What Did I Do to Deserve This, My Lord?! 2 (the sequel to last year’s Holy Invasion of Privacy Badman, What Did I Do to Deserve This?!) Just like the first time around you’ll be playing as the Lord of Destruction laboring to protect Badman from the swarms of heroes laying siege to his underground lairs because he’s a bad guy and they’re good guys, and it was decided long, long ago that good guys have to fight bad guys. This is where you come in – it turns out that Badman is a fairly inefficient villain and just about anybody can kill him. To keep him safe you’ll need to dig out a complex maze, raise a few monsters, feed those monsters to other monsters to create better monsters, and hope that you have a good enough monster economy going to defeat the aforementioned heroes.
My Lord 2 doesn’t look or sound like much, but don’t let the 8-bit veneer fool you. Under the rust, the 8-track player, and the antenna that local neighborhood kids snapped off lays a big, powerful V8 engine of deceptively complex gameplay mechanics and randomly generated playfields. Every experience in My Lord 2 is a unique one, and it never ceases to be entertaining to mine for nutrients and get an economy going well enough to finally beat those blasted do-gooders. In order to get you used to the mechanics My Lord 2 features a 12-part tutorial.
Aside from adding a few new monsters to the mix and changing the title of the game My Lord 2 feels an awful lot like Badman. This is fine in games without a random element, but Badman has random dungeon layouts just like My Lord 2 does so I’m not entirely certain why somebody who played and enjoyed the first installment would need the sequel, and I’m not certain why somebody interested in the series wouldn’t start with part 1, save some money, and just keep playing that. Unless Badman eventually proved to be too easy for you, you don’t really need to upgrade. For the three people out there that cleared out Badman and can play with their eyes closed, My Lord 2 is more difficult thanks to new monster types, new hero types, more levels, and an even steeper learning curve due to small additions like creature mutation and varied hero pathing.
A warning for any who decide to pick up My Lord 2: be prepared to die. My Lord 2 is unforgiving and insists on teaching via failure. The first title did, too so this isn’t a surprise, but there’s very little hand-holding, and if you make a mistake you’ll be punished for it with a game over screen. NIS missed an opportunity here to make My Lord 2 the definitive Badman title by making it accessible without sacrificing the challenge. Instead, what we have a game that is less informative than its predecessor and more difficult. Pass unless you loved part 1 and desperately need more.
Pros: Challenging, highly replayable
Cons: Unforgiving, fairly inaccessible to new players
Plays Like: Holy Invasion of Privacy Badman, What Did I Do to Deserve This?!
