Micromanagement

And perhaps in spite of the designer’s intentions, it is the villages, and not the creature or the combat that are the games true focus this time around. The great bulk of your time will be spent managing the building of your villages and the residents’ needs.

Yes, even those players who decide to tread through the entire game exploring the darker side of their nature, will find they still need to make sure their people have enough to eat, even if it is in hovels rather than mansions. So in every level, on every island you will begin to work your way through an expanding technology tree, which allows you to “buy” more efficient and specialized buildings that will add to your power and your people’s productivity. The purchases are made by way of tribute – a measure of your follower’s respect and awe for you. It can be gained through assisting in your town’s affairs with your powers or through solving a number of puzzles indicated by scrolls hovering around the islands of the gameworld.

You click on the scrolls with Black & White’s primary interface - your mouse controlling a disembodied hand on screen. Almost identical to the control method in the first game, you use it to move, pick up objects, slap or stroke your animal, and cast spells. And you will need to do all of them as you try to solve the puzzles. A few of which will actually provide some of the most enjoyable moments of the game, while others are simply ridiculous.


In one case we were asked to help a hermit with an obnoxious rooster to catch some sleep. The solution was to speed up the day/night cycle so that the rooster quickly became hoarse and could no longer crow. Admittedly, it was very interesting to simply click on the sky and rotate the mouse to cause the sun to rise, but not satisfying in what it accomplished. And that is a great illustrator of the game as a whole. Great graphics, god-like powers, and an intuitive interface, all misspent on an often tedious city management sim. When it is all said and done with, you feel like you just moved the sun through the sky, all just to subdue a cock.