I have to say that I agree with Gamemastr1's 'soap box' nearly 100%. I had a few technical complaints about the game itself, the final collectible in both lab and relic section were dropped by children after being chased off by the child masked villager, and still have yet to respawn.
Click to reveal..
The Fog did not turn on the "conversion-over-the-head-lamp."

While the mildly annoying and off-putting tactic of turning mothers into useless caricatures of true motherhood remained for the fifth installment, as well as a complete lack of ethnic diversity, *(which is not some insurmountable feat by the way)*
which is old news. And at least for myself; Was a minor irritation that I was willing to ignore for the sake of a good, clean, game that could be played by parent or child without any awkward concerns about what might come up during a game.

However,I found the thinly veiled Monotheistic theme to be over the line, inappropriate and shameful. Particularly so. for a group that was so proud to have received the the 2005 Parents' Choice Recommended
Award.
http://www.ldw.com/press_releases/VillageSim_award.pdf

I have been playing and enjoying the Virtual villagers Virtual families since the beginning and simply shrugged off elements
Click to reveal..
(The Golden Child at the end of VV1)
in previous games that seemed to be uncomfortably ministerial in nature.

Virtual Villagers 5 simply went too far. The representation of the non-believers as "Heathens," "Aggressive Heathens," and even "Scary Heathens" was truly repugnant, intolerant, small minded and had to place in a game that had no age appropriate warning. The excuses that I made for myself, when I initially started the game, (eg. that The god being referred to was really the game player, etc) quickly wore thin. The ruse of implanting indoctrinating ideals into a child friendly game, truly repugnant,(I had an event wherein;
Click to reveal..
A believer, who was wavering, asked one of the little villagers if his God could give him a sign, to which I thought, "Of course I can, the god is me after all and the tools are built right into the game," so I chose to give him a sign. To which the in game result was that the little wavering villager became a heathen and when the message on the screen explained the result it stated something about "Faith comes from with in."
This quote is obviously not referring to "The Hand" which is me, but to some (most likely)Monotheistic ideology.
Even the direct references to me/you/the gameplayer was subtly changed in this version, through the statue.
We went from occasionally seeing individual villagers, or events, where they worship "the hand from above" which was euphemistically the mouse cursor we used to move our little villagers about; To "The Hand of God." statue that they now worship at.
I won't even get started on "the Filthy encampment" where the non-believing 'heathens' are relegated after my little fascists whites take over the island.
Furthermore the fact that you have to scare the last few into belief seems terribly fitting for an immoral game that makes a mockery of both the believers of any faith, and non-believers alike. Shame Shame Shame on you "Founder" of LDW Arthur Humphrey and "Co-Founder" Carla Humphrey.

Below is in reference to the technical issues surrounding the ethnicity of villagers.
*As some may have already noted, the creators of the "rip-off Virtual Villagers game" titled "My Tribe," were able to give a broader representation of flesh tones without making race specific delineations that would have made some of the head graphics incompatible with some of the body graphics.*