This, combined with the town / villager management issues really results in a smorgasbord of gameplay problems that readily become apparent before the game’s second, non-tutorial mission is even over. The "good versus evil" alignment system is so horribly skewed that I almost completely gave up on caring about it shortly into the campaign. Apparently picking up trees is now considered an "evil" act, as was collecting resources from my storage building. Because only an evil god collects a pittance of one thousand units of grain from an overflowing storehouse to help feed the dying villagers in another town half way across the map, right? Adding to the infuriation was the fact that placing down certain kinds of buildings (like, say, a basic house) is also considered an "evil" act, as is any kind of military action whatsoever. Even if a huge army of archers and warriors were bashing down the gates to my heavenly citadel of divine flowery goodness, sending my underpowered creature out to try and defend my stake of land against the unwarranted invasion was considered a "bad" thing to do, and every time my wolf splattered an enemy foot soldier in between his greasy toes, another big red "Evil" sign appeared above him. Summarized, satisfying my villagers was way too much god damned work, and towards the end of the game I was tempted to simply spread fireballs around at random to help give those sassy pigs some perspective on "good" versus "evil". Except, oh, wait, you apparently can’t cast harmful spells on your own villagers anymore either. Plucking one up and hurling him across the map to his doom, or dropping a boulder on his face still works to hilarious effectiveness of course, but try as I might, I just couldn’t get the bonfire of corpses I desired. Research yielded this to be come kind of crazy "design choice", which makes me really wonder what the hell kind of game Lionhead was aiming for when they developed this. Oh yes, and the whole "godly control over the time of day" thing was cool, until I realized that the villagers depended exclusively on me to turn the sun off so they could get some sleep rather than let time progress "naturally". Ever hear of putting a paper bag over your head?

At least the graphics are nothing short of spectacular. My earlier commentary involving the game’s opening is definitely not without merit, as the amount of graphical detail offered by Black & White 2 is tremendous. Trees and grass swayed in my presence as I moved my "godly hand" around, and zooming up close showed bugs moving around, chickens and other animals going about their inane business, and other fine details. Other little geographical elements like waterfalls, rivers, ravines, mountains, and of course ancient relics all offer their share of graphical detail, and not only does the water look fantastic, but watching a sunset reflect on it doubles the beauty. Bloom effects are also used to help augment a "good" or "evil" creature’s appearance, and the fur-mapping and complex animation system are really put to excellent use (it’s a shame however that a creature’s maximum size seems to be much smaller than it was back in the first Black and White). However, this animation system soon developed some really weird quirks, and I notice that when my creature was sprinting long distances, he would sometimes get "hung up" on an area, then suddenly teleport and appear several feet closer to his destination. A creature’s animation (and pathfinding) are also tragically broken when working inside of a crowded village, as my wolf commonly got stuck trying to navigate around groups of buildings, and also clipped right through walls or other objects when moving or picking something up. The same applies to villager animations too, a subject which I won’t even begin to touch on. As a final complaint, the game engine itself is also something of a pig and has a very noticeable memory "bloat" problem, becoming significantly slower the more I played and clearly scooping up my available memory by the bucket-load. Given the level of texture and graphical detail and dynamic nature of the game’s terrain engine, this didn’t surprise me terribly, but I was hoping for some stroke of coding genius that would bypass this sort of issue for an upper-range system such as mine. Guess not everyone can be John Carmack…

To summarize this beastly article (I suppose it looks more like a rant, but I’d prefer this to illustrate my disappointment in what should have been a fantastic game), Black and White 2 is a clear and present letdown. The campaign is lackluster both in terms of plot and scope (even the optional "side" missions, while still present, aren’t nearly as creative or engaging as the original’s – and where’s my damn singing sailors?), the creature’s capabilities as both a godly avatar and autonomous implement seem to have been seriously mutilated, the villagers are all arrogant upright bastards who deem any act of even slightly questionable morality to be worthy of burning me at the stake (yet still cry out "WE NEED SLEEP" because I don’t randomly change the time of day to suit their absurd schedules), and the entire game simply reeks of being an incomplete shadow to something that was obviously meant to be greater and more-developed – given more production time, of course. Oh yes, and those of you who enjoyed having your own personalized creatures duke it out in multiplayer can forget it now, since Black and White 2 doesn’t have any, nor even any kind of "skirmish" gameplay. You beat the main campaign, and that’s it. I’ve got to hand it to Peter Molyneux for somehow turning out a game inferior to that of the original. I can appreciate the concept behind a "new direction" approach, but I personally felt that despite the original game’s imperfections, Black and White had the right initial idea, and had this been explored further and refined for the sequel, could have turned out a tremendous title. Sadly, this is not the case, and I’m back once again to stewing in my imperfect world.