Granted, the controls are far from intuitive, but an even slightly seasoned gamer should be able to have them memorized (or if all else fails, customized) within a reasonable period of time. Although it can’t help that you’re actually playing this on a Mac. Your life (at least the parts of it you spend playing Black & White) would be a lot easier if you could right-click now and again.

As I was saying: this game is annoying if you suck at it, but it’s great fun when you’re winning. Converting enemy Villages, managing your own and making sure your Creature isn’t causing trouble (or if he is, then making sure that it’s for another god) requires a large degree of skill at micromanagement, and the game doesn’t go out of its way to teach you that. Instead it points out the important things about the game mechanics and lets you figure out for yourself the best way of doing things. Unlike most of the crap that the ‘intellectual’ game market is flooded with (meaning things like strategy and puzzle games, not reflex-driven games like shooters), this game is difficult, because assumes you’re actually good at what you do and doesn’t lower the learning curve and hold your hand with everything. And like all good strategy games, once things start to go wrong, they go wrong very quickly and very badly. “Do it right the first time, or don’t do it at all” is the idea.

Secondly, I think your description of B&W as a simulation-cum-strategy game is mistaken. There’s precious little actual simulation involved here; it just looks that way because of the complicated way the people work. But make no mistake: villagers are not pets that need to be taken care of, they’re resources that need to be managed to be of any use to the player, just like Food and Wood. You need them to extend your reach over the land, and to power Miracles to help take over your enemies’ Villages or to teach your Creature; but to do that, they need to be happy and not dying of hunger or exhaustion- and even then they die of old age eventually, so you need to make sure that Villages encourage children being born. Why? Because the game revolves around keeping the little whiners happy, like Tamagotchi? No. Because otherwise, you have no power and you lose. It’s precisely the same principle as what happens when you order your drones to stop mining in StarCraft, it’s just that much more complicated.

In short, I think your review is too negative, simply because it takes an incorrect view of the game. Play B&W again, but don’t look at it as a simulation game, and I guarantee you’ll have more fun. You still might not like it; it’s not easy, and it’s not for everyone. But at least try to look at the game the way it’s meant to be looked at.