Populous II: Trials of the Olympian Gods
| Populous II: Trials of the Olympian Gods | |
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Cover art
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| Developer(s) | Bullfrog |
| Publisher(s) | Electronic Arts |
| Designer(s) | Peter Molyneux |
| Series | Populous |
| Platform(s) | Amiga, Atari ST, FM Towns, MS-DOS, Mac OS, Mega Drive, NEC PC-9801, Sharp X68000, SNES |
| Release | 1991 |
| Genre(s) | Real-time strategy, god game |
| Mode(s) | Single-player, two-player |
Populous II: Trials of the Olympian Gods is a 1991 strategy video game in the Populous series for the Amiga, Atari ST and MS-DOS-based computers, developed by Bullfrog Productions. Populous II was remade and remastered for the Nintendo DS in 2008. Populous II is a direct sequel to Bullfrog's earlier game Populous and is one of the company's most notable games.
Like its predecessor, Populous II is a god game, where the player is guiding his people in battle against the followers of an enemy god. Whereas Populous only generally alluded to undefined deities, Populous II is specifically set under the backdrop of Greek mythology. The player is a demigod, one of Zeus's countless children with mortal women, and has to battle one Greek deity at a time until finally facing his father. Zeus has promised to let the player into the Pantheon on Olympus if he can survive all the battles.
A data disk was also released for Populous II, titled Populous II: The Challenge Games. This was set in Japanese mythology instead of Greek, and had each level as its individual challenge, slightly in the style of a puzzle game.
Populous II is considerably more versatile and has a great deal more "divine intervention" effects than the original game. Populous would only bestow eight powers on the player but the sequel, Populous II has twenty-nine (30 in PC version). These are sub-divided into six categories of effect: earth, water, wind, fire, plants and people. The six categories have an individual "manna meter" which needs to be filled to a certain level to enable specific powers for usage. Manna is generated by population existing over time - the larger the population, the more manna is generated. Use of a power will deplete a set amount of manna and repeated use of the more devastating powers will empty the manna reservoir.
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