An RTS with base building and resource managemnet
Of course, the other side of this coin is that with this new structured play come a heavy RTS element with the building of armies and the storming of enemy towns and villages. This, just like the ‘win enemies over with my impressive town’ approach is a time consuming enterprise as well as you can’t just go off and build a dirty great big army all at once. A large army is supported by a large city , which is supported by a large farming industry and built with a large number of houses etc etc, so the basic gameplay is still the same except rather than just keep on building you can stop and decided that now’s the time to create or expand your army and then go on the rampage.
Click for larger imageYou’ve got just two types of units though, foot soldiers or archers and don’t expect any rampaging C+C style sweeps through the enemy cities in overwhelming numbers as you’ll have to nibble away at the enemy defences first before you can belt in there with a full blown attack. Once the full war is raging its impressive stuff with hundreds of soldiers battling it out with swords and arrows and the graphics engines allows you to zoom in nice and close to watch the individual ‘mano a mano’ combat.
Click for larger imageBut the battles here are really just wars of attrition and your success is founded not in your tactics, (there aren’t any except to attack, retreat or defend) but in how large and well built your city is. If you’ve got that bit right you can support the cost of the war in terms of followers and keep feeding new platoons into the fray. Of course, godly miracles can make all the difference as well and here is where the poor AI shows it’s weakness.
Click for larger imageYou first begin to suspect the AI isn’t all that much cop when, in level 2, you find yourself under attack for the first time. Now you’re fairly weak but once you’ve had a chance to establish yourself the enemy makes foray against your town which is fairly easy to repel. Having a quick shifty reveals he’s got a pretty large town which is well defended, but rather than just come on in and slaughter your lot, the AI sends his army in dribs and drabs, even camping them right outside your walls making them easy prey for the odd fireball miracle or archers. In the mass battles, where you might be careful about when and where you cast a miracle, the AI doesn’t seem to care quite so much and will happily blast a couple of his own platoons to take down one of yours. I even watched as he killed an entire platoon of his own to take out the last two men from one of my platoons I’d given up on.
Click for larger imageSadly, the further you progress, the more you realise that there’s nothing more to Black and White 2 than what you see in the first two or three levels. Sure, you can argue that there’s all sorts of unlocks to obtain and new islands to explore but there’s none of the fun puzzle elements that were so wonderfully distracting in the first game. I honestly spent four hours on the first level of the original Black and White and still found it totally engrossing… This time around I could barely wait to get off a level in the desperation to avoid the boredom of building yet more wells and houses and trickle feeding platoons into the war. This desire to just get through the game in the hope of seeing something new comes as a severe blow to someone who’s such a fan of the first game.