Black and White is a brilliant game which is the perfect balance for those who like the RTS genre and those who don't.
Pros: Great graphics, good sound, world adjusts as you play, creature learns from what you tell him to do and when you reward him or punish him, RTS gamesplay without the narrow range of fans, the hand can do many things, unlockables make it very tempting to try goals, resources provide an extra challenge
Cons: AI is pretty stupid, three-songs-fit-all audio, some resources are a little too hard to find, buildings have no interior other than the plainly visible parts, battles are... odd since AI is rather dumb, creature tends to destroy occasionally when you don't want him to, tribute is hard to gain, hand has no power outside your influence (border), minor frame rate issues
Don't be intimidated by the long cons list, this game is very fun and a great value. However, it is plagued by stupid AI and some fairly small frame rate issues.
Allow me to explain the pros:
-This game has great image quality and lighting effects, and almost always looks great even when zoomed in all the way.
-It also has some great music, which isn't too intrusive, and always keeps you in the right mood. Now, the world moves around with you; you have your own area of influence in which you can move trees, create miracles, build towns, and generally play with it in a sandbox way.
-Some things, like a gatehouse in a wall, will level the terrain beneath them in a very believable way, so that the gatehouse isn't slanted or cut off.
-Your creature can be trained the way you want, and ordered to do things (sleep, eat, throw something, build, gather, workout, play with a toy, entertain villagers...). He can also fight off enemies. Now, the whole training system isn't all it's cracked up to be, since you just pet him until the bar goes all the way in one direction (I'll never do this or I'll always do this), and then he just knows if he should do it.
-The hand you control in the game can perform a wide assortment of tasks, ranging from miracles, to throwing villagers, to assigning villagers jobs, to building your town.
-Tribute is this games form of currency, but not in the way you'd probably suspect. Tribute is earned by performing goals, or tasks, and is used to unlock houses, buildings, miracles, creature abilities and more. This is the biggest thing to collect in this game.
Here are the cons:
-Now, this AI is stupid. Very stupid. This doesn't apply to normal villages, but mostly to battles. I had a very hard to getting my troops to even move. Check this out: I had a huge powerful wall set up, which was impossible to go around, right? So, I had enemies attack, and, they first piled up into a one-man space- all fifteen- and then they walked straight through the wall. My men were on the wall (archers) and right behind the wall (swordsman), but did they do anything? Even when I told them to attack? No. I actually defeated the few soldiers who ran through. I used the pushing ability. I had about 50 men standing right behind the gates, and when I said 'Attack' over and over again, they just stood there. So, my village was damaged and I ended up killing the threat. Could they have at least attacked the ghost army? And, the other thirteen of them seemed to run back home, but when I zoomed in, no-one was there. What the crap?! So, the short answer is don't expect epic battles.
-The songs are all orchestrated, but don't especially stand out. There are only a few of them, as far as I know.
-Food and sometimes the other two resources- ore and wood- are apparantly hard to find later on in the game. When I was on the first real land (with the Norsemen), near the end I was getting huge bursts of evil points all the time because I couldn't feed my people fast enough. I had about 15 fields, and I constantly did water miracles and took the spoils, but they were dieing all the time.
-This might be a little dumb, but the buildings don't have any interior. It's just totally empty. All the buildings' interior can be seen by just zooming in far enough for the camera to cut through the object.
-Your creature, though he might be 100% good like mine, will occasionally be found throwing villagers and often killing them in the process. Anger issues?
-Tribute can be hard to gain, since some goals require actual skill :)
-Your hand has absolutely no power outside your area of influence until you dominate the land.
-The framerate can be a pig wading through sludge
Finally, my final complaint is: I can't even get past the mid-way point in the game. Yeah, kina big problem. Whenever I click the scroll, and confirm, it starts loading, and then a minute later, it's crashed. Yeah. So, I've been building up my land three.
Overall, though therer are a multitude of small issues in this game, it's still easily recommendable to anyone even remotely interested in RTS games. This game is very addictive and has a lot of playtime. Now if only I could get past land three...