This is my first review ever, so please after reading it tell me what I did wrong and where I made mistakes, because there will most likely be some. And please leave constructive critisism. And there will be spoilers, but those will be at the end and in spoiler tags. You have been warned
Fable 2 is the latest game from Peter Moleneux. His previous game, Fable, was overly hyped and as a result a dissapointment. It was a good game, just overhyped and brought down by promises that couldn't be delivered. Fable 2 is more or less the same thing, an overhyped game that is foundementaly good, just overhyped.
I apologize in advance for the length
Fable 2's gameplay is incrediably simple. "X" is to use swords and other melee weapons. "Y" is to use ranged weapons like guns and crossbows, and "B" is to use magic. Its all very simple and easy to use, and chaining magic, guns, and melee results in some pretty cool looking attacks, plus an experience boost. However it never gets any more complex than swithcing between magic/melee/range on the fly, which makes it feel empty. Plus, going "pure" or only using 1 skill is really hard, as melee and magic seem to be the strongest and going pure range would be just silly, since range attacks are arguably the weakest attacks. Save for headshots and point blank shotgun shots, its not that strong. The combat system is fun nonetheless, and can be easily mastered by just about anyone.
Another very important part of gameplay is your dog. The dog is implemented very well, and is almost never a hassle. Your little buddy finds treasure, helps you fight, and preforms tricks whenever you "talk" to the citizens. You can use books to teach your dog plenty of tricks and can also teach him to be a better fighter and treasure hunter. A better fighter will make him do more damage, and a better treasure hunter lets him find treasure thats farther away from the player. However, he does have his flaws, as he seems to like to get stuck on the occasional rock or tree.
If you have ever played "The Sims", then you'll have a pretty good idea of what talking to people in Fable 2 is like. You select some expressions from a menu wheel, and your avatar preforms them. So all socializing really boils down to is doing a bunch of odd actions to get people to like you. Not the deepest social mechanic I've ever seen, but it can lead to some humorous results. Like failing to fart could result in your avater crapping his/her pants. Thats another place where Fable 2 shines, its dark sense of humor.
If you can get an NPC to like you enough you can marry them. From there you can have kids if you don't use a condom. Families are pretty annoying and don't really serve any real purpose. It seems like its in the game "just because it can be". You can also have more than 1 family, but that is just a giant burden.
I was just questing around and returned home, but I couldn't find my son. I eventually learned that he ran off to "be just like daddy" and try to fight some hobbes. Now I needed to save him. Its times like these that make the game show its potential. It was unscripted and just happened. Another moment is when I got blackmailed by someone who said he would expose my 3 marraiges. Another example of unscripted events that shows what this game could have been. I just wish that there were more moments like these in the game.
Everything in Fable 2, from the items to the side quest has some humor. The only thing missing some funny qualities is the main quest/story, which I will touch on later. Every item has a description, and almost all descriptions will give you a chuckle, and some will make you laugh outright. The side quests are also really fun, and are actually my favorite part of the game. You have your normal RPGish quests, kill bandits, bounty hunter, ect, and you have more interesting quests, like a grandmother who asks you to save her grandson who just went exploring in a tomb, only the grandson is actually a hardened adventurer and his grandma is overprotective. There are many more funny and fun side quests.
However, for all the fun sidequests there are these dredfully repetative things called "jobs".
All these "jobs" are are minigames where you have to hit a button as a little marker moves back and forth into a "safe zone".
Now imagine yourself cutting wood and serving beer while trying to hit the green spot and thats all jobs are
And for some reason, one interesting job is unavailable to the player, prostitution. You see other people making money from it, why stop the player from doing it? I guess it would have come under fire from the media but still, in a game about making any choice you want, coupled with the games dark and adult tones, I'm suprised that you couldn't be a prostitute.
But you can still wear the clothes
Fable 2's graphics and art style are very nice. I has a sort of storybook feel to it. In other words there is a lot of color in every part of the world, which is nice considering all of the gray and brown "realistic" games coming out nowadays. The graphics aren't on the same level as say Gears of War but they are very good nonetheless. However my only gripe with it is that there is so much damn bloom in the game it can get blinding at times. It looks really good, but they could have turned it down. Looking at the sun creates some cool shadow effects around your character and objects, but still hurts the eyes. Toning it down couldn't hurt.
The sounds, music, and voice acting are really nice. The voice acting does tend to change from brilliant and believable to hilarously bad. The sounds are really good, from a gunshot, to a troll rising from the ground. Its really well done. The music I found was very subtle, I only really noticed it during battles, and it was actually really nice.
The enemies you face in Fable 2 are cut and pasted from every other RPG. You fight bandits, Balverines (werewolves), Hobbes (goblin like creatures), and the undead. There could have been much more put into these enemies. The trolls are my favorite enemy to fight, and shows what Fable 2 could have been if there was more care put into the other enemies. Trolls are massive beasts that never move, but that doesn't mean that they are easy. They hurl rocks at the player and send small shockwaves through the ground at you. They are fun to fight and I just wish more enemies were created with the care the trolls were.
The Troll, the coolest enemy in Fable 2
The choices you make in Fable 2 effect the world in a number of ways. And while making choices seems to be in every game these days, Fable 2 is the only game I played where you actually see the concequences of your choices bear fruit.
you can join 2 factions, the temple of light, and the temple of shadows. If you join the temple of shadows you eventually have the choice to raid and kill everyone in the temple of light and the surronding village. If you do the village turns darker and has an eerie feel to it, and it turns into a ramshackle village. If you join the temple of light, you can help the village and temple expand which turns the village into a small town and the temple gets bigger. The area prospers and everyone is happy.
There are many choices like this, so it does become predictable. But it is still nice to be able to influece the world and you can see the results.
You can customize your character a great deal in Fable 2. At least determaning what clothes you wear and what your hairstyle/beard/moustache/makeup looks like. Other things like height and muscle size are controlled by skills and how good/evil you are and what you eat. Sadly when you max out your strenght if your a woman then your character looks like a guy with boobs. While guys look like steroid abusers. There is no way to reverse this that I know of. And if you use magic a lot then your body starts getting glowing blue markings on it. Which looks cool for a while but eventually loses its charm and you want it to go away. There is no way to get rid of the neon blue designs on your characters as well, which is lame. And you can get fatter or skinnier depending on what you eat. If you eat meats, you get fat, vegatables like celery keep you skinny. But for some reason when you eat pies you get "curruption points". Why the hell is it considered currupt if I eat a pie? It does not make sense.
Hopefully in future DLC there are potions or something that removes the neon blue designs and makes fully maxed characters look less like steroid abusers and more normal. There is already a height potion and fat/skinny potions in one of the DLC's so maybe there is hope.
The characters in Fable 2 are interesting to say the least. I'm just going to focus on the main characters. *spolers ahead*
Lusien is an interesting character. His wife and daughter died not to long ago and now he spends his time greaving and trying to find a way to bring them back. He could have had a lot more depth to him and been made into an interesting character. "Loving father and husband trying to bring back his family at any cost" He had a motive that people can relate with and could have been a lot more. Sadly all the developers did was try to make him into an asshole who kill your sister and throws you out a window. And considering his daughter died, I don't think he would feel comfortable shooting you and your sister at the beginning of the game. Regardless if he could bring his family back by doing it. He could of at least hesitated and think about it instead of pulling out a gun and saying "I'm sorry" then shooting both you and your sister.
She is sort of a mystery. She tells you to buy the box at the beginning of the game and is the one who rescues you when you get thrown out of Lucien's window. Don't have much more information, she was never really explained. Her name is the same name as your sister's in the first Fable. Coincidence?
Theresa is the hooded one
This hero is named "Hammer". She is a monk who broke away from her peaceful ways when she sees her father killed by one of Lucien's men. She is on the heavy side and a great character. One of the few really likable characters in Fable 2
Hammer is the one on the right
The hero of will named "Garth" is pretty bland. He's the master mage in the group and it doesn't go much deeper than that. You find him in the Spire, a large structure that grants any wish that Lucien is constructing. Its an interesting place and has real moral choices, like feed the prisoners and lose experience or let them starve but turn evil. If your playing as the good guy then its a hard choice, but if your playing as an evil guy its not that hard. Still, I would love to have seen more instances where your forced to make moral choices.
The hero of skill A.K.A. Reaver is quite possable the biggest jackass in the game. Even worse than Lucien. Lucien I could understand why he was evil, plus the developers forced him to do evil things that were out of his character, making me feel sorry for him. But Reaver is just a jackass becaus he can be. I once walked up to him while he was getting his picture taken, and when he asked when it would be ready, the guy taking the picture said 4 months or something, and Reaver just shot him. Thats just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to him being a complete asshole. Hell, they should have replaced him as the main villain instead of Lucien, that would have been a better move.
Thats all for the main characters, except your character of course. There are many minor characters that are kind of important but seeing as how long this review already is, I'll have to skip them. Shame to, because there are so many interesting people.
Now for the main story *Spoilers ahead*
You start as an orphan with your sister. You hear about a magic box and start gaining money to buy it. After you get it and make a wish it dissapears and you go to bed all dissapointed. But in the middle of the night you are woken up and taken to the castle. There you meen Lord Lucian, the main antagonist. After talking he realizes something horrable and shoots both you and your sister and throws you out a window. After a cutscene you start in a gypsie camp and the real game begins.
You travel through Albion looking for the 3 heroes, the heroes of Strength, Skill, and Will. You find each of them and prepare to fight Lucien. But before that he shows up, kidnaps the 3 heroes, and shoots your dog first then you. After a dream you get the music box and teleport to the Spire to face him. You eventually face off in the spire, but instead of an epic final battle like in the first Fable, all you do is shoot him... once. Yeah, lame. And if you don't kill him, eventually Reaver the asshole kills him.
The whole main story was just a pain in the ass, and the final choices at the end of the game are equally lame. You either choose to bring back everyone killed by making the spire, which does nothing, or you can bring back your loved ones, your dog, family (assuming you started one), and your sister (although you never see her). Or you can choose "more money than you can imagine". All the money is is 1,000,000 gold, an amount I easily got by buying a bunch of properties and shops and jacking up the rent/prices, and the wealth just accumulated over time.
And thats basically it for the story. If they cut out the story and just left everything else, it would be a better game, at least to me.
You travel through Albion looking for the 3 heroes, the heroes of Strength, Skill, and Will. You find each of them and prepare to fight Lucien. But before that he shows up, kidnaps the 3 heroes, and shoots your dog first then you. After a dream you get the music box and teleport to the Spire to face him. You eventually face off in the spire, but instead of an epic final battle like in the first Fable, all you do is shoot him... once. Yeah, lame. And if you don't kill him, eventually Reaver the asshole kills him.
The whole main story was just a pain in the ass, and the final choices at the end of the game are equally lame. You either choose to bring back everyone killed by making the spire, which does nothing, or you can bring back your loved ones, your dog, family (assuming you started one), and your sister (although you never see her). Or you can choose "more money than you can imagine". All the money is is 1,000,000 gold, an amount I easily got by buying a bunch of properties and shops and jacking up the rent/prices, and the wealth just accumulated over time.
And thats basically it for the story. If they cut out the story and just left everything else, it would be a better game, at least to me.
Fable 2 is a good game, just distorted through major hype and promises by Peter Moleneux. Sadly I couldn't comment on the Co-op feature of the game since I never played it. But other than that I tried to cover as much as I could. Although I missed the gargoyles. Shame to, because they are pretty funny, and annoying.
I would say rent this game and see if you like it before you buy it. Its not for everyone, especially not the hardcore RPG crowd.
And thats all, sorry again for the length, but there is a LOT of stuff to cover in Fable 2, if you put in a lot of time and explore everything, you find a great deal of content. But if you just rush through the main story as fast as you can, you will be sorely dissapointed.
Or maybe I just suck at writing and can't shorten things efficiently. I'll let you decide.
And please, tell me what I can do better and what mistakes I made so I can better myself.
And 1 last note: 1000th post! Wooooo!
