FGC #724 Overlord – Escape from Nazarick

To begin, here is my Overlord timeline:

• In 20…uh… 2015? 2016 or so? Somewhere in there, I first watched the anime Overlord. I found it fun but not terribly compelling.
• In late 2021, Overlord: Escape from Nazarick, a Nintendo Switch game, was released. I purchased it somewhere within about a year, as it is a metroidvania, and I will purchase nigh-any metroidvania. There was likely a sale.
• But I realized at that point that I had nearly forgotten what happened in Overlord. I should rewatch that! And then play the game!
• In late 2024, the movie Overlord: The Sacred Kingdom was released in theatres. It came to streaming shortly thereafter (or maybe immediately? I wasn’t paying attention). Foolishly believing this meant the anime had reached some point where a movie might be a touchstone, I vowed to rewatch Overlord in the near future.
• In the Fall of 2025, I finally shotgunned four seasons of Overlord, watched the movie, and played the videogame that had been sitting on my Nintendo Switch (now Nintendo Switch 2) for four years.

And this article is the culmination of my Overlord overload.

Please enjoy the following thesis: I am mad at anime.

Or maybe “disappointed” is the right word? I know I am disappointed at the concept of Overlord. See, what we have here is yet another isekai/virtual reality MMORPG situation, vaguely similar to Sword Art Online or any other anime where a dude (it’s always a dude) must now live in a world that had previously only been virtual. But! There’s a significant twist this time! … And, yes, there is always a twist, but this twist is actually interesting. Satoru Suzuki is a Japanese salaryman who, for the crime of trying to play an MMORPG one minute after its expiration date, wakes up in the body of his MMORPG character. And his create-a-character was no hero! He roleplayed as a Lich that ruled over a castle/crypt that served as a challenging dungeon for other players. So now Momonga the Lich (soon to also be known as Ainz Ooal Gown) (and we’re just going to refer to him as “Overlord” going forward, because keeping track of his names is folly) is the big bad of a haunted castle, and he has boss monsters to keep him company.

And that’s where things get interesting… Or… at least things could get interesting.

Overlord tries something different from what is typically seen in the VRMMORPG genre: the main character has friends. The usual hero of a VRMMORPG story (or an isekai, for that matter) is a loner that finds new, marketable friends in their virtual world. At best, sometimes someone will mention a sibling they miss, or maybe one (1) friend back in “the real world” (and said one friend will then be revealed to be the secret identity of the dude in the helmet right around episode 11). And this is the opposite of my few interactions with MMORPGs and similar games. I play games to socialize. I keep playing particular games well after their expiration date because I want to play with my friends. I lose interest in a game faster if I don’t have friends. I still play Pokémon Go to this day because of the socializing (that, and the OCD). I do not understand someone that plays a MMORPG so they can be the highest level and beat the game (that is unbeatable). I do not understand that person just as much as I do not understand someone obsessed with fantasy football (are there crystals? Do the various footballers have different job classes?). But a dude who plays a MMORPG, gets transported to that magical world (sorta, more on that soon enough), and misses the friends he used to play with? That is something I understand. I understand still playing a game, and having fond memories of the crew you used to play with. And, more than that, I understand how his gang works.

As previously stated, our favorite lich is the overlord of an evil dungeon-castle. And, as such, each of the floors of that dungeon has its own unique boss monster, each created by a different (real) person. And it shows! So our “Floor Guardians” are…

• An insecure and sociopathic goth lolita vampire
• A noble, multiarmed swordsman. Swordsbug? He is, like, a giant roach
• A pair of crossdressing, magical elf twin children
• A devil in a business suit that is basically Waylon Smithers with demonic powers
• A floating fetus. That… is all that’s going on there. They seem nice.
• A virgin succubus with a sadistic streak
• And honorary Floor Guardian Sebas Tian, who is just the werewolf butler from BlazBlue, and commands an army of battle maids

To be absolutely clear: this is great. If you told seven people to create seven different boss monsters, there would not be parity in those designs. You would get exactly what you have here: a few thinly veiled fetishes, a couple of dual-wielding power colossi, and a few examples of the unfettered creativity of producing something called “Chaos Knuckles”. And that’s great! The creator of Overlord is not claiming that he invented gothic lolita vampires, he is saying “this is exactly what some nerd playing an MMORPG would create as an OC.” And that statement is proven by the science of just looking at some of the dorks on these servers. I stopped playing Final Fantasy 14 because I was not enough of a nerd for that scene. And I think rainbow suspenders are a pretty cool way to keep your pants up!

The entirety of Overlord could be spent exploring this unique premise. You have one “real guy” palling around with the seven or so creations of his friends. We could spend hours exploring the absent friends and their personalities through their creations, and gradually learn not only more information about these people, but why the titular Overlord was friends with them in the first place. Throw some twists in there! These “NPCs” were all lines on a character sheet before the start of the story, so maybe their transition to sentience added some unexpected quirks. So many story opportunities! All without having to introduce another named character! Thanks to just a handful of Sailor Moon episodes, I can tell you details right down to Ami Mizuno’s favorite color (it is blue… which, in thinking about it, is pretty obvious). Give me a story where I learn just as much about the creator of the chaste sex monster.

But it was not to be. The other hook of Overlord is that our shanghaied protagonist has not been trapped in the familiar MMORPG world where he built his own character and various groupies; no, Overlord and his estate have been transported to a new, unfamiliar universe. Basically, what if Dracula’s Castle missed Transylvania, and landed in Pennsylvania. And, like if Dracula were to descend upon the denizens of Lancaster, PA, our anti-hero and his entourage are dramatically more powerful than anything they ever encounter over the course of four seasons. An entire war gets going somewhere in there! And the human army is obliterated with the magical equivalent of an atom bomb! It is not very fair! Particularly in light of having spent episodes and episodes explaining the histories of every fighter and country involved. It all gets blown up in an instant! There is a decisive duel that, thanks to time magic, is literally over in an instant! What is the goddamned point!?

This is the greatest problem with Overlord: they have a wonderful concept right out of the gate, but it is at odds with introducing this whole new world and all its inhabitants. The audience is stuck with entire arcs showcasing characters that live, love, and survive for the express purpose of being crushed by the protagonist. And, while there is the justification that this is a situation where audience and protagonist can learn about this world and its people together… Well, that logic does not necessarily lead to stimulating viewing. At the start of season 2, we get “Overlord is a big scary monster to the average person” from a 17,000 episode arc about the lizard man tribe. As much as I love a good Lizard Man, that whole bit was boring and trite, so we certainly did not need reinforcement that our ostensible protagonists are the baddest of asses from then on. But then we get another two seasons of the exact same nonsense! And nobody ever gets around to explaining the flying fetus! The ball is well and thoroughly dropped.

So after having absorbed four seasons of Overlord, I moved on to today’s game, Overlord: Escape from Nazarick. My preliminary belief was that there was significant potential here. The Overlord story’s greatest failure is focusing on everything happening outside the Overlord’s stronghold, The Great Tomb of Nazarick, so a story that is constrained to that location would be an improvement by default. And it is a metroidvania! If this were somehow a tactics or RPG title, there would be an excuse to explore all sorts of extraneous characters. But metroidvanias are solitary affairs: it is “you” against a castle/planet, and your supporting cast is traditionally limited to one or two dudes selling library cards. So, assuming this game cares about the license, and is not simply a skin for someone’s random indie-vania creation, there is a lot of possibility! We might not get a complete backstory for the vampire lolita, but at least we will get more information than “she’s a vampire lolita, she’s strong”.

Right out of the gate, it is clear that Overlord: Escape from Nazarick expects the audience to have experienced the source material. The game starts with a flashback to a season 1 episode of Overlord that would be incomprehensible to a neophyte. Basically, we have this game’s playable character, Clementine, fighting a dark warrior. She loses, and then the dark warrior reveals himself to be a skeleton wizard before Clementine is killed. This is exactly what happens in the series, but lacking the context that Clementine is a murderous assassin who goes as far as wearing trophies from her kills as armor, and the Dark Warrior is Overlord in disguise attempting to garner public support as a hero of the people. Is this context ever reintroduced over the course of the game? Nope! Overlord’s dark warrior form is never even seen or mentioned again! Whatever! Let’s properly start the game: “you” are now in control of Clementine, who has not actually been killed, but stowed in Overlord’s castle for an indeterminate amount of time to heal. She is now escaping. Try not to think too hard about how your heroine is a serial killer, and proceed to guide Clementine to freedom from homicidal skeleton wizards.

Clementine might slit your mother’s throat for a nickel, but she is well-suited to be a metroidvania protagonist. She is basically a ninja, so she can wield weapons with a little more range than Link, she has acrobatic prowess that would put Samus to shame, and she even gets a morning star with a few extra abilities that Simon could never imagine. She has a grappling hook-whip! That is always fun! There is mana to collect, and you can make the gaming choices of spending that on weapon improvements or teleport options (or just be a pacificist, and never collect any mana at all). And Clementine’s canon appearance established that she can enchant her weapons with various magics, so there is an elemental-switching system not unlike Record of Lodoss War Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth: toggle to fire, ice, or lightning elements to not only have different attack effects, but also absorb color-coded traps and magic blasts. There is a really nice “kit” here! And, from a gameplay perspective, this is an adequate metroidvania. It is not setting the world on fire, but there are challenging sections, appropriately spaced enemy barrages, and more than a handful of secrets and hidden areas that encourage exploration. There are some sections that feel like they were designed as strictly linear “levels”, but they are not persistent enough to suggest that this was stitched into a metroidvania at the last moment. Oh! And the Overlord series did establish that Nazarick contains impossible architecture (some jackass enchanted an entire floor of the place to appear perfectly like a starry night sky), so there are excuses for ice worlds and volcano sections. Space station biome rules, baby! Enjoy a scenic jungle inside this crypt.

In examining the plot, we all know this is going to turn out to be a non-canon, “anime movie” style adventure. Clementine is canon-dead in the main series, and there is no universe where she is going to fight and defeat the main character of the real series. Clementine must escape Overlord’s clutches, and that guy has a perfect win record. She ain’t gonna do well just because someone is steering her around with a controller. But there is potential! It is clear from the opening moments that Clementine is being tested by Overlord, and the bosses deliberately escalate in difficulty in a way that could be described as “all according to plan”. The first few mandatory battles are against the low-ranking battle maids of Nazarick, and then the fights heighten to half of those previously mentioned “floor guardians” (for the record, we get an even three maids and three guardians). And, of course, the final boss is the Overlord himself. Will it be revealed that this incarnation of Ainz Ooal Gown is only a shadow, and “you” did not defeat the real Overlord? Of course! But the general shape of this adventure does not have to waste this chance to add something interesting to the canon. We can at least say that if some adept ninja lady were fighting Cocytus the Bug Man, this is how it would go down.

And your reward for beating the game is learning that this is so deeply not canon, the characters have to take time out from their days to shout at the fourth wall, “This was all fake! Thanks for playing!”

Here is the ending for Overlord: Escape from Nazarick: Clementine escapes from Nazarick. Woo! But upon reaching the exit, she is confronted by Overlord and all his minions. But didn’t she already defeat them? No! Those were all fakes. Now, at this point, there can be two different endings. If you did not 100% the game, Overlord reveals that this was all a test, Clementine more or less got an incomplete, and now her memories will be erased, and she has to try again. Cute! This is an excellent excuse to play the game again, and try for a better score. However, if you steer Clementine effectively, and help her find all the literal puzzle pieces across the game (like this is friggen’ Banjo and Kazooie), then Clementine earns her freedom, and actually escapes. And is it then revealed that she has earned the admiration of Overlord and his subordinates? Nope! Overlord goes out of his way to note that the castle was a fake, his minions’ attacks were deliberately modified to be unfamiliar, and the whole scenario was created so that even if someone did escape from the (counterfeit) tomb, they would report false information for anyone else that might try to raid the place. You see? Not only was Overlord too powerful for you, player, but he also outwitted your foolish belief that anything that happened in this game might be legitimate. Fooled you, idiots, Overlord is the best.

So, in a franchise that could stand to spend a little extra time with its core cast and setting, an opportunity for such is wasted in the name of maintaining canon and flattering the title character.

I got fooled. Like an idiot.

Ugh, let’s squeeze a moral out of this morass. I watched Overlord once, figured it wasn’t my bag, and then only revisited it because there was more of it. Should I have devoted my time to that “more”? Absolutely not. Was playing Overlord: Escape from Nazarick similarly a waste of my time? It was not bad, but it certainly exploited the license’s familiarity to separate itself from the flood of available metroidvanias. You play Overlord: Escape from Nazarick to see more of the Overlord world, and not because it is something that could legitimately compete with any metroidvanias with a better hook or gameplay. It was not a waste of time, but it was time I could be spending with something/one quantifiably better.

So what is the final lesson? Go with your gut. If you think something might be a waste of time, trust that impulse. We only have so many hours on this planet, and those hours could be spent with the 575 hours of One Piece currently available. You are welcome to get mad at anime, but at least learn from your mistakes.

Now it’s time to watch some Attack on Titan so I can play its attendant games. I think this one has a grappling hook, too!

FGC #724 Overlord – Escape from Nazarick

• System: Nintendo Switch and Steam/PC. This is the kind of licensed game I would expect to be on literally every available system, but focusing on the big two makes a certain kind of sense.
• Number of players: You are alone as an auxiliary character that did not survive season 1.
• Pay Attention: O:EFN makes absolutely zero sense if you are not familiar with the source anime, but it is designed like this may be your first metroidvania. Clementine talks to herself constantly, and her entire inner monologue appears to be “did a door just open somewhere?” or “this wall should work with my new wall climb ability”. I mean, these are thoughts I would have if I was trapped in a dungeon filled with the undead and was desperate to dwell on anything but my own mortality, but I don’t think anyone would want to hear said thoughts.
• Collect ‘em All: The jiggies hidden throughout the castle unlock single anime frames like it is 1992 and cartoons were just invented.
• Gotta go Fast: A timer of your total play time is onscreen constantly. Complete with that rogue-like ending, it really does seem like this game was designed to be played multiple times. Which, buddy, I do not need to waste more hours of my life just to optimize my lizard-slaying.
• Say something nice: The morning star climbing and swinging feels really good. It is always fun to attempt to swing off of a corner, angle a swipe just right, and then make your way “up” a wall thanks to deft morning starring. It’s fun! It’s a fun mechanic! Unfortunately, it is like 5% of an otherwise rote experience.
• Favorite Boss: Hamsuke, the giant hamster-chimera, is an opponent. The battle with Hamsuke is maybe the only place that this game acknowledges its franchise’s innate ridiculousness, and thus any time spent with a gerbil god should be cherished.
• An End: The final section is a boss rush (fight all the bosses again) and an area rush (where you traipse through a few mini versions of levels from earlier in the game). It is pleasant to be reminded of how much Clementine advances over the course of the adventure, and how some of the earlier bosses/areas were only difficult because you had so few options. On the other hand, this game is not all that long to begin with, so wading into “remember this thing from a couple of hours back” feels like busywork.
• Did you know? As a skeleton lich, Overlord Ainz Ooal Gown does not have… er-hem… any fleshy equipment to speak of. This makes the isekai/VRMMORPG trope of every woman wanting to jump his bones at all times more pointless than usual.
• Would I play again: I’m done with this franchise. Done. You hear me!? Done!

What’s next? ROB is taking a break, and Bongo has chosen A Short Hike. We will talk about that choice and game next week. Please look forward to it!

Oh, and this part is the absolute worst