I remember first time that I've played BnW2, my friend's dad bought the Collectors Edition and we played it for the whole weekend. To this day I remember that I couldn't put a leash on my creature because I skipped the tutorial, this game taught me to never skip the tutorials.
It was funny, quirky and looking back at it now, not very hard (especially compared to BnW 1) but it was ton of fun. As I've completed BnW2 many many times, I went through Impress, Army and mixed way of achieving victory and I've got to say, most of the time I used army only for defence to focus on city building but watching my creature fight alongside bows and swords was a sight to behold too.
This game awakened the love for RTS, city-builders and management games in me, I vividly remember being proud of myself for designing a working city that could govern itself without any issues.
It had a lot of flaws such as AI doing weird stuff, creature locking itself between buildings etc. but it was all overshadowed by the graphics, miracles, easter eggs and hidden mechanics (looking at you immortal man), marvelous voice acting and OST.
Sadly, due to the Lionhead studios being first bought and then closed, there are issues with intellectual property and rights to the franshise which saddens me deeply. It's sad that we probably will never see a Black andWhite 3 or a Remaster of the originals but to big corporations 'It's just a game, forgotten and shelved for eternity'. For many of us this game is a treasured memory, a medium that allowed us to have mighty ton of fun or even introduction to management and god-sim games. For me it's not a game, it's a part of my journey growing up, that still holds up even to this day.