A large improvement over the original
GRAPHICS:
Wow. Just wow. The graphics in this game are stunning. From the amazing-looking ocean, to the eruption of a volcano, to the hair of your creature, everything looks awesome, at least for a game in which you spend most of your time with the camera away from all the detail. The attention to detail is great. Grass sways as you move your god-hand through it, ants crawl around on the ground, and soldiers gather around and practice swordfighting, or sit around campfires if left idle for too long. Flowers grow in the fields as a good god, and your buildings are white and covered in plantlife. Cracks of lava cover the land of an evil god, and thorny vines grow around your buildings.
One thing to note, is that strangely, the game doesn't allow you to fully configure the graphics through it's menu. If it *thinks* your graphic card can't handle some features (namely, much of the stuff listed above), then you can't enable it in-game. You'll have to dig through a text file in the BW folder.
One minor thing that bugged me was that sometimes when fighting, creatures would seem to be in one place, ut actually be in another. This led to scenarios such as a creature looking as if he is attacking the air ten yards away from what he was actually hitting.
SOUND:
Nothing but great things to say about this as well. Zoom into a tavern and hear patrons chattering and cups clinking (or perhaps some music if the place is full enough). Toss a water miracle on some trees and get close so you can listen to them creak as they grow rapidly. Zoom way out and the wind howls deafeningly.
The voice acting on some of the characters wasn't up to par though. Nothing horribly, laughably bad, but it isn't great. At least your advisors sound good, who you'll be hearing from the most.
STORY:
This could have used some work. Minor spoilers ahead.
You play as a god, summoned to aid the Greek people against the Aztecs, which destroyed their civilization and left only a few survivors. The various characters in the game rattle on about a prophecy in which a weak people become strong with help of a god, blah, blah, blah. Pretty cliche and not very exciting, to say the least.
GAMEPLAY:
The meat of any review. As stated before, Black and White is a mixture of various genres. You play as a god, and the choice of playing good or evil affects your gameplay greatly.
Playing as a good god, most of your time is spent in your city, improving and expanding. If your city is impressive enough, the people of your enemies will convert and migrate to your town, leaving their old one deserted. The playstyle is ery "sim-city" like, constantly caring for the needs of your people and planning out your town, and occasionally defending against an attack (not a difficult task with even the most basic of offensive miracles and your creature).
The people of your city aren't just a statistic. You see them walking around, doing their day-to-day chores. They work, they play, they sleep, age, and they have children, which grow up to do the same. Villagers will automatically work on whatever the town needs the most at the moment, or you can assign them tasks. I have noticed that as your city get more and more crowded, the people get confused, and sometimes end up in giant bunches of people who sit in one spot and do nothing, no matter what you try.
Playing as an evil god, the game turns into an RTS. Your cities are there only to produce troops, and the needs of it's inhabitants are neglected. You can even throw them around and such if you'd like. Your main goal is to get out and conquer enemy towns. The RTS side of the game isn't very in-depth, as there are only 4 types of fighting units (that come in a few different visual flavors).
The first is swordsmen, which tear up archers but are creature food. The second are archers, which are decent against swordsmen if they have swordsmen of their own protecting them, but are chewed up when attacked. Archers also take out creatures with ease. The third is the catapult, which is mainly useful for assaulting cities, and doesn't fare well against any type of unit. The last is a creature, which can easily stomp over melee troops but dies quickly to archers. Frustratingly, your creature has miracles which he could use to easily dispatch groups of archers (such as a fireball), but almost never uses them, and you can't tell him to. The creature AI in battle isn't that great at all, really - you'll often see it standing around doing nothing for a few seconds in between attacks, or taking 10 seconds to grab a rock and throw it at a single soldier.
Despite it's simplicity, the RTS side is actually pretty fun, although fairly easy if you make sure your units are covered from their counters. Some of the missions throw some cool stuff at you, especially the final one.
As a god, you have many interesting powers yourself. You move about using your "god-hand", which you use to interact with the world. You can clench your fist and start punching things around, or pick up a rock and toss it at a building (which crumbles fairly realistically). You can pick up trees, and use them to construct buildings, among other things. You can also cast miracles, each of which has a different use. There are a few basic miracles, such as a water miracle to grow fields/trees, or put out fires. There's a meteor miracle, which rains down a violent shower of flaming rocks on your foes. There are also "epic" miracles, which require a LARGE amount of "tribute" (currency), wood, and ore to construct, and a ton of time for your people to worship to be able to cast it. They are pretty amazing. My favorite would be the volcano, which raises the land around the casting point into a large mountain, which then starts spewing lava which flows down realistically, burning all in it's path.
Last of all is your creature. At the beginning of the game, you pick from a baby lion, ape, wolf, or cow (add in tiger if you pre-ordered or got the special edition). Your creature is a curious being, and experiments with stuff all the time. You can reward or punish his behavior to increase/decrease the likelyhood of doing it again developing his personality. If you teach him to be do things such as gather supplies, entertain villagers, and water fields, he'll start to turn into a friendly, white beast. If you train him to eat villagers, destroy your enemies, and burn down forests, he'll gradually turn black and fierce-looking.
CLOSING:
BW2 is a great game, but it isn't for everyone. What I've noticed most is that it suffers from a lack of polish in some areas, and that it includes some horrible bugs (although the recent patch has fixed a lot of it). The game is unplayable by many people for this reason. I, myself, encountered a pretty bad one awhile back - my creature was deleted and replaced with a brand-new lion at the start of every map.
Despite the bugs, BW2 is a lot of fun. I'm confident that most will enjoy it - everyone I've showed it to has.