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On top of that you have the hideously high system requirements required to support the medium-level graphics, the relatively primitive nature of the lauded RTS gameplay and the horrible interface, all of which paint B&W2 in quite a poor light. On the other hand it had a innovative city-building technique (if the cursor weren't so difficult to use it would have been something special), the easiness of Pet Training and improved pet AI, some clever new buildings and a peripheral AI would have brought your city to life by automating its civilians.

These features drag the game out of the gutter and when combined with the hope for improvement gave it a nice round score.

Hence our statement that the game is controversial, and devastating for Lionhead's image in the community. Fortunately for them and Mister Molyneux, a lot of gamers put the blame partially on the feet of the publishers (as always) who pushed for a premature release.

The expansion was announced not long after the game was released (the second week if memory isn't failing us), which at the time was met somewhat cynically. This was after a 150MB patch was released two days after the launch date, a patch that invalidated all previous saved games. The feeling at the time was that the publishers (the rat bastards) were scrambling to appease a dissatisfied customer base, and the things they were announcing in the expansion (skirmish mode, multiplayer - maybe, an enemy god) were widely seen as the things that should have been in the original.

And now it is here.

A quick summary: Skirmish: no. Multiplayer: no. Enemy god: yes.

On top of that they have bundled four new levels in a new campaign, a bunch of new buildings and a new creature (the turtle). The basic plot of the game is that the Aztecs you defeated in the original have been sacrificing to their dead god ever since, and finally the shear strength of their belief has brought this god back to life, or more correctly undeath. This god is now massing his undead legions in a bid to destroy you and cleanse the world of all living, and you, of course, have to stop him.

You can do this in the traditional sense by either countering his evil with great good, or by swamping his evil with even greater evil. Being as good is a little more difficult in this expansion, as the maps are significantly larger than in the first game so building a city big enough to reach the outer limits is quite an effort. Playing as evil is still boring because of the combat (evil cities still look cool, rest assured), but you can feel safe knowing that the enemy AI is still pathetic, with simply one squad after another being sent to their deaths against your walls or creature.

All in all, depending on your playing style, this expansion can be breezed trough in six to eight hours - if you complete all minigames relatively quickly, that is, which for some of us who are less analytically minded can be no small feat.

Each new minigame grants tributes just like in the original, which when combined with the tribute choices at the beginning (Battle of the Gods begins with a quick start mode for those not importing from B&W2) allows players to purchase some of the major wonders, like volcanoes, which were somewhat difficult to get in the original without forgoing everything else.

The new god is the only real dynamic to the existing gameplay, but he isn't too challenging and actually comes off as slightly disappointing. We wanted to play catch with fireballs.

So all in all Battle of the Gods is a moderate improvement over B&W2. If you were looking for something to reignite your interest in the game this might be it, but if you were disappointed with the sequel then don't expect this expansion to fix all the let-downs. It's just a new polish on a tarnished piece of silverware.