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Dumbed down, a step backwards and many bugs

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 106 / 136
Date: October 13, 2005
Author: Amazon User

First of all you'll need a video card that supports pixel shader 2.0 or higher or you won't see many of the eye popping graphics featured in the screenshots, such as water, weather, your "good" alignment effects, sun and moon, ants, the list goes on.
That being said, thats all this game really is - eye candy.
It only resembles the 1st game on the surface. Once you get into it you find out that its been "dumbed" down - ALOT.
The first map will have a tutorial on how to move your mouse left. Then it will teach you how to move your mouse right. Then Up. Then down. And thats just getting started on moving the mouse. You'll spend parts of the following 2 maps on tutorials as well that you can't bypass.
As for gameplay, the creature has lost all personality. Its now more robotic in nature as your training involves petting (or slapping) it to move a slider bar which determines to what degree it will or wont do something. Its basically "set it and forget it" You cannot teach it miracles anymore. You simply purchase them. You cannot control it in fights with other creatures like the first game. They duke it out on their own while you just watch.
The entire belief system is gone and your influence ring is now determined by your most outer edge buildings.
You either spend all your time building cities to impress nearby towns to join you or building an army to take them over by force.
Neither method is challenging and gets boring very quickly. There are only 3 unit types for armies and they are limited to move, attack, defend, get on walls, and disband. There was some strategy in the first game but you wont find it here. The enemy AI is horrible. It simply sends out wave after wave of platoons to your city walls whether it had the resources for them or not. It will also ignore you when you attack their towns unless you get close enough to the actual platoon itself. The enemy will also constantly taunt you endlessly. Many of the features that were promised didn't make it into the game and there is no multiplayer. I waited for this game for 4 years and its a huge disappointment and a step backwards. Unless you enjoy a game for its graphical presentation well over its gameplay, length, and replay value, save your money and avoid this title.

Check The System Requirements Before Buying!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 33 / 45
Date: November 16, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Check the system requirements before you buy this game. (What ever happend to listing them on the page where the game is sold?)

B&W2 does not run on my Dell, which is only three years old. I have XP, a P4 2.0 GHz, and a 64 MB GeForce video card (but the card does not support pixel shading!)

EA says the minimum system configuration for installing and running the game are:

"Windows XP or 2000 operating systems.
1.6 GHz or faster processor.
512 MB or more RAM.
3.5 GB or more free hard disk space.
Supported DirectX 8 or higher based 64 MB video card which supports pixel shading.
Supported Video Card Chipsets (these cards are tested to work with the game under normal setup with the most recent manufacturer drivers):

ATI Radeon 8500, 9100, 9200, 9250, 9500, 9550, 9600, 9700, 9800, X300, X600, X700, X800, and X850.
NVIDIA GeForce 6200, 6600, 6800, FX 5200, FX 5500, FX 5600, FX 5700, FX 5800, FX 5900, FX 5950, PCX 5900, Ti 4200, Ti 4600, and Ti 4800."

You will have to spend some time finding the requirements on the EA website. (Why make it easy for consumers to know what they are buying? They might not buy something that won't work!)

Terrible

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 16 / 28
Date: October 26, 2005
Author: Amazon User

First off your creature selection is next to ZIP! There are only 5 choices in this game.In the first game there were 18. 0/5 Stars

Your influence is now determined by building outward on your influence ring. So rather then being nice to your people just start building. I usally build all way to the enemy city then threw fireballs at them. 0/5 Stars

Computer AI is terrible. Kill the first few waves with Fireballs then they quit attacking. You can usally just walk into their city and take it over. 0/5 Stars

Trides :( In the orginal game there were 8 tribes. Now there are only 4. The tribes have different look but they are really all the same. In first game every tribe had a different bonus unique to it.

Overall the game play is just bad. You are no longer even competing against other gods. Ends up being pretty boring. Only reason I'd give them 1 star is for the graphics. They are pretty good. This is just a bad bad game. I don't remember the last time a company took an awesome game and made it so horrible. Don't bother even buying this till it's on the $10 rack.

Do not buy this game until they solve installation problem

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 20
Date: March 22, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game about 2 weeks ago. I've tried everything I could to just install this game and.............. failed miserably... :(
I looked up the help manual they provided with the game box and also went to EA website and Lionhead website to try to fix this problem, but they didn't even have this problem on their support website. I tried to download video, sound, CD-ROM, and motherboard drivers and checked all my hard drives which took almost 4 days!! :(
and~~ closed all my background programs.... But!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Still having problem...

My system is celeron 2.93 G with Asus motherboard + 768 ram + windows XP service pack 2 + Geforce FX 5500 256 mb + sound blaster live 5.1 + 350 W power

What pisses me off is I just upgraded my system to play this XXXX game... :(

This is what I have when I try to install.

Installation failed
Black and white 2 has failed to install. Your system has not been modified. Please re-run the installer to try again.
Error: wrong file name, directory name, or volume lable.

I hope you won't get the same problem like me...

What a waste

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: April 28, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game has the potential to be fun. Unlike others who say this is "dumbed down" from the first one, I thought the the original B&W spent too much time forcing the player to set up cities and play the game with limited resources. This does correct some of the imbalance and allows for a more direct way to conquer other cities (namely, armies).

The problem is this sequel was designed like an after-thought. It, quite simply, doesn't work. My specs exceed what is needed - however, the game (and this is from forums dedicated to it) was not designed to be compatible with Windows XP, let alone Windows XP 64 Pro (which is what I run).

The result is that every time the game gets interested it crashes. Not to a blue screen, not directly to windows, but instead freezes, takes forever to get to the Windows Error screen, and then forces you to restart and go through the entire intro again.

So, no matter how much fun and pretty the game may look, it's unplayable.

Not Black and White 1: Not even close.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 7 / 13
Date: February 05, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Although I didn't play it much, I really did enjoy the first game. And this is not that game at all. The graphics have been slightly improved, but have created a much worse problem than bad graphics: horrible frame rate. The game lagged, and I am running it on a AMD 64 dual core with 1 GB of RAM and a 256 MB graphics card. The frame rate was bad enough to make the game significantly less fun. It also doesn't let you fool around nearly as much as the first game did, and from the moment you begin, you'll be bombarded with boring, repetitive tutorials. But that's just the beginning. Even without regards to the first game, Black and White: 2, is, simply put, a disappointment.

Well..

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 38
Date: October 07, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game didn't really impress me. It could have been a lot better if the designers would have the patience. The graphics are good, but the gameplay is no fun. If you want a strategy game, don't buy this.

this game sucks

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 16
Date: October 26, 2006
Author: Amazon User

nothing more really needs to be said.I'm running a 3GHz P4;256Mb ATI Radeon 9000 series PCI express video card and 2Gb of RAM and the game still hangs,lags and locks up on my computer. I tried uninstalling & reinstalling-same effect.DO NOT BUY THIS GAME

Didn't Recognize my Middle Mouse Button

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 10
Date: January 26, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Just a note about two technical problems I had with this game. First, during installation, it locked up my computer (XP Pro, fully-updated) twice (big red button time). The first time was on the 4th (out of 4) CDs. To work around that, I copied all four CDs to my hard drive and installed from there. That led to my second lockup. While merely copying the files to my hard drive, XP locked up again. After that hard boot, I was able to get all the files copied and installed. But, that second lockup leads me to suspect the problem was with the CDs themselves.

My second problem was an incompatibility with my Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 6000. During the initial tutorial, the game goes through a section on panning the view using the middle mouse button. The tutorial simply wouldn't recognize my mouse's middle button clicks. After searching the web, I found that people with the Logitech MX 1000 (amongst others) had the same problem. The solution was to use their mouse software to change the default middle mouse button to Autoscroll or middle-click. For some reason, doing the same with my Microsoft Wireless Laser Mouse 6000 software didn't work. At that point, I just said "to heck (hah) with it" and uninstalled the game. My son tells me that when he played the game, he had the same problem with his Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer. He worked around it by changing the options in the game to use the SHIFT key instead of the middle mouse button.

It's not much of a review, but hopefully, it might help others who are running into similar problems and are willing to fight with the game more than I was. I rate this game at 1 star out of 5.

Another slight disapointment from Lion's Head Studios.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 12 / 14
Date: December 19, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Alright, I never played the first Black and White, though I hear it was amazing. I never finished this one, though I did get to the 4th island, I lost interest after that.

it gets repetative, and doesn't stray much from your typical RTS. I found my creature rather annoying, until I figuered out he can really only do one thing very well. if you train him to be a gatherer, and only that, and train him to eat and sleep and such, he will do it and take care of himself, however if you also tell him to entertain the people and fight, well at least in my case, he over worked himself and was constantly exhausted until I would force him to sleep.

It was fun for a while but island after island had very little new content. I found unlocking things to be quite difficult. If you like RTS's ALOT, perhaps are a big fan of the Civilazation series or the Age of Titans game, then you might enjoy this, but I dont recomend it otherwise. it was alright while it lasted, but it just took too long to get anywhere exciting, if it goes anywhere exciting at all.

The graphics are pretty unimpressive for a game of is stature, it took so long for them to release this, you would think it would be stunning. the new Age of Empires is beautiful, this leaves alot to be desired, some of the graphics are down right pixilated and pointy where they shouldn't be at all. The game looks older then it is, it's disapointing.

Ofcourse you can decide whether to be benevolent or evil, I went with being good, it was easy to win if I just concentrated on building a very good city. I tried being more evil on another character, I also found that pretty easy. Its a huge time sucker.

the impressive thing about it is how many people there are on the screen. there are alot of people on the screen at one time allowing for huge battles, but, that didn't really make up for the other short comings for me, personally. It could have been much better I feel.

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