Black & White 2 is a video game developed by Lionhead Studios and published by Electronic Arts. It blends real-time strategy, city building and god game elements. The player (the last god) is called to the world from a "pure prayer" and thus comes upon a scene of a Greek city being devastated by a huge Aztec army. After the player saves a certain amount of people, their people are transported to a new land with a handful of refugee worshippers, the player must re-establish a power base from which to eventually defeat the Aztec empire. To do so, the player must conquer the Norse, the Japanese and the Aztecs, by peace, or war.

Throughout the game there is a theme of "The prophecy" which states that a tribe will be destroyed by the mightiest power in the world but will receive a god who will lead them to glory and dominance of the world.

The only way the player can interact with this world directly is through the player's hand, with which the player can pick up people, trees, food, and influence the ground. The player can also cast miracles. However, a certain amount of "Mana" (in essence, "Prayer Power") from the player's believers is needed to do this.

One of the game's most innovative features is that its user interface is almost buttonless. The HUD (Heads-Up Display) is much simpler than other such "creator" games, such as The Sims and Rollercoaster Tycoon, and the player sees little else on the screen but the world, the player's hand, and toolbars which the player can make disappear. To do things such as cast miracles, the player moves the hand in such a way to make a symbol on the ground, which is called a gesture. This activates the miracle, and if the player has enough mana, it appears in the player's hand ready to cast. Miracles have a variety of different uses. There are 6 ordinary miracles: fire, lightning, water, shield, heal, and meteor, (each of which can be thrown or poured), and 4 epic wonders, which are hurricane, siren, earthquake, and volcano.

The player's creature can do most things the player can do, such as cast miracles. They will grow slowly for a long time, and can become very large. Since the player trains him, his personality can become whatever the player makes of it. They may be an aide in supporting the player's kingdom or the ultimate soldier in the player's army.

There are three possible paths to take in this game: Good, Evil, or a more neutral combination of the two; although this decision is not discrete. The typical path of an evil god will be one of fear, torture, conquest and destruction using epic armies and building fearsome places, such as a pit of torture, while that of a good god will be one of benevolence, more positive city building, and lots of looking after the populace, particularly defending it from attack. Both of these require ore and wood, of which there is a limited amount (though some maps have bottomless mines and water miracles can turn a single tree into a forest used correctly), making players choose a strategy - but there is plenty of slack in each.

The game features Norse, Aztec, Japanese, and Greek tribes. The player's tribe is the Greeks.

Minimum PC Configuration

Processor - Intel® Pentium 4 1.6 GHz or equivalent
Memory - 512Mb RAM
HDD Space - 3.5 Gb free hard disk space
Operating System - Windows® 2000/XP
DVD ROM Speed - Any Speed
Videocard - DirectX 8+ based video card which supports pixel shading (see Notes on video card chipsets below)
Soundcard - DirectX 8 compliant sound card
DirectX - DirectX 9c+ (supplied with install)

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