constant danger in this world - but there are heroes as well. However, you are not one of these heroes, but in fact an evil overlord who is trying to spread corruption and to slay these heroes instead of helping them. The entire premise is a complete departure from how most games play out and I think this lends Overlord much of its charm. It's kind of a difficult game to place in terms of genre. It's part role-playing and part strategy, but also with a lot of real-time action taking place. It's a strange hybrid where you do less of the dirty work yourself, and actually use summoned minions to attack most of your enemies, go to places you can't reach and to solve puzzles.

Graphics: All in all, these are pretty good. There are some good particle effects on fire (which there is plenty of), and the minions are all pretty active with loads of personality. It's quite amusing to see them ransack a house or tear through a pumpkin patch - only to bring you treasures or to place a pumpkin on their heads while running about. There's not a ton of variety in the critters you face, and the landscapes while good, can be a bit confusing once in awhile as there does tend to be sameness to many of the paths. Also, I'd have liked a bit more variety in the Overlords animations, since he seldom does anything but run or stand.

Music and sound: Not a great deal of music to be had here, or at least nothing that stands out in my mind. This seems like the kind of game that would benefit from lots of deep horns and 'evil' music like you would find in a Lord of the Rings movie, but what there was, was not terribly memorable. The sound effects are actually pretty funny. There's some pretty good dialog and the minions are constantly prattling on about treasures. This is where some of the game's sense of humor really gets to shine, because the developers did a great deal of this with tongue-in-cheek, I suspect. "There are evil deeds to be done!" - I heard that one a few times and it made me grin.

Game play: This is where the game suffered a bit. Some minions have pretty good 'AI' - they find paths relatively well, attack things efficiently and are a good deal of fun to watch as they tear things up. Targeting what you want can be a bit of a pain, and the overlord is a bit 'blocky' feeling at times. Also, I had one quest in particular that sort of annoyed me because the minions were carrying a large item and ran into a draw bridge. The drawbridge could be easily opened by a turn of a wheel. Problem is, the minions dropped the item right in front of the wheel and would be more than happy to pick it up again, but not actually move it. I had to redo the entire part because I couldn't gain access to the wheel that I needed.

Intangibles: The game was quite amusing. I'm not done with it yet, but I'm about 1/4 of the way or so and have sunk quite a few hours into it. There are some online options I haven't tried yet, but it looks like you can pit overlord against overlord - I'm really not in a place to comment on those yet (had to spend way too much time last night fixing my router first). There's a lot of backtracking, which is not my favorite feature in games. I like to find new ground and continue on. Backtracking feels like a way to make a game longer, without the developers having to add quite as much content.

Overall, I'd score the game a 3 out of 5 stars - very close to higher, if not for a few of the more annoying flaws that continue to creep up again and again. The humor is great, if crude (seriously - not for small children unless you want them to see urinating minions after they get set loose on a table of food and mead) and it is quite a twist playing the villain. Also the blend of strategy, RPG and action is handled quite well. If a few things were tweaked, the game could have been an instant classic, but instead is serves as a nice idea that is more of a near-miss that just does not offer enough variety down the stretch.