Any fans of the Black and White series?

Black and White was a very enjoyable despite its huge flaws. I always enjoyed the freedom of the game and the unique experience. While it had a learning curve and was far from user friendly with large amounts of time spent casting miracle wood as the landscape would be deforested very rapidly with the town building.

Black and White 2 was one of the most disappointing game I ever played with the game being reduced to a basic city builder with RTS and a list of issues such as a broken AI. I won every map by simply building an impressive city or sending my creature with 2 units of archers to wipe out the enemy. The challenge and freedom was basically wiped out in the second game.

I always liked the creature which could make your life easier if you trained it in spells such as food, heal, wood... or harder with teaching it fire ball or lightening. One of the best moments in the first black and white was after finding a lighting miracle I managed to teach my creature the miracle. Keep in mind that it required quick blasts every so often for it to learn. In the end the creature learnt it and used it to burn down a forest. When I am getting bored and had taught all the miracles on the first land to the creature, I was about to carry on with the story. My creature on the other hand had chosen this moment to use the lightening miracle in the middle of the town. Had to wait half an hour to increase population and rebuild the wood and food supplies in preparation for the next land after most of the supplies were destroyed.

I wonder if the first black and white will ever turn up on GOG.

Any one have good experiences with either game or just hated them?

I would be a fan if EA gave me the possibility to buy these games.

This.

It's on my "instant buy when it arrives on GOG" list.

I would be a fan if I could get it to run.

I have both PC and Mac copy of it (Mac one is complete edition).
Never got too much into it though, as camera it used always turned me off, and creature handling was unreliable.

Let's just say that the first one is the game that kind of shatter the absolute and blind faith I had in Molyneux at the time.

I don't "hate" them, just found them to be very "average"; sort of Populous-lite with the gimmicky creature added to it.

The creature was a bit of a pain. You could teach it miracle food, but it would rarely use it.

Still the random behaviour was kind of nice. I would normally just tie it to the town store and leave the creature there for the majority of the game.

But I can fully understand why it would put people off. Much like the vital town expansion which was need to complete lands that required ungodly amounts of wood and the weird building construction interface.

I very much share your view phillippassmore, B&W 1 was an excellent game. It was only after reading through guide on how to play it that I understood what I was missing. Simply diving in can cause you to not manage your village desires correctly, and vastly overuse resource miracles, until your nothing but a dancing wood and grain monkey for your villages (meanwhile your creature goes completely off on one).

I had dreamed of great things for B&W 2, I eagerly bought the collectors edition of the game on day of release, expecting the frustrations of the old game to be smoothed out, with a few nice new features and graphics. Instead it was a game that had clearly failed, and they just wrapped it up as best they could and threw it out to reclaim dev costs. I think it has to rank as one of my biggest dissapointments.

Mine acted retarded most of the time. Not to mention that I usually didn't have enough time before he finishes what he's doing to select it and slap it/ reward it. I kinda understood that the point is to buff creature to it's best, especially w/ Creature isle expansion.

I was fine with building interface, but not with the fact that sometimes those blocks didn't want to stick together. I remember cursing Lionhead & Feral quite a lot for that.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhh

We got this notion, that we'd quite like to sail the ocean,
So we're building a big boat to leave here for good.

We're not keen on sinking, so we're all here sittin' thinkin'
Cause we're going nowhere til we've got some woooood

Eidle eidle eee
Eidle eidle eee

... and I forget how it goes after that, and probably got some bits wrong :P From memory, is my defense!

Oh, yes, that song about erectile dysfunction of pilgrims...

I remember being intrigued by B&W but I don't remember enjoying it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXkw4j0x1h8

Heh, miracle wood...

I remember the first time I stayed up late playing and it started whispering my name, creepy as hell...