Black & White 2

"Not a bad follow up but a bit of a step down"

Black and White 2 is the follow up to the fantastic and highly acclaimed Black and White.
For those of you who are not familiar with the concept of the game you play a god to a civilization. They worship you and your actions shape the way the game plays as you continue through. You actions can be good or evil and it provides a unique gaming experience.

This game is stunning in both the audio and visual departments. The immense depth and lighting tones produce of the most realistic environments I have seen in a game for a good while. The creatures are the best examples of what the graphics can do for your experience. The Audio is also fantastic this time around as well. The war cry sounds and the music are just a couple of examples of what Lionhead have done to create a better atmosphere and the voice acting is particularly excellent especially with you good and evil guides.

Black and White was a fantastic game although there was a good share of faults. The release of Black and White 2 had fans hoping that the faults would be fixed and the added features to the game would produce something fantastic for the fans of the original to play.

However this is not the case. Although it initially appears to play differently as soon as you play further into the game the game play has shades of the more tedious and repetitive areas of its predecessor.

One of the most significant elements of this game is the Creature. This time it is relatively simpler to manage by selecting what you intend that creature to do and you find that it will do a lot more of the tasks you assign it even though the number is still really low. One of the things that made the first game quite difficult was that in most cases your creature would tend to do the opposite of your morals and this appears to be the case in this game as well however it is easily fixable.

The newest and most considerable addition to this game is that of the RTS side. I am not an expert in this area and I found this most difficult to get my head around and use its potential.

One of the most popular features of the first game and my personal favorite was the miracles. This took a serious hit this time around. There has been a large reduction in the number of them as well as the variety of them. Also the acquisition of the miracles removes some of the novelties and as they have to be acquired in this way it does make things a bit harder. As a consolation we are given the Epic Miracles but their use is so sparing and limited it isn't as big of a feature as it appears to be

My final opinion is simply try it out. It may be for you it may not. This game wasn't for me which I was really disapointed about but could have been a result of high expectations. If you do get this hope you enjoy it.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 11/01/05