I do not give Populous II 5 stars out of nostalgy, but because it is incredibly fun even nowaday.
The gameplay is simple albeit brilliant: acting as a god (to be more precise, a demi-god aspiring to godhood) the player has at his disposal a wide array of divine intervention to wipe away the infidel "evil" reds and to increase at the same time the number of loyal worshipers from the "good" blue tribe,
map after map, until is given the chance to claim godhood from Zeus himself.
The game has a huge number of maps (the first tens are basically the tutorial but the player is expected to read the manual to understand a few basic concepts) and, out of the "conquest" mode where maps are played sequentially under predetermined conditions, there is a "sandbox" mode to increase replayability (which is basically limitless); the player does not have to play all the 1000 maps, but, depending on the score, may skip several of them after each victory: this ensures a balanced challenge, even if sometimes may seem needlessly repetitive.
Being 20 years old graphics are not so fancy, but are nonetheless functional and even cute to a certain extent (by the way, in my opinion 2d games suffer much less than 3d ones under this regard) and, once the game begins, I get sucked in and do not care anymore; certain sound effects were nasty even at the time (e.g. the plague) but disabling them would make the game harder.
In the years there have been several "god games" (the best was Black and White) but no other title came close to Populous II in giving the same feeling of "unrestricted power" within the limits of its standard rules
