Originally posted by: MmmSkyscraper
No crash bugs for me. The control system sucks, I played the original and it was never this bad. The game runs sluggishly on this rig that can handle D3 and HL2 no problem. The constant comments from the enemy become grating and tedious. The AI is poor, platoons ignoring the enemy or getting told your town is being destroyed when the enemy is stuck outside your walls and can't get in. WTF. The creature seems pointless as there's no AI there anymore and you're busy nannying the townspeople as they can't do anything for themselves. The quest bits are garbage, picking things up and moving them around. Wow.
Hmm, I thought the villager AI was VASTLY improved over the original. My creature did a lot of work building my town, gathering resources, etc, without my direct input. After I trained him of course. From the creature menu, you can trigger behavior, then reward/punish him when he thinks about it.
My villagers always took care of their needs, provided they were able. For example, if they needed food, but they did not have the farm space, they would not be able to grow enough food. Same goes for wood, ore, and mana.
Military AI could use some improvement, I agree. Enemy platoons would just sit outside my gate until I set my creature after them, or dropped them all with a fireball or lightning bolt. Commanding armies in combat was also a b!tch, getting attack commands out against specific enemies. Never had them say my town was being crushed if they were stuck outside though.
As far as B&W2 running sluggishly on a system that runs D3 and HL2 well, HL2 and D3 are no where near the level of B&W2 in terms of visuals. Neither HL2 nor D3 have the zoom capabilities of BW2, the polygon counts, special effects, etc. The game runs very smoothly on my system, P4 3.4Ghz, 2GB RAM, and a 6800GT. Only time that I've gotten lag thus far was when I had several platoons in active combat, with my creature, and I was zoomed out far enough to see multiple active towns at once. Once I zoomed in to only the battles, it sped up again.
Lastly, I've beaten the game. Last mission is a step up in difficulty from previous lands. I thought I was screwed until the Norse and Japanese showed up to back me up. After that, it was a cake walk to sit back and build an impressive town.
To improve BW2, they need 1)Skirmish/sandbox mode, 2)Multiplayer would be nice, 3)A map editor and random world generator