INTRO:
The first Black & White was hardly a successor to Peter Molyneux's once-ground-breaking Populous, but it broke ground anyway with the feature of Creatures, which happen to be uncannily quirky and endearing. Lionhead Studios revisited the designs of the first game for its sequel, making the sequel better at being a strategy game than its predecessor.
However, Lionhead has also reduced the sophistication of the Creatures. Worst of all, it has very questionable designs for what Lionhead considers as warfare in the world of Black & White.
PREMISE:
Some time after the conclusion of the first Black & White, belief in gods among mortal had faded away. Progress has gained for them greater knowledge and wisdom to build more sophistication civilizations. However, mortals being mortals in the universe of Black & White, some of them are in need again of a being with powers beyond mortals. Thus, the player character, a new god, was created, making its way to the world.
The premise is not really that much different from the previous game, except that the player character is the only deity around, oddly enough.
USER INTERFACE & CONTROLS:
As in the previous game, the player's cursor is represented as a three-dimensional disembodied hand that floats across the lands. The mechanisms of picking things up with the hand, scrolling across the world by literally dragging it with the hand and such other clever disguises for controls that are otherwise common to the strategy game genre return almost unchanged.
Also, the player can still drop objects with a gentle tap of the mouse, or flick it to throw the object, perhaps with devastating force. This was a great appeal in the previous game, so it is pleasing to know that Lionhead has preserved this in the sequel.
Moreover, the player can now pick up mortals like he/she can piles of loose resources. The player can now sweep the hand over many mortals, picking up more than just one mortal and holding them all in the hand.
The most apparent improvement to be had for the controls is the introduction of a user interface with tabs, lists and icons; this is fittingly called the "Toolbar". Although this goes against Peter Molyneux's vision for the first Black & White, this is sorely needed for the sake of user-friendliness.
However, interestingly enough, the cumbersome controls in the first game, such as clicking on objects in the game world and flicking the mouse around to create signs, have been retained. This may please players who prefer to use the unorthodox and often motion-dependent controls that were introduced in the previous game.
The first few levels are tutorials that teach the player about the controls for the game, but if the player finds some of the lessons too difficult to follow, he/she can skip them entirely by clicking on the scroll icons for more pressing quests. Unfortunately, there is no longer any special tutorial level that the player can return to for more lessons, as there was in the previous game.
A player that has played the previous game may also notice that the Temple is absent in the sequel. As a reminder, the Temple once doubled as the main menu and the focal point of the player's power.
In the sequel, the main menu is called up via pop-up screens and windows, not unlike what is done for many other games; this is a convenient change. As for the function of collecting energy for miracles, there is a reduced version of the Temple, which will be described later.
There are some new actions that the hand icon can perform, such as rubbing objects until they heat up and catch fire or shatter. Unfortunately, these are only there for the novelty, as most of them have very little practical uses. At most, the player can rub rocks until they grow red-hot from all that vibrating, and then use them as tinder.
A more useful tool is a view toggle that allows him/her to know where there are fertile lands. A simple holding of a key on the keyboard conveniently highlights the fertile lands in the player's view with a green tint.
ROADS:
The most exciting improvement that the sequel has over its predecessor is the feature to build elaborate cities that far surpass the villages in the previous game in terms of sophistication.
Perhaps the things that the player will be building the most are roads. Roads are immediately laid down where the player designates them; there is no need for villagers to "build" them. Roads allow mortals to travel faster than they would across unmarked terrain.
However, these are not exactly roads of paved stone; instead, they are simple dirt roads. This may not impress players that have played more advanced city-building games.
The dirt roads do have some aesthetic nuances though. At first, the dirt roads appear only as simple streaks across the land. As time goes by, the roads wear down, leaving convincing depression-like decals along the ground.
Regardless, the player will be laying down a lot of roads, as part of settlement-planning. Wise players are more than likely to surround storehouses with roads, to make the transfer of materials easier, for example. Moreover, connecting roads to buildings provides a small increment to the total Impressiveness of a settlement per building; the system of Impressiveness will be described later.
Unfortunately, the roads also betray holes in the pathfinding scripts for mortals. For some reason, they may opt to take a path that is not over any road, usually when they are of shorter walking distance. This may seem logical, but they may take longer to get to their destination due to the rougher terrain.
Lionhead appears to be aware of this issue though; it has implemented a handy visual indicator to inform the player of the preferred paths of the mortals. This is a narrow dirt trail that can be quite easy to spot if the player is taking a visual survey of his/her settlement. This is a cue for the player to either lay down roads along the dirt trail, or if the player just wants to divert traffic away, plonk something down on the dirt trail.
HOUSING:
As in the previous game, the mortals require housing so that they can sleep during the night, or they otherwise have shorter lives than others.
As mortals who believe in the player's godly player character contribute to his/her cause as long as they are hale and hearty, it is in the player's interest to build housing, regardless of his/her opinion of the (fictional) mortals. This design has been in the previous game, but in the sequel, housing contributes to the system of Impressiveness, which will be elaborated more on later.
The fancier a housing option is, the less efficient it is at utilizing space to house people. Yet, the fanciness of a housing building directly affects the happiness of its occupants.
The proximity of each housing building to the others is also a factor to consider: generally, houses that are too close to each other have penalties to their happiness ratings. This effect is handily shown via visual indicators that display over the buildings that would be affected when the player is deciding where to build new housing structures.
The player can increase the happiness rating of a housing building by building it near luxurious buildings, such as the Temple of Baths. Conversely, the player may want to keep dirty buildings like Armouries and Smelters away from housing buildings.
With the aforementioned considerations in mind, the player ostensibly has to balance between having fancy housing options and the more squalor-prone ones in order to have a city with limited space to expand and become more impressive, yet remains capable of sheltering its inhabitants and keeping them happy with the roofs over their heads.
That is, assuming that the player decides to go on the beneficent route. Theoretically, all the player needs from his/her settlements are living and reasonably healthy believers; their happiness is not important to a callous god. If the player wants to make sure that they are always working whenever they can and not when they want to, the player can plonk down nasty structures like Sacrificial Pits and doodads such as heads on pikes near the homes of his/her believers.
These features of affecting happiness and productivity of believers via building things in proximity with their homes are incidentally nothing new to the strategy genre; they have been in the city-building subgenre for a long time. That Black & White 2 implements them may somewhat detract from its core gameplay of being a divine entity, but they do somewhat help reduce the need for micro-management of settlements.
RUNNING SETTLEMENTS & MORE BUILDINGS:
In the previous game, settlements can be left to their own devices after the player has placed down the necessary amenities to maintain a stable population that would not consume too many resources; the player would have to ignore more calls for housing and higher population though.
The player can also create self-sustaining settlements in the sequel, though the player would have to spend more time to develop a settlement as there are more facilities to be built the second time around.
There are the fundamental buildings, namely housing and the storehouse, that are required for a basically sufficient settlement. However, to develop the settlement so that it can autonomously support the player's cause, more advanced buildings need to be created. These advanced buildings are by default locked and have to be unlocked using tribute.
Advanced buildings make the resource-gathering activities of the settlements much more efficient, such as Smelters which extract more ore from minerals that have been mined. Pleasantly enough, all the player needs to do to have an autonomous economy is to assign mortals as Disciples, and they will somewhat do the rest, e.g. hauling ore from mines over to the smelters, and then to the storehouse. If there is a need to supervise, it is the ratio of Disciples that is needed for optimal performance.
This means that the player can spend more time on doing other things, such as pursuing quests, developing settlements or waging war, conveniently enough. On the other hand, it also means that the game does a lot more computing than its predecessor, which may explain the higher computing requirements for the sequel.
There are also small buildings that serve to improve a settlement in small ways; these are known as Embellishments, interestingly enough. For example, placing Fertility Statues near houses not only grant Impressiveness from the statues alone, but they also encourage mortals who live near them to have more children.
Wonders also return in Black & White 2. However, unlike the Wonders in the previous game, which boosted the power of certain miracles, the ones in the sequel have more interesting effects, such as the Siren Wonder that can bewitch any enemy platoons that come near it and force them to lay down their arm, and the Hurricane Wonder that can unleash a powerful but unpredictable storm on enemies. The player is likely to build Wonders mainly for their individual area of influence though; the system of areas of influence will be described later.
Inevitably, the player may want to expand a settlement so that it can support a greater population; this may require the duplication of housing structures. To aid the player in doing this, there is a handy tool that allows the player to drag "copies" of houses from existing houses and use these to plonk down the foundations for other would-be houses. The same action can be performed on existing roads to create new stretches of roads, of which the player will be doing a lot, so this convenience is likely to be much appreciated.
A NOTE ON SKYSCRAPERS:
It has to be said here that once the player has obtained the housing option known as the "Skyscraper", which allows vertical stacking of housing, some of the aforementioned considerations on housing can be tossed out the window. It also reveals some design limitations, which may have been deliberate for the sake of convenience.
The "Skyscraper" (or what is Black & White's facsimile of it) lets the player build towards the skies, with apparently next to no limit to the height to the building. Although each floor of this housing building adds only a bit of impressiveness and only a small increase in housing capacity, the ground floor takes up very little horizontal space.
Moreover, any new floor for this building does not need to be built on-site; builders only need to be at ground level to apply the construction materials to it, like how they build any other building. Furthermore, the occupants exit and enter the building at the same rate, regardless of how high the Skyscraper gets. These can be unbelievable conveniences.
Stacking Skyscrapers higher and higher increase the penalty to happiness to nearby housing buildings. However, considering how little horizontal space that Skyscrapers take (which frees up space for more happiness-increasing buildings) and that any happiness-increasing structures that are nearby affect all floors regardless of how high they get, this can seem manageable to meticulous players.
On the other hand, very high Skyscrapers are very vulnerable to attack, especially rocks that have been hurled by Creatures and catapults. A crashing Skyscraper can cause horrendous casualties, so the player may not want to build too many of these lest he/she suffers this disaster. (However, the player can build walls around Skyscrapers to somewhat protect them.)
AREAS OF INFLUENCE - IMPRESSIVENESS:
The system of area of influence returns, functionally remaining the same. The area of influence governs where the player's hand icon can interact with the map or cast miracles in, as well as place down the foundations for structures.
What has changed though is how this area of influence can be extended. The town centers of settlements are still the epicentres of the areas of influence, but the factors that determine the sizes of the areas have changed.
Belief is no longer the main statistic, so the player no longer needs plenty of villagers to expand his/her domain. This was a slow process in the previous game, if the player did not want to deal with the consequences of accelerating it by having many Breeders.
Instead, in the sequel, the Impressiveness of the player's settlements, as well as the individual Impressiveness of individual buildings, is now the main statistic. To elaborate, having an efficiently-planned settlement gives optimal Impressiveness to the settlement, which in turn provides an optimal area of influence.
The Impressiveness ratings of buildings can be independent of their happiness ratings. To cite some examples, villas are impressive housing buildings that make its occupants happy, but the foreboding Sacrificial Pit also has a high Impressiveness rating.
The Impressiveness ratings of structures are also affected by their topographical location. Before elaborating on this, it has to be mentioned here first that for the sake of this factor, every map has locations with special properties that grant bonus Impressiveness to buildings that are built on them, or subtract them away via penalties.
For example, there are locations that are considered as good ground, such as plateaus. Each building that is built on these has an Impressiveness bonus. Another example is a valley, which imparts penalties to the Impressiveness of buildings that are in it. In other words, the player may want to squeeze as much Impressiveness as possible from places with bonuses to Impressiveness by building many buildings on them, while avoiding locations with penalties to Impressiveness.
There is no in-game documentation on which places offer bonuses or inflict penalties, though the player will learn these via the visual indicators that come up when the player surveys where to place buildings.
This feature is nothing new, though very rare outside of the city-building genre and may be appreciated by players who are looking for something different in the sequel.
Redundant buildings in a settlement reduce the impressiveness of subsequent buildings of the same type that would be built later. This does not appear to affect their individual areas of influence, however; this will be described later.
The impressiveness of a settlement affects the area of influence that it offers to the player, as will be explained shortly. However, having an impressive settlement also offers another benefit: the opportunity to entice entire populations of other settlements that are not already under the player's control to migrate to the player's domain. This will be elaborated further later in a more appropriate section.
AREAS OF INFLUENCE – SIZE & REACH:
In Black & White 2, a settlement's area of influence appears to be exponentially proportional to its Impressiveness, though the game does not appear to give the exact equations that are used to calculate this. This means that given enough space, a player can focus on developing a single settlement such that its area of influence encompasses almost the whole map.
However, for most maps, the player is likely to run of space to build in the immediate area around the settlement, eventually limiting its Impressiveness. Therefore, this may require the takeover of other towns – usually by force – if the player wants to expand his/her area of influence further.
This is where a problem with the game's notion on taking over the map by force or compassion becomes apparent. Sometimes, a settlement under the player's control can no longer grow; yet, its area of influence is not big enough for the player to affect the nearest settlement that is not under the player's control.
This will require the player to send armies over to conquer that other settlement, but without the divine support of the player's godly hand, his/her armies may be defeated if they go up against mortal but otherwise significant opposition that is just too strong for them to handle. Sending the Creature may help, but the player is at the mercy of any decisions that it may make to achieve the player's orders.
The developer has not overlooked this issue though. There is a nuance in the system of areas of influence, which gives an individual aura to each building. The extent of its aura is dependent on its individual impressiveness. If its aura is already completely within the area of influence of the settlement that it belongs to, the aura is completely subsumed.
However, if the building is placed at the edge of the area of influence of a settlement, the aura appears as a protrusion from the main area. This means that the player can place a particularly grand building (which are usually the huge ones, such as Wonders) on any edge of the area of influence of the settlement that it belongs to, thus having it exude a tremendous aura that is big enough to place other buildings in, provided there is actually enough physical space to build it.
This way, the player can have the area of influence of a settlement "sprout" out, if only to reach something that was just outside the main area of influence. This work-around can seem cheesy though.
It has to be noted here that after winning one of the levels in the story campaign, the system of areas of influence is disabled and the player enters a mode where his/her hand can go anywhere and manipulate anything, as if the entire map has been placed under the player's influence. This is handy if the player has some secondary quests or mini-games that have yet to be completed.
WALLS:
Unlike the previous game, the player can build walls in the sequel to keep enemies out, especially opposing armies. Walls, however, require many resources to build and which could have gone into other things, so the player will have to choose where to place the stretches of walls wisely. (There will be more on resources later.)
A certain design oversight allows the player to start building walls within his/her area of influence and then "pull" the foundations out of the area of influence. This is a convenient oversight though, as this allows the player to set up defences along more convenient locations. Of course, the player will have to depend on his/her Creature or mortal believers to build these walls.
Of course, walls keep things in as much as they keep things out, so the player may want to build gatehouses into them to allow passage through the walls. However, these gatehouses weaken the segments of the walls that they occupy.
The tops of walls can be garrisoned by soldiers, preferably archers, so that they can attack any threat that comes too close. However, garrisoning soldiers consume more food than those that are staying at ground level. Moreover, if any attacks hit the walls that they are on, they are more than likely to get knocked off and die from the fall.
RESOURCES:
Food and wood return, and are still obtained from the usual sources, e.g. grain from fields and wood from trees. A new resource has been introduced into the Black & White franchise though, which is ore. Ore is obtained from peculiarly coloured rocks, as well as mines. Of the three, Ore is the most finite, unless the player has access to a mine that has been categorized as "bottomless", though there are scant few of such luxuries in the game.
Basic buildings require only wood to build, though more advanced ones require ore. Ore is also required for the raising of armies.
As in the previous game, the player can collect resources with his/her godly hand and deposit them into storehouses or apply them to buildings, though contact with the divine causes some resources to be lost. If the player wants resource-gathering to be more efficient, the player will have to let the mortals do it themselves, preferably with processing buildings such as the Smelter and Granary to assist in the refining of the resources.
TRIBUTE:
Tribute from mortals is the only currency that is worth anything to a god. Dramatics aside, this is the currency that the player uses to unlock new structures to build, improvements for the player's Creature and new Miracles.
Tribute is earned when the player conquers another settlement for the first time, or when their inhabitants decide to migrate over and the player accepts their migration and gifts. Tribute is also earned from completing quests, both primary and secondary.
Tribute is also earned from completing objectives that are handed to the player right at the start of a level. However, some of these objectives contradict or otherwise oppose each other, thus requiring the player to give up one to achieve the other; these kinds of objectives appear more frequently in the later levels. In other words, it is unlikely that the player will be able to achieve all objectives, though the player only needs to achieve the more critical ones, namely winning the level, to advance.
The need to earn tribute is the impetus for the player to go through the story mode of Black & White 2. The player is unlikely to garner enough tribute to unlock everything the first time, however, so the player may want to save the tribute that is needed to unlock the options that suit his/her playstyle.
However, the player would get to keep whatever that has been unlocked in this game's take on the "New Game Plus" feature; there is no story-telling contradiction that would arise from this, fortunately.
Migrants approach the settlements with the greatest impressiveness. Therefore, if the player wishes to win via city-building, the player has to concentrate on one settlement, assuming that there is enough space for that. Moreover, the player needs to keep in mind that the settlement that the migrants have gone to must have enough space for them to live comfortably in, lest the homeless lose happiness.
Anyway, Tribute is used to purchase upgrades for the Creature, which will be described later, obtain new miracles and unlock more advanced buildings that will help the player achieve his/her goals. Sometimes, the unlocking of a few certain buildings will be quests in themselves.
RECRUITING & MAINTAINING PLATOONS:
If the player wishes to resort to warfare, he/she needs some buildings, including the barracks and armoury; preferably, they should be close together, due to reasons that will be described shortly.
After building the barracks and armoury, the player has to drag and drop a flag from the barracks onto somewhere near the barracks and armoury; the flag denotes where a platoon of soldiers will be formed. Recruits, who are automatically picked from among the adult men of the populace of the nearest settlements, will come over to arm themselves at the armouries and march over to the flags to join the platoons.
The player can set the proportion of adult men that each city has to contribute. This does not include adult men that have been appointed as Disciples, so the player may want to keep this in mind as male Disciples can still help maintain the population of cities as long as there are female Breeder Disciples, who couple with any males that they come across as soon as they have given birth.
In other words, the player can draft the entirety of the "free" adult male population of a city as soldiers, as long as the city have many male Disciples who can breed with dedicated female Breeders. This can take quite a lot of micro-management, but having a city dedicated to breeding is handy for a warmonger.
Each barracks can only support a few units of soldiers. To have more soldiers, the player must build more Barracks. The Barracks do little more than this, so having them destroyed can prevent replacement units from being created, if the existing ones are annihilated.
Soldiers need only be armed once; they do not need ammunition or replacement parts. However, soldiers incur a constant drain on the player's food stockpile; they do not need to visit storehouses to have their meals, but will siphon off food automatically, even when they are fighting. Soldiers consume significantly more food than other mortals, so the player that has an army will have to plan to compensate for the food costs that will be incurred. Armies on the move consume even more food.
Each soldier in a platoon has his/her own health capacity, meaning that he/she can die, reducing the platoon in number and thus its damage output. Injured soldiers also limp behind the rest of the platoon, though rubber-banding movement scripts ensure that they stay close.
Injured soldiers can be healed via healing miracles, but otherwise, they are on a one-way trip to death's door. This can be issue if the player is sending them off to fight enemies that are outside of the player's area of influence.
Platoons that survive battles and defeat enemies gain experience, thus increasing their combat prowess, at least against mortal enemies. As experienced as a platoon is though, it is not likely to survive the attention of the divine or the gigantic Creatures, as will be elaborated later.
PLATOON REINFORCEMENT:
As war wears on, units are likely to take casualties, despite the player's attempts to heal injured soldiers. To replenish their number, the player can merge two platoons of the same type together, if the two platoons are already somewhat depleted. Their experience points are pooled together and averaged, usually resulting in a slight drop in experience for the resulting platoon.
Another alternative lets the player can replenish their numbers by picking up and dropping otherwise untrained villagers to them; this can seem visually silly, as will be elaborated later. Anyway, it circumvents the need for the recruits to arm themselves over at the armouries, though the costs to arm them are incurred immediately as well. It also requires a lot more micro-management, and the drop in experience is incurred anyway.
There may be a glitch with this option that the developers have missed though. Nominally, only adult males can be included as replacement soldiers. However, as long as the first person that the player drops on a platoon is an adult male (who will also be the last person that the player picked up), the player can drop women and children after him too. This can be very convenient, but of course rather outrageous.
The launch version of Black & White 2 has some loopholes in the aforementioned alternative option of reinforcement via picking-and-dropping. These loopholes allowed the player to expand units beyond their initial numbers. This exploit could be performed to enhance very powerful but otherwise small platoons of special crack soldiers, such as the Seven Samurai, thus resulting in problems of gameplay balance.
This glitch was fixed in a later patch that limited units to just their starting numbers, though the glitch that allowed the player to conscript women and children remains. However, this limitation should have been there in the first place, which would have been so if the game designers apparently had significant experience in gameplay balancing for strategy games.
PLATOON-LINKING:
In a manner that is similar to the leash mechanism for the Creature, the player can link platoons to other objects, usually to each other. This allows them to travel together when any of them is given an order to move to elsewhere on the map. This feature is akin to the grouping method that is seen in RTS games at the time, but it requires a lot more micro-management.
An unscrupulous player may realize a few more nasty uses for this linking feature. Some of these involve linking a platoon to objects that the player's hand icon can interact with, such as linking a platoon to a rock and then tossing the rock so that the platoon is hurled together with the rock. However, handling soldiers like this has the same consequences as that from handling other mortals; most of them would not survive the roughshod treatment that the divine can mete out.
MIRACLES:
The miracles in Black & White 2 appear to function as they had in the previous game, e.g. they appear as magical spells that come from divine/supernatural sources. For example, the Water miracle still creates a raincloud in the player's hand icon, which can be used to rain water over things.
What has changed though is how they are obtained and cast. Miracles are obtained via purchases made using tribute, and not through boons that are granted by settlements that the player has taken over.
Miracles no longer have to be cast using gestures; the player can use hotkeys and icons on the user interface for that, as mentioned earlier; gestures are optional, but are unlikely to be used by players who are in a hurry.
In the previous game, the energy for miracles has to be collected by having mortals worship the player's god at the Temple, which may be located very far away from their settlements; the player also has to keep them supplied with food, which was also a hassle. Of course, the player can just sacrifice mortals – human or animal – outright, but this also requires some hassle of going to and fro the altars at the Temple.
In the sequel, this function of the Temple has been devolved down and handed to its version of the Temple. Mortals can be assigned as worshipper disciples in the temple; they will autonomously seek out food from the settlement's storehouse, without the player having to keep them supplied with food. The nastier alternative of just picking up some mortals and dumping them on the sacrificial altar that each Temple has is also still there, amusingly enough.
Some of the most powerful miracles can only be accessed via Wonders. These miracles have to be charged by having Worshippers dedicated to the Wonders, but this takes away Worshippers that could have gone into casting more mundane miracles instead. On the other hand, this is an appropriate gameplay-balancing decision, though at the cost of making these Miracles seem no different from the super-weapons in typical RTS games.
Overall, these changes are for the better. If there are complaints to be had, it is that miracles no longer play a part in impressing mortals, though the system for impressing mortals has been done away altogether.
ARMIES VERSUS GODLY POWERS AND THE CREATURE:
Although players can create armies, they are ultimately next to useless against the divine and/or gigantic.
Soldiers are somewhat tougher and faster than other mortals, but they are affected by the divine in very much the same way. The player can hurl rocks at them, burn trees and hold them over soldiers to immolate them and cast harmful miracles on them, among other excruciating methods of inflicting demise.
Alternatively, the player can set the Creature on them. The Creature has many attacks that are very much intended to devastate ranks upon ranks of soldiers. Their pin-pricks can still somewhat damage him, albeit with miniscule effect, though for the damage to accumulate to levels that would bring down the Creature, it would take a long time – which is an effort that would be for naught if a healing miracle is cast on the Creature, either by the player or the Creature itself, if it has learned it.
(Side note: In this game, it is almost always the player that will be visiting devastation on mortal armies. There is no A.I.-controlled enemy god.)
The pathfinding A.I. of soldiers can also run into issues when they try to work around terrain obstacles, thus making armies march across long distances a headache.
The player can attempt to use godly powers and the Creature together with mortal armies to conquer settlements with. However, the mortal soldiers may get in the way of godly powers, unless the player does not care for their lives, and/or the rampage of the Creature, who generally has no qualms stomping on mortal soldiers on his side if it means eliminating many more enemy soldiers.
Overall, it would be very difficult for any player to consider raising armies to achieve his/her own ends. At best, armies are efficient when there is a small undefended town to be taken over, but for any settlements that are bigger, the player is better off resorting to building a massive city to entice them to migrate.
MORALITY SYSTEM – BUILDING CITIES VERSUS WARRING:
As mentioned earlier, the player can attempt to conquer a map via either constructing a glorious settlement that can attract migrants from other settlements, or going out with armies and conquering them. These two options also tie into the game's morality system.
Settlement-building is considered as "good", whereas conducting war to conquer other settlements is considered as "evil". This may not sit well with players who consider such actions to be in the gray areas of morality, but Black & White 2 would not deviate from the franchise's promise of defining most in-game actions as distinctly "good" or "evil" with almost nothing in between.
To address concerns that waging battles to defend an important settlement would be considered as "evil", the developers have included exceptions to the norms that they have set. To be precise, having armies defeat opposing armies within the player's territory of influence is not considered "evil", as the enemy would be considered as attempting to invade and the player is considered as defending oneself from aggression.
CREATURE – REINFORCEMENT & MORALITY:
As in the previous game, Black & White 2 gives the player a Creature to nurture as a pet. However, the player does not gain the Creature very early on; instead, the player has to go through a couple of tutorial levels before getting to pick one from a limited selection of Creatures that resemble anthropomorphic animals.
The system of reinforcement and discouragement returns. The player can coddle his/her Creature to encourage more frequent repetition of desirable actions, or smack it around to discourage undesirable behaviour.
Making the system of reinforcement somewhat easier to use are thought bubbles that hover over the Creature. If the player bothers to read them, the thought bubbles show what the Creature is thinking of doing or has just done. If the player applies any reinforcement at this time, this will either discourage or encourage the Creature to repeat the aforementioned action in the future.
The Creature has a morality statistic that is separate from that for the player character. Actions that the Creature can perform may be associated with either the "good" or "evil" alignment, or none at all if the action is considered as inconsequential. Performing "good" or "evil" actions shuffle the Creature towards either alignment, which causes the Creature to perform more diverse actions that are associated with the alignment.
For example, a Creature that has been trained to eat only mortals for sustenance is likely to become "evil" later. When it has, it is very likely to treat mortals in poorer manners too, such as throwing them around or casting harmful Miracles on them, before ultimately eating them, dead or alive.
A change in alignment also alters the Creature's appearance. This would not be a surprise to players who have played the previous game, but the changes are a lot more aesthetically awesome in the sequel. For example, a Lion Creature turns into a very regal giant with flowing manes if it goes down the path of "good", whereas an Ape Creature that turns "evil" will look so hideous that it barely resembles an ape.
The Creature can have an alignment that is starkly different from that of the player's deity, which is a difference that the Creature will notice. Good Creatures are likely to be somewhat visibly apprehensive of the attention of evil gods, whereas evil Creatures are likely to appear distracted if good gods approach them. This is just a cosmetic touch though, as the Creature is ultimately loyal to a fault.
There is a complaint about this game's reinforcement system and the Creature's morality statistic. The Creature can be trained and goaded down an alignment to the point that it does not perform any activity other than that associated with its alignment or that which has been encouraged by the player. The Creature is a lot easier to control in this state, but it also loses much of its sense of curiosity, making it far less endearing than the sometimes unpredictable Creatures in the previous game.
CREATURE – STATISTICS:
As in the previous game, the Creature in Black & White 2 has a set of statistics that governs its current state. There are its health, hunger and sleep levels, all of which must be maintained at optimal levels or the Creature will start to fail in its performance; having these reach critical lows simply cause the Creature to "die", upon which it will respawn at the Creature Pen after a while, but with reductions to its size and stats, which the player will have to build up again.
The Creature's strength, size and fatness are likely to be of importance to players who intend to use the Creature for war.
The Creature's strength can be improved by having it haul around stones and trees. Incidentally, the Creature is likely to figure out that it should be exercising its muscles if it is handed a rock the first time; reinforcing this behaviour will encourage it to exercise more often, conveniently enough.
The Creature grows as it ages; increased sizes allow it to handle bigger objects, as well hold larger quantities of resources in its hands. A bigger size also contributes to its performance when smashing enemy platoons or settlements and its ability to move across maps, understandably enough. However, it also eats more.
The Creature can get fat if it over-eats. Having a visible paunch makes it easier to tire, e.g. having to sleep more often, but the fat also appears to make it easier for the Creature to gain strength and somewhat reduces damage that has been inflicted on it. Conversely, having a very thin Creature is also bad, e.g. it loses Strength faster; a thin Creature is also likely to be ravenous, attempting to eat anything new that it comes across when the player isn't looking.
Strength, size and fatness have ceiling limits that could not be breached. This is of course for purposes of gameplay balance, though some players may complain about the limitation to size; in the previous game, there was no known limit on size, though Creatures grow bigger at a progressively slower rate as it ages. In the sequel, however, the Creature grows a lot faster, perhaps as compensation for the ceiling limit on size.
CREATURE – LEASHES:
The mechanism of leashes returns. Like the leashes in the previous game, the leashes in Black & White 2 can be used to direct the Creature around, as well as to perform actions that are associated with the type of leash used when the player either clicks on something with or attaches something to the other end of the leash. For example, clicking on things with the other end of the Aggressive leash is more than likely to cause the Creature to attack it.
All of the leashes have unlimited range and go through obstacles, which is a convenience that also returns from the previous game.
In the previous game, the Creature may be stubborn enough to ignore the player's attempts to have it do something with the leashes. In Black & White 2, this has been fixed, thus making the Creature a lot more reliable, though at the cost of any amusing personality quirk.
CREATURE – MIRACLES & UPGRADES:
In the previous game, miracles have to be taught to the Creature, who can at best only remember a few spells for regular use. In Black & White 2, this need has been removed by replacing the teaching mechanism with upgrades for the Creature that can be purchased with tribute.
For example, once the healing miracle has been purchased for the Creature, it will automatically cast the miracle on itself if it gets too injured, or on platoons with injured soldiers, if it has been directed to be nice towards them.
There are other upgrades for the Creature, such as Soldier upgrades. These turn the Creature into a living war machine; the player does not need to train it for fighting, as in the previous game.
This can seem to make the preparation of the Creature for war quite trivial, as if it is little more than a super-unit in an RTS title. More importantly, it takes away opportunities for the player to get emotionally attached to the Creature, which was one of the key appeals of the previous game.
CREATURE – BEHAVIORAL SETTINGS:
There are also behavioural settings for Creatures. They can be toggled around to force Creatures into performing specific sets of actions in lieu of any habits that they may have developed. For example, setting them to Gatherer mode have the Creatures seeking out any settlements with resource needs, which they will then attempt to satisfy.
At first glance, these tools take even more away from the Creatures' appeal of unique personalities in the first game; indeed, a Creature that had little prior training for activities that are associated with certain behavioural settings will perform these actions somewhat reliably once the relevant upgrades have been purchased for them.
On closer inspection, how the Creature performs these actions to meet expectations may vary, depending on its personality. For example, an evil, bad-tempered Creature that has been directed to assume the role of Gatherer is very likely to toss resources into Storehouses over long distances, yet its aim is not exactly reliable all the time so the player may expect some collateral damage.
Another example, to illustrate the contrast between a good Creature and an evil Creature, is that the good Creature may collect wheat from fields to fill a store with food, whereas the evil one is likely to toss animals, or mortals, into the storehouse, which is filled with food anyway.
The Creature's personal preferences may also influence the details of the actions that it would take when it is set to specific roles. For example, when set to the Builder role, a Creature may choose to merely just gather the materials necessary for a building that is to be constructed and just move on to elsewhere, or it may stay to construct the building, depending on any reinforcement that the player has applied.
The player should not expect the Creature to be efficient though. For example, the Creature, when set to Gatherer mode, is likely to just bypass processing buildings such as the Smelter and Granary and go straight to the Storehouses.
FIGHTS BETWEEN CREATURES:
Unlike the previous game, the fights between Creatures in Black & White 2 can be astonishingly brutal. Whereas the previous game presented these fights in silly ways, such as shrinking the combatants down to the same size, placing them into a ring and requiring the player to actively participate, the fights in the sequel are more autonomous and are without any attempt at addressing the disparity in power between the combatants.
Speaking of disparities in power, a Creature has a statistic for fighting experience. A Creature that have been fighting a lot is likely to be more aggressive and would take the initiative for a decisive attack, of which one may be all that it needs to end a fight just as quickly as it had begun.
This means that a Creature with Soldier upgrades, greater size, higher Strength, more experience and such other advantages is more than likely to give the other Creature a severe beating. In fact, a Creature can gain the upper hand so much that it would be the one dishing out the most punishment, or even decide the outcome of a match from the start with a particularly vicious opening attack that knocks down its opponent.
However, the player is also allowed to interfere, usually by casting miracles or directly harming the other Creature by dropping rocks on it.
The fights between Creatures can easily spill into places where there are mortals, resulting in more than a bit of collateral damage. Therefore, the player may want to keep an eye on a fight, just in case it happens uncomfortably close to an important building.
MANIPULATING THE ENVIRONMENT:
As in the previous game, the player can perform things like pluck up trees, pick up boulders and throw them, among other things that can be done with the divine hand icon. New things have been introduced, such as the aforementioned vibrating of hard solid objects until they glow hot, but otherwise there have not been much in the way of new means to manipulate the world.
On the other hand, nothing substantial appears to have been taken away either. The player can still water forests and trees to make new trees grow and such other godly acts.
It is worth noting here though that the previous game's use of ugly lumps of forests that shrink when trees are taken away from them has been removed. This was implemented in the previous game, likely for technical reasons. Black & White 2 has rendered this simplification unnecessary, though the clumps of forests were a lot easier to handle than individual trees.
SIDE DISTRACTIONS & EASTER EGGS:
In the previous game, there were more than a few opportunities for activities that utilize the game's control in often hilarious ways. Some of these are in the sequel, amusingly enough. These are map-specific activities though, so advancing to the next map in the story campaign would cause the player to lose said opportunities.
Some of these opportunities may clearly manifest in the game world as silver quest scrolls, which can be clicked on to start the secondary quests, or clicked on again if the player wants to reset the quest if he/she failed it before. Most of these quests are actually revisited versions of the ones in the previous game, such as a quest that requires the player to have the camera follow a mortal around without having the hand icon hovering too close to said mortal.
Some other opportunities for side activities are not marked in any way; the player would either have to be lucky to stumble upon them, or have been informed by others or game guides of their presence. Overlooking them is quite easy when the player spends most of his/her time zoomed out and over the lands.
One of these notably involves a certain immortal person that is just minding his own business in an easily overlooked nook in a few of the maps in the game. The associated activity has the player tossing the person as far as he/she can. The only hint that the player has for this is a signpost nearby that records the distance that the person has reached. The reward for repeatedly setting and surpassing records grants the player lucrative amounts of tribute.
Unfortunately, the player may come across quests or mini-games that are practically broken. For example, there is a secondary quest early on in the story campaign that wants the player to denude the entire map of any trees. As simple as this may seem to be, the player has no way of knowing exactly where there are trees. Trees may clip into other objects, or may be so small as to be no bigger than shrubberies, or they may be overlooked by Forester Disciples.
Such occurrences remind the player that Lionhead is a developer that is not known for having tight programming and quality control.
MISCELLANEOUS COMPLAINTS:
In the launch version of Black & White 2, there are design oversights that can seem quite embarrassingly amusing.
One of these is that a settlement has "needs" that are autonomously independent of its population – if there is any at all. A player can remove all of the population of a settlement, either by sending them over to another settlement or just killing them off. Yet, despite not having any population, the needs for food, housing and such other necessities remain as statistics that are associated with the settlement.
This would not seem to be an issue, but as the fulfilment of the needs of settlements is tied to the morality system, neglecting a derelict settlement actually causes the player to accrue points towards the "evil" side of the scale.
This problem was later fixed with a patch, but it would not remove the impression that the game was not tightly designed to prevent silly problems such as this one.
In the first game, the player has to take over villages by impressing their inhabitants with acts that would awe them or terrify them outright. This system has been done away with in the sequel, though it would have been a lot more sophisticated if it had been retained to complement the new system.
The game does not have any multiplayer options, which means that the player is stuck having the A.I. as the opponent in the story campaign. The enemy A.I. is not competent all the time, as can be seen when it sends platoons to attack the player piece-meal. Although the enemy A.I. is smart enough to know about probing for weak points, it is not smart enough to realize feints on the part of the player. For example, the player can dupe the A.I. into sending platoons after opened gates, and then closing them just before they get through.
The story campaign has levels that often require the player to build and develop settlements all over again. This can seem rote to players who are tired of having to start from square one for just about any scenario. Moreover, where the previous game allowed the player to dump resources and mortals into a portal at the end of a level so that they are carried over to the next, Black & White 2 does not have this feature, thus reinforcing the impression of having to start back from square one.
The last complaint is also one that was in the previous game: the player may be a god, but still lacks the ability to warp the lands so as to create hills and such. The closest that the player has to being able to do so is the Volcano miracle provided by the Volcano Wonder, but this is all there is.
GRAPHICS - CREATURES:
The Creatures are easily the most visually pleasing characters in the game. Their models have the greatest number of polygons and texture options in the game, especially those that are of the "Good" alignment. For example, a good Lion creature is a visually vainglorious creature, with plenty of mane and silky white fur.
The Creatures are also the best-animated models in the game. Their animations are expressive enough to inform the player of their current state. For example, a creature that is limping is low on health, whereas a creature that is strolling around confidently is likely to be happy and has just gained the adoration of some mortals for a deed well-appreciated.
The Creatures' superiority over mortals becomes very apparent when they battle each other. Creatures slam and toss the mortals, even mocking them with marching that practically scatters their ranks all over.
Perhaps the most amusing – or the most shocking - animations that the Creatures have are those that are used for battles between Creatures. In the first Black & White, the Creatures are presented as pugilists when they battle; in the sequel, they are outright feral, savagely brutalizing each other. This is a major contrast, which is an impression that would be reinforced further when the player considers that in the previous game, injured Creatures accrue bruises and welts, whereas in the sequel, clear bloody wounds appear across the Creatures' models as they take damage.
The marks of these injuries do not go away entirely when the Creatures are healed; scars actually stay for a while, as a visual reminder of how battle-hardened this Creature is. In fact, scars are reliable indicators of the Creature's experience at fighting.
The Creatures in Black & White 2 have more facial expressions than those in the previous game, which is perhaps to be expected as the sequel benefits from better graphics technology than the first game did. A Creature's face gives away its current mood and condition. For example, a Creature with sunken-looking eyes is likely in need of sleep, whereas a sheepish look betrays its anxiety at having performed an action that, from experience, it knows its master does not appreciate.
The lighting and particle effects for the Creatures are more apparent if they have gone down either alignment instead of staying in the middle, where they would look relatively mundane. If they go down the path of good, they will grow shiny, flowing hair and occasionally even sparkle. If they go down the path of greed, smoke and miasma emit from them, reflecting their terrible nature.
GRAPHICS – MORTALS:
The mortals were hideously simple in the previous game, so one would expect that their models have been improved in the sequel. However, although there is improvement, it is at best only minimal, especially when the graphical designs of the mortals are compared to those for the Creatures.
Of course, one can argue that there are many mortals that have to be displayed on-screen, such that they still have to be simple-looking in order to reduce the computing needs of the game.
However, those who have played the first game and were disappointed by the simple visuals for the mortals would still be disappointed anyway by the sequel, because the mortals still lack facial animations and clear fingers instead of a skin-colored lump (they do have thumbs now though).
On the other hand, individual mortals have more visual differences between each other than they had in the previous game. There are now more variation in their clothing, head polygons and body shapes, as well as the textures and contours on their heads that pass off as their faces. This is ultimately just a cosmetic improvement of course, as the mortals are too short-lived for the player to keep a specific few alive just for their looks.
If the player utilizes the option to reinforce units by hand (both figuratively and somewhat literally), e.g. by picking and dropping villagers onto depleted units, the new recruits immediately take up arms and wear helmets, which can be a jarringly silly transition.
Furthermore, recruits who happen to be adult men would convert their models completely over to those of soldiers, whereas adult women and children do not have most of their models changed at all; the helmets and weapons are simply pressed onto their models. The scaling of the additional parts also sometimes fail for child recruits, causing weapons and shields to float away from their models.
Such goofy sights can be very amusing, but it also gives the impression that Lionhead has not invested enough quality control or design effort into making satisfactory models for adult women and children that have been conscripted as soldiers.
The animations of the mortals are a lot more varied than they were in the previous game, and appear a lot less synchronized. The player can adjust the level of synchronization to have the most optimal setting for his/her rig. Anyway, the animations are typically comical-looking, which suit their caricature-like visual designs well.
Like the previous game, the animations that the mortals have for worshipping are the most varied. Some races prefer elaborate dances, while others flail around wildly, which can be an amusing difference.
GRAPHICS – MIRACLES, BUILDINGS & THE LANDS:
The miracles hog most of the particle effects in the game. As to be expected of products of Lionhead, most of them are exaggeratedly sparkly, fiery or wispy, suggesting that any particle effect that they could conceive of has been crammed into them. This can lead to some framerate slow-downs when miracles are cast, but otherwise there are no other practical problems with them.
The buildings in Black & White 2 are very grand, or at least quite detailed in terms of textures. They are not the thin shells that their predecessors were, but instead models with some semblance of thickness and interiors, as can be seen when they are broken apart. Still, closer observation may reveal that most of their interiors are empty, suggesting lack of attention to detail on the part of the designers.
Yet, the designers have also crammed bloom and lighting effects into just about any building that can conceivably have them, which make them seem rather garish. However, they are consequently also easier to distinct from more mundane buildings, conveniently enough.
The lands are mostly cleverly contoured planes with textures and decals normal-mapped over them, but they are convincing enough to be an impressive facsimile of real-world terrain. However, their most appealing visual aspect is the lighting and shadowing that is applied to them, which show off how well the normal-mapping has been implemented.
SOUND EFFECTS & MUSIC:
Most of the sound effects in Black & White 2 have been recycled from the previous game, such as the rumbling noises that accompany the dropping of lumber from the player's hand. These are still satisfactory though.
The new sound effects are mostly for the feature of warfare, but these are standard-fare clashing of metal that has been heard in many games with settings of medieval conflict before.
The soundtracks also appear to have been recycled from the previous game; the folksy, slightly stereotypical soundtracks for the different races' worship rituals return almost unchanged. There are a few fresh ones, namely those for battles. The one for battles between Creatures is especially exciting to listen to.
The most memorable soundtracks would be the flourishes that accompany the accomplishment of objectives. These have been heard before in the previous game, but they are still hair-raising as ever.
VOICE-OVERS:
Most of the voice-overs in the game are provided by the two advisors, who return from the previous game, albeit with much more detailed models and particle effects. They can still be as annoying or amusing as ever, depending on the player's perception of them, but it is still unlikely that a player would be ambivalent towards the oft-bickering pair.
The Creatures, perhaps thankfully, still communicate with animal noises. They have a bigger range of groans, growls and other noises than their predecessors, which contribute to the variety of emotes that they have. There are, of course, more bestial sets of noises for when they fight with each other, which reinforce the impression of their savage ferocity.
Unfortunately, for some players, the mortals seem to remain as whiny and annoying as ever. There are more than a few arrogant mortals who introduce quests, which may drive some players to just do away with them violently. There are a few convincingly needy mortals, so not all of them would be a pain to the ears.
CONCLUSION:
Better city-building tools and a much more convenient user interface makes building and nurturing the player's domains far easier and more sophisticated than it was in the previous game. However, what passes as warfare in Black & White 2 is so cumbersome to manage, especially when compared to other strategy games that have far better tools to organize armies with.
Most distressing of all to fans of the first Black & White and Creature Isle is that the Creature's behaviour has been simplified so greatly that it is more of a lackey of the player than being an entity with a mind of its own, which was one of the best appeals of the previous game. It still has some semblance of personality, but there would no longer be any unique Creatures with peculiar sets of habits.
Such changes strongly suggest that Lionhead does not really have a strong sense of direction for its products, which is an impression that would become all-too-apparent in the future.