Graphics

3D accelerated

One of the primary criticisms of the original Dungeon Keeper was that the graphics were a generation behind when the game was released. In addition, it only had a software mode. It took many months before a 3dfx 3D patch was released for Dungeon Keeper. Bullfrog learned from their mistakes in a big way. The Direct3D graphics of Dungeon Keeper 2 are a stunning accomplishment. What's even better is that the camera angles you can view your dungeon in is fully adjustable - zoom and pitch can be changed to almost any arbitrary angle. No matter how far in or out you zoom in, graphics remain clean, polished, fast, and gorgeous.

Dropping in a firefly

Some Goblins practice their swordplay

Animation and First person

The character and spell animations were pretty good too. Your monsters look "natural" and believable as they go about their work in your dungeon and go into combat. They even look great when zoomed in close or when in first person mode, where Dungeon Keeper takes on a whole new look, but with the same visual polish and flair.

Oh no, the good guys are here

They're ripping off your treasure!

A few knocks

Only a couple of complaints here - one is that you're limited to a max resolution of 800x600. The manual says otherwise, but the higher res modes were axed at the last moment. Also, the software mode is somewhat ugly at low res. On my Celeron 433 with 128MB of RAM, I turned off hardware acceleration on my Voodoo 3 to see how things would go. At 800x600 software mode, the game chunked badly of course. 640x480 worked reasonably well, but anything lower than that and the graphics look, well, like Dungeon Keeper 1. System reqs say a minimum of 166MHz and 32MB of RAM but you'd probably have to play 400x300 unless you had a 3D card. The other teeny annoying thing is that you can't change resolutions during a mission - these can only be changed at the title screen.