Evil Genius
Evil Genius
Game
Game2021
Evil Genius 2: World Domination
Developer Rebellion
Evil Genius 2: World Domination is a real-time strategy and simulation video game developed and published by Rebellion Developments. As the sequel to Evil Genius (2004), which was developed by the now-defunct Elixir Studios, the game was released for Microsoft Windows on 30 March 2021, and PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on 30 November 2021. From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
268 reactions from 4 sources (Steam reviews, Bluesky, Mastodon, Lemmy) · newest Nov 1, 2026 · last updated Nov 5, 2026 · How this works
Audience score
63
Fresh
134 positive · 78 negative
95% range 57–69%
| Source | + | − | = |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steam reviews | 134 | 78 | 0 |
| Bluesky * | 15 | 2 | 30 |
| Mastodon * | 1 | 0 | 7 |
| Lemmy * | 0 | 1 | 0 |
* shown, not counted in the score (label accuracy below our 85% bar or not yet audited).
Steam's own rating
Mixed
5,993 of 8,863 reviews positive (all languages, per Valve)
What players are saying
63% recommend · 132 yes, 76 no
Counted from the reviewers’ own thumbs up/down on the 208 English Steam reviews we collected, not by the AI. Valve’s all-language rating: Mixed (9,164 of 13,261 positive).
Some reviewers feel the game was abandoned by developers, lacking promised support and modding capabilities. [1][2][3] Others find it enjoyable on sale but note it becomes tedious and grindy in the late game. [4][5][6]
Liked
Representative posts
- [19]
I wish I could recommend Evil Genius 2 in good faith, but there are simply too many issues for the experience to ever feel genuinely enjoyable. The writing is stilted and awkward, as if HR had set up camp in the writer’s room to ensure every line passed a corporate smell test. The result is humor that rarely lands and dialogue that feels strangely sanitized for a game about supervillainy. Base-building, one of the …
- [15]
Evil Genius is half a great game welded to a screensaver. The first stretch is a delight — building the lair, setting traps, actually feeling like a criminal mastermind. Then the wheels come off. The entire second half collapses into clicking regions on the world stage and waiting for minions to finish training, an endless loop of queue, wait, repeat that asks nothing of you and gives nothing back. There's no …
- [4]
I got it on sale for $3.99 and played it for nearly 8 hours straight. At this point I feel like I have seen everything there is to be seen. I would not recommend buying it at $40, but the $4 I spent it feels worth it for the amount of entertainment I got out of it.
- [7]
Never played evil genius 1 so I can't speak for all the people comparing it to the first game, but I thoroughly enjoyed the game. The humor is great, the artstyle is great and the gameplay is... okay. I do wish there the balance was a little better because there are certain casino items, traps or henchmen that are very clearly just way better than any alternatives.
- [1]
Abandoned game, devs went out of their way to make it unmodable \ very hard to do it. Like the first game this game is now lost to time due to that decision. It's a fun game but the end game is totally unbalanced and your not allowed to have enough minions to keep your base running as the durability drain is to high along with the sheer amount of power stations you need, hence why the game needs mods or them to …
Summarised from 34 of the 265 public posts collected about this game; every point cites the posts behind it ([n] opens the post) and the split is counted from the posts’ own ratings. Updated Oct 11, 2026. How summaries are made
RottenBot@rottenbot · automated account
Evil Genius 2: World Domination sits at 63% positive across 212 opinionated reactions from 4 sources. Fresh or rotten — where do you land?
Critics, per Wikipedia
Evil Genius 2 received "generally favorable" reviews from critics, according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. The game was nominated for Best Sim/Strategy Game at The Game Awards 2021.
From the “Reception” section of Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Critic context only — not part of the audience score.
Reactions
60 of 268 · most liked firstin Evil Genius 1, whenever a minion brings in gold, it would add to a stack, and as the player earns more and more gold, the stack would become taller visibly and once the stack has reached its full height and a new stack would appear. In EG2, there is only one stack, and it is the same no matter how much money the player has. This epitomises the problem with this game, very flashy but obviously not enough love and attention to details have gone into making this game. I think this game is…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I wish I could recommend Evil Genius 2 in good faith, but there are simply too many issues for the experience to ever feel genuinely enjoyable. The writing is stilted and awkward, as if HR had set up camp in the writer’s room to ensure every line passed a corporate smell test. The result is humor that rarely lands and dialogue that feels strangely sanitized for a game about supervillainy. Base-building, one of the series’ core appeals, is hampered by bizarre item footprints and layout…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Another old video game screenshot tf sequence, this time from 2022! I had a lot of fun with Evil Genius 2!
positive · AI labelView post →I still have a boxed copy of the original Evil Genius. Even allowing for the haze of nostalgia, I confidently recall it being reasonably entertaining and stylish, though certainly not flawless. This though, is just *dull*. It has the feel of an idle or freemium game, constantly waiting for timers to complete and having to do small variations on the same thing over and over and over again. There's little thought or strategy involved, it's just a matter of persistence through the painfully drawn…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A lot in the game screams mobile game design. Timers, shallow loops, and UI choices that genuinely feel like the game was originally meant to be a free to play mobile title. It all disappointingly plays like a dumbed down version of the first game: less depth on both the world map and in the lair, simplified trap mechanics, simplified minion management and an overall strangely hollow gameplay loop. It’s not unplayable it has the humor and "eye candy" regarding the models and animations. But the…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Been playing Evil Genius 2 a lot lately so here's a Vanilla based on one of the villains from the game. #VanillatheRabbit #EvilGenius2 #SonictheHedgehog
neutral · AI labelView post →This game would be peak if they just added another year or two of proper support and playtesting and feedback updates. Unfortunately it's like a love letter lost in the trenches. Never to reach where its meant to be.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Evil Genius is half a great game welded to a screensaver. The first stretch is a delight — building the lair, setting traps, actually feeling like a criminal mastermind. Then the wheels come off. The entire second half collapses into clicking regions on the world stage and waiting for minions to finish training, an endless loop of queue, wait, repeat that asks nothing of you and gives nothing back. There's no escalation, no new mechanic, no reason to think. Just menus and cooldowns dressed up…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It is not a horrible game. I kept playing hoping it would get better but it just became more and more grindy. The setting, humor, art, graphics, and sound are all great. The base building is fun. Defending it is fun for a bit but it gets repetitive. The side quest system is repetitive. The main quest is repetitive. The world map is not fun at all and guess what? that right: extremely repetitive. The core gameplay is good but the video game built around it is not.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Evil Genius 2 confidently delivers the core fantasy of the series: you are not just building a lair, you are staging a full-on cartoon villain show, where every corridor, every trap, and every control panel supports the same tone. And it shines the most in its visuals. The artists and animators absolutely nailed it: the style is sharp, readable, and packed with detail, and the animation is full of life, with little gestures and comedic pauses that sell the humor. It is especially fun to watch…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →So, the base game is okay, really just fine. This is getting a thumbs down because the bean counters milked this game for what cash they thought it could produce and then dropped it. No more support, further DLC, or even mod support. The DLC that is there is crap that wouldn't be worth a look if you didn't get it with the season pass, just run of the mill cash grab bs. The base game is more or less complete except for things like the controls still feeling floaty even five years after launch.…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Failed to Capture the Original After all these years, Evil Genius 2 finally launched, and yet since launch day, I still haven't felt the urge to go back and play it. What makes that even more frustrating is that I constantly find myself going back to the original Evil Genius instead. Evil Genius 2 just feels overdone in a lot of ways. It has more modern features and plenty of changes, but somewhere along the way, I think it lost the identity and charm that made the original so much…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Everything about this game feels a little off. It plays like a mobile game. Even the tutorial was just non-stop do this, then do this, then do this, for hours upon hours. The whole spying/operations loop is just timers on a world map without any real depth. This game just didnt have the charm and depth the original game had. There's no feeling of stakes and investment, just stay busy clicking. You are better off playing any of the Two Point games.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The original Evil Genius had a charm with a mix of Austin Powers and James Bond universe, with the included humour of the first, i didn't take itself seriously making fun of everything and with stereotypes of the region each Justice Agency represented it was just fun, apart of that you had idiots and expendable minions with a mix of smart and dumb henchmen that where powerful. The Evil Geniuses where hilarious and unique. Evil Genius 2 has a generic mobile game style with the "safe disney"…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I got it on sale for $3.99 and played it for nearly 8 hours straight. At this point I feel like I have seen everything there is to be seen. I would not recommend buying it at $40, but the $4 I spent it feels worth it for the amount of entertainment I got out of it.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Evil Genius 2 is based around constructing a lair, training troops, and taking over the world. You have your Genius, your henchmen (elite troops you can micromanage), and minions (AI controlled). Your lair is constantly attacked by the Forces of Justice as they try to kill your minions and blow up your stuff. You build traps, capture people, and do schemes on the world map to progress. The graphics are nice, the animation is fine, and the actual base building is enjoyable. Everything else is a…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Abandoned game, devs went out of their way to make it unmodable \ very hard to do it. Like the first game this game is now lost to time due to that decision. It's a fun game but the end game is totally unbalanced and your not allowed to have enough minions to keep your base running as the durability drain is to high along with the sheer amount of power stations you need, hence why the game needs mods or them to actually patch the game and release new dlc to give us better power stations that…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →So the game is perfectly acceptable, but I REALLY want to get across my main gripe I had when I played it and why I don't think it's going to fill the niche you might be hoping it does. Please keep in mind I have not played this in maybe like, 2 years? Maybe more? But I stopped playing for a very specific reason. Starting out, it's very fun. You have this BIG blank slate of an island, and you start building your dream evil fortress. You setup a skeleton of hallways, fill it with rooms,…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →TL:DR Get the original, act as if this game dosent exist. I lived the original Evil Genius to bits, but waited on getting Evil Genius 2, simply because the reviews and opinions were very much split with the original crowd and new crowd. With the game being on sale for 4€, sure, why not, how bad could it be. I refunded the game in under 10 minutes. It feels like a mobile game from the very start, the personality is bland kids safe, the tutorial voice actor is dead inside, the "funny"…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →If you are getting it during a -90/95% sale, yes definitely worth the price. Otherwise, absolutely not. I am struggling to complete even my first campaign. Not because of difficulty, but because of just how drawn-out it all is. Artificially so, I would say. There is a main campaign you have to do, obviously. And stuff is locked behind progress in that. But apparently if you progress too much, side-stuff gets locked out. So you have to do side-stuff first. Except you can only do one at any…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →how do you release a sequel with worse pathfinding than a game that came out 2 decades ago? if you cant control your minions directly, there needs to be some kind of logic to direct them to stay in hallways instead of walking through multiple doors because "the path has less tiles." Thats seriously your logic for pathfinding, distance ... in a game where you're essentially designing a maze. this game makes me hate video games and developers more than I do at bethesda. At least their excuse…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It was nice at the very start of the game. Pretty visuals and cheeky spy aesthetics. But very quickly the grinding and constant waiting around for resources and timers became a slog. And managing the HEAT on the world map is not a fun mechanic at all. There is no incentive for doing a good job of staving off attacks from enemy factions besides not getting swarmed. And even so, there are points in the game where that becomes impossible. Late game is just the same issues mentioned before but…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →At first the game is fun, you have to build all your facilities and shape out what kind of a lair you want to build. But the mid to late game is very boring, nothing really happens. The World Map missions are repetitive, research is really slow and all the traps that you set up get ignored by the special agents. I have tried a playthrough 4 times now and I just can't bring myself to play this game to the end because it gets so boring. I like the concept of the fake front and a lair in the…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is a classic example of how not to make a game. It's a Minimum Viable Product; a lazy version of "What is the absolute least amount of effort we can expend while still legally being able to charge £40 for it?" The fact that it is still on sale at full price only reinforces this. You can keep your CBE's, they didn't help you make a decent game, Rebellion.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →At first its fun setting and building up your base, but after a while the game becomes the definition of tedium and frustration, so I'm rather proud of myself that I did my first (and most likely only) playthrough of this on Normal difficulty. Its not completely horrible and it has its moments, but if you want a game that makes it fun to play the villain, I'd look somewhere else. This one will be entertaining for a short while, but I can see why less than 20% of the player base were determined…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Beginning has a good pace, but the mid to late game is very boring because you need to wait for every single thing in this game. Missions are boring and extremely repetitive, even the main story. Research is so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ slow. Enemy agents just spawn randomly in your base to mess you up and don't react to your traps. Combat is unbalanced, top minions get two-shot by most enemies. The world map is extremely cluttered and unintuitive. Graphics look cool and polished, with very good performance.…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →got it on a whim and it was fairly decent to spend my weekend, however, i've encountered a game breaking bug that labeled by entire base as invalid placement space when using Build mode. reloading old saves, resetting the game, verifying the files and even a fresh install, nothing fixed the issue. i can see why the community for this game is basically nonexistent despite being a decently recent game. it's a shame, it's actually a pretty fun little base builder when it actually worked.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Not a bad game, just an extremely tedious game, starts off extremely fun at first, but between agent scaling, downright unfair agent vs minion stats(IE any of youre minions maximum Vitality only goes up to 150 with all upgrades and start at 50 vitality per minion and the games idea of making it more "hard" is to just throw more guys at you and to decrease the amount you earn and how much damage you do) But the forces of Justice scale so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ terribly in the late game that like a group of no…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I finished the game and i enjoyed my run on it. I don't think i would replay this. But good enough for a single playthrough.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →There are some things I've pitched for/written samples for that might surprise people. But in terms of published work, it's probably the 7-page comic about a retrofuturistic casino heist I wrote for the official companion for the game Evil Genius 2 (which I also wrote for). Art by Staz Johnson.
neutral · AI labelView post →Devs gave up on the game .got a bug where I cant build or edit anything and in steam community and there official website loads of other reports all the way back from 2022. All say the same :Devs abandoned the game and the bug has never been fixed! (EDIT: they got back to me and quite literally said they dont update or put anything into the game they focus on their other stuff now and im still yet to find a fix to the bug where everything becomes contested after a certain point stopping you…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Never played evil genius 1 so I can't speak for all the people comparing it to the first game, but I thoroughly enjoyed the game. The humor is great, the artstyle is great and the gameplay is... okay. I do wish there the balance was a little better because there are certain casino items, traps or henchmen that are very clearly just way better than any alternatives.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →EG2 feels like they tried to make another mobile game in the franchise before realizing everyone hates mobile games, and then rapidly had to re-tool it to work as a PC game. 99% of the time you are going to be twiddling your thumbs, waiting for something to happen. The annoying VHS fast-forward whine will be stuck in your head permanently as there is almost no reason to play at 1x speed. The missions lack the amusing charm from the first game since now they're all repeatable slop, base design…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Tonight at 8pm EST on Twitch! We are gonna reveal a new PNG! And for the occasion we'll be playing a game that is very appropriate for it, Evil Genius 2!! Join us as I try to keep my cool and take over the world! (Link in Bio) #PNGtuber #ENvtuber #EvilGenius2 #Vtuber
neutral · AI labelView post →I bought this second game after seeing a friend play the first one and getting excited about it. However, it has almost nothing to do with the first game. Traps feel completely useless. To kill the super agents you are forced to progress the main story, and you end up repeating the same “go there, kill this” missions over and over again. Unfortunately, the same repetitive loop also appears in the side missions. In management-style games I usually expect a certain level of realism, and this…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →LIVE NOW! Evil Genius 2! Basically, still sick, and wanted a casual game where I could just chat and hang out with y'all while being chaotic! www.twitch.tv/CamronJK www.twitch.tv/CamronJK Come hang out with my sick self! I know the time is weird, sorry! #furrylive #furry #vtuber
neutral · AI labelView post →It has Denuvo. The mods and community this game could've had if it wasn't locked down for no reason at all. Fun little base builder though.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I can definitely see where this would get mixed reviews. It's great when it's all shiny and new, but when you get into the thick of it, the whole process gets TEDIOUS! Let me try and get a little more detailed on why that is. The most fun I had with the game was when designing a STUPIDLY LONG CORRIDOR of nothing but shark traps, but you don't get sharks until over 20 hours into your "Glorious Campaign". And somewhere 15 or more hours in, I figured out...you don't actually NEED the casino. No…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →not bad but pretty basic and repetitive, $5-10 game at best
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It has a lot less replayability than the last one but it is still pretty solid.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I'm what I assume is half-way through my first playthrough. Initially its a really fun, if obviously watered down version of what Evil Genius was. However, as other reviewers state, it becomes very tedious after a point. You reach a point where you have built your base and you're just waiting for minions to leave on missions or for a research project to complete. It's compounded by the fact you can only pursue one side objective at once and there are over 20+ of them, some of which seem to…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I've not played the first Evil Genius and had no point of reference or expectations before buying this game. Overall, I got my money's worth (on sale) but there is 0 replay value. Late game becomes such a grind that I haven't even finished the game. Early game has some challenges, but after you figure out the strategy, it's just managing priorities. Mid-game is enjoyable: you get to build out your layer, research new machines and decorations, etc. But then late game all the activities are…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Got the Deluxe Edition for $6 (cad) during a steam sale and i put in 40 hours within 3 days and it's real fun and worth the money. There are very few issues I have that can be fixed in a small update, which I doubt would happen since the last update was in 2022. If objects are destroyed you have to manually replace them, there is a toggle to have it auto replace but you'd have to press it (enable it) for every single item. The devs should've made it so that it'll be on by default or even add…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Chose a steam game at random to play, decided on Evil Genius 2 which I really enjoyed but am now kind of done with?
neutral · AI labelView post →Game is typically to buggy to play. Attempted 2 playthroughs now once at release and once years later. Both times hit bugs that broke the play through and realized it so late i lost all progress. honestly its worse than the original
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →unfortunately i cant recommend this game. I would say its very close to being a good game but some of the choices the developers made makes this game really slow and drawn out. i loved the first evil genius game and still play that one. this one feels like it was developed as a free to play game that doesn't have the microtransactions in it so its just a very slow and grindy process to complete objectives.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →An incredibly disappointing game that will never be able to even achieve a modicum of a cult following due to their choice of keeping Denuvo as part of the product even 5 years after all the sales dried up. Thus precluding any possibility of a resurgence via community fixes. All in all, several steps backwards from the original and all potential squandered.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Alright. So I've spent a good amount of time in this game, trying to get all the achievements (as of writing this review, I only have three more to go). After all those hours, I can't really recommend this game to newer players. Just a clarifier: I have not played the first game, so I won't be making any comparisons to it. Gameplay The base builder aspect of the game itself is pretty good, but that's all I can really think of when it comes to enjoyment. 90% of the game is side questing, to…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The Good: great graphics and performance. Research is faster than the first game, The Bad: dumbed down to cater to a younger audience as compared to the first one. In doing so, lost the humor, 50's-90's movie references are just bad now, and gone are the polished mechanics and non-repetitive gameplay of the first. traps barely work and are far less fun to use and link together than the first game. loot is now completely uninteresting. and the silly cutscenes? why? overall, the game performs…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I found this more annoying and tedious than engaging. Maybe it becomes more bearable later on, but my patience ran out after about 90 minutes.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →You're better off just playing the original EG.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →actually pretty fun! some of the voice acting feels like they pulled in random devs and gave them zero voice direction, but generally the vibe is there, the game is decently fun, and the music is great if you have the oceans dlc thing, one major criticism is that the temperature mechanic follows you into all other locations, and having to place air conditioning boxes everywhere is really ugly and annoying. also, the game can be painfully slow to progress since research itself is very slow.…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →thumbs down, denuvo
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Benjamin Netanyahu simulator
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Feels like a soulless mobile game. Go back to first game if you want the real evil genius experience.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →These guys had a money printer and tried to take it apart for the copper wires. They ripped launch content to sell as DLC, they abandoned the game within a year and the game is still ridiculously unbalanced, unpolished, and barely finished. ♥♥♥♥ Rebellion, they had to audacity to gobble up an IP they never cared about - Never purchase this game.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Greatest game ever. I find myself playing this game 'til midnight because I just want one more side quest. It gets a little slow at times but you just gotta know what to do during those.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →this is roughly the same game as the first one but this one is done a lot better imo. its a whole lot less glitchy and they fixed the issue of minions not training and replenishing your ranks. right now i am on medium difficulty and i am actually looking forward to replaying it on hard with a different evil genius (hopefully they have a different voice actor doing the other choices) i only have one real complaint is that though they fixed a lot of issues and made the graphics better they…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A really fun game. It runs well, and has great replayability. A lot of the DLCs are either free or cheap and hence worth the price. There are some bugs in the game, but you generally won't encounter them. Is this a perfect game? No. But its definetly a fun game to come back to once in a while. I enjoy the base building and henchmen. Lots of systems feel mostly smooth, with only a couple things that really annoy me (sending minions on the world map has caused more headaches than I'd like). If…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game is not for everyone. FACT! Also there are negative reviews that have good points on its flaws. I don't care as I have fun with the game. The negative reviews and watching youtube reviews should be considered when buying this game for yourself. I like the game because for me its all about making the perfect lair, the music, combo-traps and colorful environment. And mostly just watching it all. That's not for everyone. The main thing people need to understand is that you will need to…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
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