Populous II: Trials of the Olympian Gods

Populous II: Trials of the Olympian Gods develops the concept of the first installment and moves the player into a world inspired by Greek mythology, where an anonymous deity becomes one of the Olympian gods striving for dominance over their own followers. The basic principle remains the same — terraforming the landscape, casting spells, and indirectly leading the tribe to expand — but the game adds a more extensive spell tree, new monsters, and a more prominent role for heroes who can independently influence the course of the battle for territory and set out on their own to explore the enemy coastline.

Compared to its predecessor, Populous II is more complex and offers a more elaborate magic system divided into several schools, among which the player chooses right at the start of the game, giving them more room for their own playstyle, from aggressively destroying enemies to slower infrastructure building and population development. On the Amiga, the game again benefited from smooth scrolling and clear isometric graphics, to which more detailed unit animations and more impressive depictions of natural disasters such as volcanoes, earthquakes, or floods were added, and the game could also be played against a second player via a serial cable, which was especially suited to longer duels between two seasoned players. The expanded world also offers a more elaborate view of managing individual islands and their inhabitants.

The musical accompaniment and sound effects flesh out the mythological atmosphere and give the game a stamp of epic scale that the first installment did not yet have, whether it's thundering storms or roaring volcanoes. Populous II was received at release as a worthy and in many respects improved sequel, one that pushed the god-game genre further forward and cemented Bullfrog's position as one of the key strategy studios of the 1990s. Even today the game is remembered as one of the high points of the entire series and one of the last great Amiga hits of the genre.

Why play: For fans of the first Populous, the sequel offers a more epic mythological atmosphere and improved depth, making it one of the series' high points and one of the last great Amiga hits of the genre.