I'm a huge fan of Fable, Populous and Black & White. I got Black & White 2 the moment it came out, and dove into playing it. Was it worth the long wait?
First, make sure you download the 100mb patch before you start playing. Any save games you make will be incompatible with the patch, and the patch fixes a TON of bugs. It sort of makes you wonder about the QC process, if this was released on the same day as the software was. But in any case, at least they fixed the problems quickly.
The game is classic good-bad choices from Peter Molyneux - the creator of fantastic open ended games where you can choose your own destiny. In B&WII this is very much a combination of Creatures and Age of Empires. You are building up your town - placing buildings to please the villagers, tending farms, mining ore. You are also training your creature to be responsible - watering the gardens, entertaining the villagers. That being said you can instead choose to be an evil overlord - starving your villagers, taking over nearby towns, causing destruction.
The first B&W really went overboard on the creature micro-management. You were more of a creature nanny than a God. Some people might have enjoyed that - and there are certainly enough NintenDogs and NeoPet games out there to soothe those people who want to spent 24 hrs a day raising a pet. I really found it quite tedious to sit there slapping and petting an animal, when I was a god with a civilization to build. I'm thrilled that they have the whole creature thing much more reasonable. It still takes your attention to set the creature on its path, but you don't have to spend hours on it. You're a God after all.
By the same token, if you're looking for a high end killer war - strategy game, this just isn't it. This isn't meant to be like a Command & Conquer or other war engine. War is an aspect of the game, yes, but you are encouraged to bring in people by impressing them just as much as by conquering them.
The graphics are of course stellar. There are tons of villagers, each with his or her own name, personality and job, wandering around the village doing tasks. Each tree and flower can be interacted with individually. The sounds are reasonable, with a nice soundtrack that isn't hard to listen to repeatedly as you go through the game using different creatures and aiming for different alignments.
The shining essence of this game is of course the choices you make. As you make evil creatures, the world gets more and more grim through each level - and your creature begins to look really violent and depraved. If you choose to make good creatures, the world reacts to that quite amazingly, and your creature reflects those choices. Even the ground on which he / she walks reflects that nature.
In the end, you could probably play through the game in 1-2 days, on a single pass. But the fun in the game is to replay it with different creatures and different aims, to see how it affects your world. In this sense it's very much like Fable, a game that was amazingly fun to replay. I found this an extremely well balanced game between the town building, creature taming and god-like powers. Enjoy! Black & White 2
For those that have played the original B&W, and who remember all that frustrating micromanaging, will certainly applaud Lionhead for finally working all that out. For some the new question is "What took you so long?" But for this review the question is "What new problems are there now?"
Newcomers will certainly be awed by the look and feel of this game, and will certainly enjoy watching their creature (I enjoy the cow myself ^^) grow and learn into their ideal beast. Even the old folks can't deny how awesome these creatures look, and are probably just as relieved to see how much more control they have on what their creature will do. But experienced gamers know that good games aren't all "just looks".
In my opinion: I love it. Graphically the game is 98% what I expected. One of my few issues with the graphics is that the people don't have functional facial features (since I don't know what the technical description is, I'm just peeved that nothing on their face actual moves... no talking, blinking... kind of lower standard as to what I was expecting, but allowable). The music is great; if I could I'd put it all on a CD and listen to it all the time. Thankfully, they aren't repeating the same story line (from what I've seen, I'm only 60% through the game) over again from the old one. Of course, you control everything through your hand and have that nifty toolbar to help you out when you need something done. Beats having to go all over the map to find out how many disciples you have how many resources you have stocked, what's going on where... you get the picture. If all these are what made a great game, I'd be tempted to give it 5 out of 5 stars.
Now, here's what you NEED TO KNOW before you commit to buying this game! First off, you will need a shy bit of a high end computer (or a little bit). Certainly might want to think about investing more ram (I'm going to aim for two 512 chips myself) before you get this game. It really sucks when the loading times take forever due to limited ram or slow processor. Speaking of which, you may, depending on what you are willing to spend, want to see about getting a new processor! There can be a heck of a lot going on your screen at once, so never hurts to see if you got the processing power (and then some) to handle it! Of course a good graphics card is most likely a BIG must, but that kind of goes without saying. The space is 3 gigs and a half I think, so just keep that in mind. All that said that's what you should know about the technical stuff. My computer is due for both more ram and probably a new processor, but right now the game runs fine with the exception of the choppy cut scenes (bummer I know, but I blame either the ram or the processor, because the game runs just great when I'm just playing).
Now, a little more about the game. FROM what I see, the creature's size does not grow to be any where near as big as in the original game, cause then I'd think the creature would just hop over the walls and have the run of the town. I suppose they did that so it wouldn't be TOO easy for the creature to destroy the platoons, or the buildings for that matter. After all, gotta give those little people a fighting chance, right? Your alignment, as before is another feature that makes this game so darned purdy. As it changes, the land that's under your influence, or anywhere your hand TOUCHES, is affected and changes accordingly. Example: Evil makes everything look so horribly depressing and ruined, and good is all flowers and bright colors. I'd have to say that that they did a good job rendering all that!
Now your creature is a little different. You can make him good or evil based on his actions, and of course he will change in appearance. However, he will undergo some minor changes at each no land. Example: My ape was 100% evil by the Norse land (second or third), and he really just looked more like a thug. Now I'm on the 5th or 6th area and he's starting to turn black and his hair is falling out in places, as well as his entire look just getting MEANER. Of course your creature will grow in size, and at your discretion get buffer and/or fatter, and so on and so forth, so you do have a LOT of control over his appearance than just if he's a good or bad little monster. Oh, another nifty thing that I just LOVE. As your creature moves around the areas that he walked on (touched?) ALSO changes to reflect his alignment. Now that's a good touch and kudos to the folks who kept an eye on appearance of this game.
Let's talk about your cities now. This is in nature a strategy game, but it is a different kind of strategy than what we're all used to. Even for those who have played the original B&W may find this remodeled system to be intriguing. You have many choices on how you can rule, but to sum them up the game explains them as being either good, bad, or neutral (for the record, neutral just means nothing really changes but your not slave to any decisions.) To be good you are NOT aloud to take over ANY towns (don't mean you can't from time to time.) To be evil you are NOT aloud to do anything that one could define as "NICE" (don't mean you won't if it benefits YOU). Your city will either be a large spread out town full of flowers, which is the general strategy for the good choice. Or it will be buildings atop buildings and people crammed into less than humane living conditions (heck you'll probably kill a few to feed your creature or sacrifice one to cast meteor on an invading platoon outside your walls). My point is that you do have a choice, and you are ALOUD to change your mind. One island you might be focusing completely on being evil, and then you just might have a change of heart at some point and then start aiming to be good. The transition will take a while to change and you won't see the changes right away, but that just depends how long you plan to be playing.
All this is a plus, but what comes next may disappoint a few... The War system. Okay, I say the pretty screen shots while anxiously waiting for it to come out, and I woulda thought without a doubt that your creature was more than just a "siege weapon" for the army. I thought he'd actually give ORDERS or something, ya know, be your GENERAL. Maybe I've not played it far enough, but this was a bit of a disappointment. I STILL don't know what the purpose of him "Inspiring the Troops" or what ever it's called is, but hey it kinda looks nifty! Oh, and when fighting the little platoons, the creature can be really stupid. He could kick into thin air because his foot was a shy bit too high, or he could hop around and NEVER hit one unit that didn't give chase to it, BUT the game does stress upgrading his roles so maybe he just isn't "leveled enough".
Stupid AI in my opinion...
Here's another downer. You don't fight the creature vs. creature fights anymore. He does it all himself based on soldier level, muscle, fatness, fitness, etc. This is cool to watch, and makes sense as to why you don't do it cause you have a bunch of platoons to be looking after, BUT still it would be nice to be able to tell it where to strike and when to block. Ya know, that all would be cool to control, BUT I'm not complaining as long as I always win >:D. For the record, don't think making platoons is a waste of time. Some of the enemy's platoons could kill your creature in seconds without some good back up. So if you designed your creature to be a war machine, support him with archers. That OR make a big platoon of footmen and use them as your main front instead.
The last thing, and my least favorite thing, is how the tribute system works. You know those big epic miracles that game was boasting? Ya know the volcanoes, or the siren? Will, you need to buy the buildings that make that using "tribute", Which is god money really, WHICH is only earned when you've hit some sort of mile stone or completed one of your objectives (like quests). Now, that's all fine and dandy, but while saving up that 400k for the first epic (the siren) you are passing up new buildings you can build, miracles you could use, and upgrades for your creature and town. But now I've gotten to the point where you get a LOT of tribute for doing things, but the problem is that it takes forEVER to get enough. Oh, and if you wanna make volcanoes, you need to buy the 1mil building (which are called wonders for the record) to be able to do that. Hey, if the game had any real fault, I'd say that would be it.
All right. The last points that I have to make. I said you would get the most out of the game TRIBUTE CONCERNED by going neutral because you'll be able to complete both the town and the army missions without being biased to any alignment. What you are missing is mostly appearance and style, and you then are simply playing the game to get through it. However, that's only if you are just doing ANYTHING without care of what alignment you are. You can do all the alignments with style, you just gotta find out what works best for you. Another point is that the tutorials are good enough to help you along, so make sure you pay your consciences good attention (no matter how gross that evil one is, sometimes he has got a point). Some glitches are mostly concerned with the creature, though I blame laggy ram for that.
If you haven't preordered it yet or what not, or put any money on it at all, get your facts straight cause you don't want to go through a total computer makeover to just run a game that you're gonna wanna take back tomorrow. That said, this game I wanna give 4.5 stars for, but because I've not completed it yet it's getting 4 stars to be on the safe side. I'm glad I got my copy of it, and wouldn't trade it for the world. Lets just hope that any "expansion packs" they add to this game can fix a few problems and present some new options. - Video Games - Black And White - God Game - Fantasy'
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