Famed game designer Peter Molyneux and his designers at Lionhead Studios are at it again. Ever since the company released their visionary first game, people have wondered what a follow up would look like. To be clear, the first Black & White, where the player literally became a god (in the form of a disembodied hand) and choose the path of good or evil, wasn't all roses. The first game was generally regarded as a very good tech demo for open-ended gameplay but not really much of a game. There was no way to exercise direct control over followers (other than to pick them up and drop them somewhere), no good way to replenish resources like trees, and no good way to take over rival town except to try to spread your sphere of influence over them and drop a fireball or two. All that while trying to train a creature using a difficult interface.

Much of the original Black & White's shortcomings are resolved in its sequel. It is now relatively painless to start building your own city and have your followers quickly populate it, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. The story of Black & White 2 is that you are a new god, a Greek god to be precise, and your followers are being slaughtered by the Aztecs. As a last ditch effort, you transport some survivors to a new realm and seek to regain your strength. Only then can you take on the Aztecs head on.

The mechanics of the sequel are very similar to part one, and anyone who already played the original will have a minor head start to those who are new. Nevertheless, starting a new game requires a mandatory tutorial where you re-learn all the controls and select your creature. Once again, your godliness takes on the form of a disembodied hand that has to hold and drag across the landscape in order to scroll. Using this hand, you can order your followers to construct buildings or turning them into disciples. Disciples perform specific tasks such as building, farming, worshipping, and procreating. They will do this one task until they day they die. Unfortunately, they don't pass on their disciple traits to their children. So, if you're wondering why there is as food shortage or why there aren't enough miners, it's probably because those people you assigned to do the task a few generations ago grew old and died. Gone is the requirement to constantly perform feats in order to keep your citizens believing in you, and thankfully so. However, feats are still present, and they are better than ever!

In order to build a thriving civilization, you need something called tribute. Tribute (god currency) is gained through achieving specific mission goals. The main goal is to eliminate the primary opposing force on the map, but minigames are scattered across all levels in the form of silver scrolls. Silver scroll tasks come in a wide rang of tasks, and include throwing objects, helping a monk break some rocks, or showing people the error of their ways. Some of these silver scroll tasks are some major riddles or puzzles that require a lot of thought. Tribute pretty much everything. You use it to purchase new building designs, embellishments to accent your city, additional skills for your creature, new feats, and best of all... epic miracles. Epic miracles are huge leaps above throwing fireballs, causing rain showers, or casting electricity. Epic feats are what you use when you really want to wreck things, and your opponents have no qualms about using them against you. These epic miracles require you to build a huge shrine and then charge it by having followers worship at it. Once charged you can do things like cause earthquakes, make armies abandon their god and join you, or spontaneously generate a dreaded volcano!

To combat rivals, the player is given a number of tools. Peaceful gods can focus on infrastructure. By building a stunning city with beautiful rich homes, you will convince rival towns that yours is the place to be! Each building and embellishment is worth a specific number of points. Every town has a point value, and if the impressiveness of your city is enough to meet or surpass that number, then the inhabitants will abandon their city and immigrate to yours. Once they reach your gates, you have the option to welcome them or deny entry, depending on what your mood is and whether or not you feel you can support them and make them happy. This process can be very time consuming, especially if you haven't earned enough tribute to buy the more impressive buildings. Impressive buildings don't support as many people as slum-like dwellings do, but they look very pretty. Impressive buildings also require extra resources to build. If this isn't the path you wish to take, then the next option will probably be much more appealing.

Yes, we are talking about war. Black & White lives up to its name by allowing players to be either good OR evil. Unlike the first game, players now have the power to generate and command armies, making it more like a real-time strategy game. If you want results, and you want them fast, brute force is the way to go. With a strong enough army, you can march into a city, take over its center, and the city instantly becomes yours. Be careful, though, creating an army requires lots of resources. Soldiers require twice the food of regular citizens, and they can't be assigned to do anything except guard and attack. Additionally, only men can be recruited to become soldiers. If you dedicate all your resources to massive armies, a population decline occurs, where your city is populated by nothing women and the elderly slowly making their way to extinction. However, anything that involves war is automatically categorized as evil... which might be a little too black and white. Even when all you have are archers up on the wall to defend against invaders, every enemy soldier that they kill counts as an evil act, slowly but surely turning you to the dark side whenever your opponent feels the need to throw his forces into your arrows. Strange, since one would usually regard defending one's home or fighting only when provoked as a good thing... a grey area to say the least. It is also regarded as an evil act to march a small group of soldiers to an abandoned city and take over its center. In this world, even bloodless conflicts are evil. The logic gets a little fuzzy, especially when you stop to consider the fact that the whole plot of the story is about getting revenge against the Aztec god and saving your people. Even towards the end, your both our guides (you have an angel and devil doling advice) state that there is no peaceful means toward a resolution, and that war is the best way to go. Considering that Peter Molyneux, when talking about the first B&W said it was impossible to become a completely good god (a philosophical choice they made in designing the game), it's probably safe to say that the same applied to this sequel. No matter what overall alignment outcome is, there is no doubt that having a military force significantly changes the way Black & White is played, and it is definitely for the better. You can now use force where force is necessary, and with plenty of aggressive opponents, it usually is.