Just picked up the sequal to Black and White, and I have to say that its is most enjoyable. For those of you who dont know, in the game your a god(!) and usually have to get everone on the piece of land to belive in you, either thru impressing them enought with you town to make the move there(good) or take over their town with armies(evil). Its a little slow at time but thats the genre I guess. If you like RTS or have a god-complex i would suggest picking it up.

 

I played this for about 3 hours today, and I wanted to put my fist through the monitor after awhile.

Its slow, and the controls are cubersome and unresponsive as hell. The creature is a bit smarter, but they took away the guess work in B&W that made it both suck and be fun trying to figure out what the pet wants, to making it as simple as smacking him when he does bad, pet when he does good.

They turned the pet into multiple choice =(

Having to keep switching leashes in the world with the Norse, coupled with the nonstop attacks that gave you no time to do anything with any town past the first one irked me.
Took me forever to beat it, only to have the game crash on me b/c I'd picked up a large amount of followers (a common crash cause sadly) luckily, my last save was ONLY 1.5 hours previous..

On top of that, I wanted to play a good god, but the choice is nearly impossible to do so far. I captured a town that was deserted, so my wolf didn't have to kill anyone. Well unless you immediatly move ppl in, and supply them with food, and their constant wants for the next 10 minutes or so, you get a nonstop flow of evil points. Evil points means you aren't as impressive, which makes it harder to take over the towns peacefully.

Having to deal with 5 norse squads of 100ish guys, with just me healing my beast along with 30 of my own guys, means I can't sit there and micromanage all the towns. On top of that, the influence range (the radius around your town you can directly interact with, outside of it you can't directly do anything) does not stretch from town to town, you have to keep sticking BS buildings to make it join together. Annoying as hell when there is something you want in the middle, and you have to waste a ton of resource to get to it, because the damned pet's braindead.


I've turned the settings to low, which still doesn't do much, b/c the game still has to keep track of what the hundreds of little ppl on the ground are doing. I've only got a celeron 2.0 ghz, which is pretty much equivlant to a 1.4ghz P4 thanks to the slower FSB speed I read, but still it should be enough to handle a game with the graphics of 2000.

I've got the game set at max resolution, just to be able to go through the menu for building without spending an hour scrolling. Is there a way to set hotkeys for squads or join squads? Kinda annoying as shit to keep pulling up squads when you need them, and wind up with a buncha 10 man squads. Or after battle when you have 2-3 ppl left alive.

The spell casting system I bought the mouse gesture upgrade, but can't figure out how to get it to work.

My opinion may change the more I play this, I liked the first one, then hated it when I found out all the missing stuff, then loved it when I modded the files myself to unlock all the hidden stuff.

From what I read however on the msg board, it stays aggravating, and the creature pretty much stays semi-retarded.

 

It is hard to manage all the towns, I usually just build a giant ass wall around my entire town and line it was archers, their armies cant do crap to me then. Being good is very hard to do, I have to build 4 or 5 of each of the resource enhancing buildings so I always have a surplus of ore and wood. Not sure how tribute system works, it seems to give me some at random times when i havent completed a quest. On japanese people right now.

 

A review I posted at another site, and I removed some of my earlier comments about that game, as they became invalid once I saw past the joy of having a B&W sequel.Peter, Peter, Peter, when will you learn to tell the truth about your game, instead of hyping features that aren't even there =( I'm honestly suprised how bad his games have been the past several years, that Lionhead is still around. Anyone of you that liked B&W1, prepared to either be disappointed, or if you're a retarded, blind, lobotomized freak, love it.

I'm a bit miffed about this game, because even though the first had it's issues, it was groundbreaking, the AI was great, I could leave my creature alone for days and he's keep my town up and running, and even help grow new forests by transplanting trees and watering them until they grew out.


Brief review: They took everything good from B&W1, and threw it out. They replaced that gaping hole with a horribly unbalanced, akward RTS game, and a god game that leaves you feeling like a wetnurse to whiny ass villagers, and a brainless creature, while you fight enemies that have no active AI at all, just scripts. You're the only god in the game this time, fighting a buncha of tribal leaders... a god fighting puny humans, no wonder the game is so easy it may as well be rated K... The only other god in this game is you saying god what the **** did I waste 50$ on this for?


The sequel to a ground breaking game, it's been worked on for just over 4 years now, and yet somehow... it contains nothing. They skimped so hardcore on all the stuff for this game... they REUSED most of the intro movie where the "god/you" are "born" from the first game! How freaking )&*@^ cheap is that?

Graphics: The graphics are great... IF you can run them. Lionhead has a set list of supported cards, that are preconfigured with you basically only choosing what resolution you want the eye candy at. In the unpatched version at least you could mod a file yourself and get maybe another 5 fps, but with patch 1.1 (which was released BEFORE the game even started selling in stores) it tends to ignore your config most of the time.

This sucks such large balls, because according to what Lionhead "thinks" my card can handle, is vastly different to what I think, and what it really can handle, so it dumbed down my graphics a great deal, until I reinstalled the game for the 3rd time, and played the unpatched version to be able to actually choose what few options the game actually has to be enabled or not. If Lionhead thinks your card can't handle an option at all, or well enough for them, they simply disable the option all together. Screw you.

You get to choose Shadows: Yes or no, Blooming (flowers or flame when your monster walks, ants in the ground) Yes or no, AA: Low or high, and about 3 other meaningless options for your graphics. Another bright spot is, according to the official forums, anyone not running a up to date ATi with a nice, nice system is going to be looking at 5-20 fps tops, at lowest settings. Nvidia need not apply, as it seems to be a crapshoot whether the game will run at all past the splash screens for Gefore users, or if it'll just screw you and you'll be playing a slideshow.

Graphically, the game is beautiful in some parts, and steaming piles in others. The creature is great at its core, but the fur on it looks utterly retarded, and nothing like any screenshot I've seen for the game. The villagers and towns are blocky as hell, with the same 3 faces used over and over and over. If the villiger is of a different race/tribe, they simply give him new clothes and slant the eyes or draw a beard.

The spells, which are supposedly the end all to die for, suck. Theres only a handful of spells now (Fireball, water, heal, lightning, meteor), all of which suck and are overpowered at the same time. Got 1,000 soldiers rushing your monster? Pftt. One 0.5 second charge fireball and they _all_ die. The epic wonders, the huge spells you can use maybe once every so often, are done as cutscenes, stealing controls from you juuuust when you need to be able to direct your worthless squads around. What the hell happened to being able to creature forests with spells, or massive nuclear type explosions?

Gameplay: The took out all the mystisicm and guesswork of raising the creature by showing him things, and refuced him to multiple choice. The creature picks up a human, slap him if he's not allowed to eat the villager, pet him if he is. A sliding window pops up in a bubble above his head to let you know the robot is listening.

The game is frustrating as @(&^. You spent 2-4 hours on the first three islands... which are TUTORIALS <------ Lionhead's need to constantly use cutscenes, and removing control of the game from you borders on assine. The patch allows you to skip the first hour or so of screwing around learning how to use the arrow keys or the mouse to move (ya know in case you're braindead)

The first few islands, one consists of about 15 minutes of watching cutscenes you can't skip, while watching volcanoes blow apart your villagers. The next, you choose your creature, and have to do retarded things like, throw the rock at the rocks blocking the waterfall. The next, you can actually play some of the game, but you don't get your critter up and running until midway, and even then the guides of the game still hold your hand.

There are signposts EVERYWHERE, ruining the immersion of the game, that explain how to play the game to you. There are at least 20 in the 3rd island, another 15ish in the 4th just explaining what villagers are, what building you're looking at etc.

The creature you choose this time, has a fun habit of standing there for up to a minute whenever it has to figure out what to do. If it is not currently near anything that you've already set his behaviour for, he gets stuck for a bit till you click him out of there. Really helpful when you need him to attack those enemies just outside your town, and he stands there taking an asswhiping until he finally figures out to attack, despite the fact that you're clicking like a madman, screaming attack, he just can't figure it out.

Soliders were supposed to be such a HUGE addition to the game... they're worthless. The enemy ones have NO A.I.<- at all, everything they do is totally scripted, you can avoid fighting them all together b simply coming in the backway and shooting the buildings out of their detection range. Every path they walk, the exact size of them, is the exact same each time. Your archers destroy any and everything, but they themselves only last seconds against another archer troup. Considering it takes a good while to get troops out of your villagers, having a squad of 100 get wiped out if you actually use them to fight in 10 seconds is not helpful.

The city building section of the game is also horrible. You have to babysit the villagers, placing food in storage yourself, as they contain the worse pathing I've ever seen in a game. I've seen a farmer villager pick up a load of grain, walk halfway to the storage unit just on the other side of the farm, and he drops the grain on the ground, and goes back to farming... resources not in the hold don't help *smack*

The buildings you buy through a tribute menu, which you get to scroll slooooowllly through, making your wince in pain at the mere thought of messing with it.

In the first game, your influence ring was based off your belief your followers had in you, as well as where your buildings were, and you could take over distant towns by throwing spells at them, or darting in and out of the ring to be able to interact with them (You had a area where you were god, outside of that you were powerless)

Well in this game, the ring is based off of your city, and it hugs that sumbitch TIGHT. It WILL take you hours each map, to be able to build a city impressive enough to take over towns the nice way, or you could spend a few hours making armys and capturing them. The throwing system has been so severly hindered, it'd worthless. In B&W1 I could toss a fireball clear across the map with marksmen like accuracy. In 2, I can get it 15 feet beyond my influence ring, and my god-hand/tool doesn't work more then 20ish outside of the ring.

Quests: .... .... Make 20 breeders. Pick up a villager, put him down next to a girl, he's a breeder. Quest complete.

-Pick up a rock from a villager's garden.. Have the creature take a poo in the field...... Water a small plant. Get a villager a handful of grain... These are the uber quests in B&W2 (sad part is, I'm not exaggerating), you are Gopher God. They weren't much better in 1, but they were funny, and there were several good ones, as well as mini games.

Action: There is none. The game is so easy it could be beaten by a 3 year old. The only time you're ever activley attacked is in the last few worlds (theres only like 7 total, including the 3 full tutorial ones, and the 1 semi-tutorial) . Build a cheap wall. Don't place a door/gate. Watch enemies run up to wall and stop. Now punch a small hole down a few feet from them so your troops can get out eventually. No they won't find the hole and come in

In B&W1 when your monster found another god's monster, they fought, in a up close, streetfight style deal, where you clicked on where for your guy to hit, and drew out gestures for spells. Did you like that? I did. Too bad, that's gone. They just walk up to each other now and smack one another till one goes away.

No multiplayer, despite it being promised, no sandbox maps, no God's playground type area to get extra monster training in, etc. Well over 50% of what was promised, and in some cases, SHOWN at tech demos, ain't here. Multiplayer is "in the works" they say... no way, with the spells as unbalanced as they are, there's no way in hell you'd get someone to stick around for hours just so he can die in 2 fireball shots.

A few direct quotes I'd like to mention:

No the hell you don't. You click F5 to go to the miracle/spell menu and select them, or you can try to draw a spiral, followed by tracing a W for water or a zigzag for fire. I say try, because at anything less then 30 fps, the game does not like to recognize what the mouse is trying to draw, and it is very anal about accepting only the perfect movements with the mouse.


For anything else you have to dig through slow responding submenus. And the enemy creature rarely even goes near you, much less "steps over your walls" On the rare occassion I was attacked (A scripted event early on in the last land) with something that could break my walls (a catapult) I simply build double layered walls. Once it knocked down all of my front wall (when only a small hole would of been good enough), it stopped, and went home

rofl, no. What it does were is a buncha pipcleaners sticking out at wierd angles, that are supposed to be fur. It looks like someone shoved a live wire up my tiger's ass and flipped the switch.


By the way, if you get the 1.1 patch, it ruins any of your 1.0 save games, so kiss that robot creature you were training goodbye, and get ready to do 3+ hours of tutorials again!

Bah there's alot more to bitch about, but pfft. Uninstalled, snapped CDs in half, tthis game can go to hell.

Bottom line is, avoid this, and any game reviewer for a major site that gives it higher then a 50%/5/10 deserves to be shot. I've seen them say the exact same thign I've said, and then rate it 7/10-9/10. wtf.

A few snips from another review:

Beginning at the beginning. Black & White 2 claimed it would not repeat the nightmarish obligatory tutorial of the original. And indeed, at the very beginning you are offered the opportunity to skip the basic movement instructions, should you have remembered them from before. However, if you fancy a refresher, then nothing has changed - rather than briefly explaining that right clicking the ground grabs it, and then moving the mouse pulls you in that direction, it instead forces you to sit through an agonisingly idiotic step-by-step guide, requiring that you learn not only how to move to the left, but also, wait for it, how to move to the right. Anyone who would need such ludicrously slow and patronising guidance would not have been able to manoeuvre the disc into the drive to install the game, let alone put their own trousers on.

Read this, its actually a 100% true review, only part that seems false is the high score it still got tat the end. http://www.gamerankings.com/itemrankings/launchreview.asp?reviewid=623021

 

I was going to buy this game when I get paid, but now i think i'd rather be locked in a room containing nothing but a printed copy of a novel length Harry/Snape/Malfoy slash fic.

 

lol.

I actually reinstalled the first B&W, it's still a decent lil screw around game.

I'm still trying to figure out how B&W1 had _25_ creatures, while a game that was in development for twice as long, with good funding this time, managed to crank out about 20% of that number. 2 has a ape, cow, lion, wolf, and a unlockable tiger if you get a patch that was leaked online... seriously wtf. These don't even have their own personalities, they are all Yes for god no for bad, stand there and do nothing if you can't figure out what to do. I'm sure it doesn't help that the lion's model is just the wolfs with minor changes made to it, such as adding a mane and making the snout slightly different. What half ass coding is that?

Another thing I couldn't stand: all the rules do not apply to the enemy. They always have resources yet there mines, trees, etc are not touched. You can destroy their town and all their people, but as long as their armories still stand, they wll keep sending 20 person platoons at your creature and your hundred strong platoon until you destroy the armories. What great scripting.


Things I liked about B&W2

-Being able to build towns that were indeed large... the layout of them took forever, the resources were a pain in the ass to get in later maps, if they made the interface more RTS-like instead of a halfass slow LONG scroll bar it would be more user friendly... oh and code in a game while they're at it.

-Being able to pick up multiple villagers or resources at once. Clicking on a villager, going where you want, then going back and repeating a hundred times is annoying as hell, and one of the main things I hate about B&W1

um... hm a few SS's


An ape expressing his dislike of the game on some villagers, yes he is shitting on them.


Reading the official forums, it seriously hurts my brain to see so many obviously 10 year old children who love the game, and are defending it very harshly, because "Lookit my cut3 cow, he's the win!" No fucking wonder the game got dumbed down so much... at least they have their target audience happy I guess

 

i downloaded this... havent been brave enough to install it though...should i?

 

I did too, and to be honest, it was a total waste of bandwidth as I've said before. I'm currently getting Godfather Trilogy Boxed set, at least that goddamned time spent will be worth it

On the officialboards they have "what I do like", and "what I don't like" about the game threads.

The like thread is 350ish posts long, and tons of multiple posts by the rabid children defending the game and claims of false adverts, by saying "its your computer! thats why you don't see the breathtaking AI, or super leet pipe cleaner fur!!1!"

The dont like thread, is 957 posts long, and most of them are unique posts, except where the script kiddies come into to flame ppl who are pissed off paying 50$ for a game that is NOT what is advertised. The next time I see one of those stupid fuckers claiming it's EA's fault for publishing a badly done game, and not Lionhead's fault for coding a piss poor game, when it took them 4 years and they have NOTHING to show for it, I'm going to go to their school and fucking Columbine them. Some of these excuses even claim that B&W does not like having 2 sticks of RAM in the system it's being played on, obviously false but it demonstrates the sheer amount of bullshit these guys are wanting to project.

http://allboards.lionhead.com/showthread.php?t=97765

This game is the worst case of blatant false adversiting I've ever seen. There are tons of threads about the false advertising on the offical boards

Thread name: So.... you used these screenshots to sell the game... false advertising much?
http://allboards.lionhead.com/showthread.php?t=103830

Hmm there was a thread with the first post about 10K words long, listing each and every bit of false advertising, but it seems to of vanished and the poster is banned. How quaint.

There are many more, but as I've just spent 15 minutes looking for the major post, I'll stop posting threads there

The company formally apologized for the bullshit game that Fable wound up being, I wonder how long it'll be before B&W2 gets one.
http://allboards.lionhead.com/showthread.php?t=103395


I've alpha and beta tests quite a number of games... this released version of B&W2 is a late alpha at best. I do find it amusing all the stupid bastards crying over no multiplayer, despite it being billed as a online game.... pathetically balanced or not this game ain't working online.

I got pissed off at the original B&W when I went digging through the files, and saw what was left out, but was still hardcoded into the game, just disabled... B&W2 has multiple other races, enemy gods instead of tribal leaders, more miracles, better balancing, better creature AI, etc... it was found on lionsource, a german site, to be half assed coded into the game.. but disabled. I guess thats a expansion pack for you to be able to switch the disabled to enabled....

The guys a fucking hack selling half finished products, then releasing a 30$ exp. pack months later that do nothing but add a few missing files in that the game is already looking for. Borderline damned extortion


Considering I was a big MMORPG fan, and the sheer bullshit those guys release, to be stunned by a retail pay-once game is astounding.
I'm not even pissed b/c I was looking forward to this game, I'm pissed that a company would have the gall to ship out such a horribly unfinished product, and then offer no support for it other then a bullshit patch which makes your graphics settings worthless, and forces you to redo hours of tutorials.
I... god I want to rant some more about all the astounding fucking brain numbing stupidity you find in this game but its honestly giving me a headache thinking about it.