Fable II: The Review

 So one of my hobbies is to play video games and currently I can't afford much in the way of video games so I play the ones I bought a while back. Some I've picked up after having dropped for some time without ever completing, and others I love so much I play them over and over again. As with other reviews, I reserve the right to make my own OPINIONS and these kinda things make little room for actual facts, not that anyone really cares about those anyway. For my first review I think I'll tackle a game I just recently finished....

Fable II

Peter Molyneux has always been the child who oversells his imagination, touting a wishlist longer than most Congressional Budgetary documents. After our run ins with Fable and the Black and White series, we've learned that this list has been black markered out, cut, edited and reformated. Gone were the little details that made us go ooh and ahh despite adding little to know gameplay. So knowing that Molyneux would do this, I had very mediocre expectations for this game. I anticipated more or less a rehash of Fable with some better graphics and a dog...

So the story starts you off like the first game, growing up as a little boy. This section was quite boring, but for the newbies it was sufficient. But unlike the first game, there were REAL consequences to decisions made as a little boy which I thought was refreshing. Decisions such as helping a local business owner or fleecing him by assisting the bandits would alter the landscape of Old Bowerstone. This would competely alter Old Bowerstone in the future once you've gone through your necessary "growing up" cutscene. So this lended to some replay value, not that Old Bowerstone was really that important after the childhood section. The story, like the old one, tries to pull on your heart strings and does so like a toddler pulling on the support cables of the Goldengate Bridge. So you're sister dies... big woop, only knew here for 10 minutes anyway and the voice actress wasn't my favorite anyway. 

But after you're little stint as a child, you go off and become a Hero!!! Off galavanting to fulfull your destiny, etc, Complete 3 missions and done... yea... it really is basically that. A few hours is all you need to beat the game. Now of course you might be missing side content. However, thats probably the main beef I have with games like this such as Oblivion, Fallout 3 and others. Sure its nice to have 100 hours of side content, but why must I get the full worth of my game by not playing the MAIN part of the game! Yay I can buy every property, but god forbid we expand upon the main storyline. Sure I can have a family and kids, which do become part of the plot later on, but for the most part is just another distraction. And yes, you can even get a job? Oh so I have to find item x and return it to Owner Y right? No, when I say job, I literally mean chopping wood, serving beer, or blacksmithing, which, to get to level 5 can take about an hour. All you do is press A at the right time...over and over and over again. This is why playing the "good" side sucks. Who wants to make an honest living in a video game like Fable! The story was too short, too segmented (Find Person A, then Find Person B, round out the game with Person C).

One of the side distractions which Peter again oversold was the presence of man's best friend. Your trusty, uncustomizeable dog (other than collar and name). He or she sniffs around looking for treasure, periodically wooing towns people, and growling if an enemy is nearby. Every so often he kills an enemy you have knocked down. Thats about it for the dog... really... thats it. And his ability to sniff treasure is either very uncanny or nonexistant. There is no inbetween. Often I'd hear the dog bark for treasures in a secret location that I can't see or reach til later causing him to bark til I leave a preset radius... oh goody. Other times I will spot the treasure and open it only for the dog to bark during my "open the chest" animation. Good for you boy... you found something that I've already found... Other than that, Molyneux's promise of attachment to this dog fell flat. All the dog was really good for was digging up condoms... yes I'm not kidding.

Enough bashing of the game, there were good points. The morality system, a trademark for Lionhead studios, is quite fun and this go around the game presents far more thrilling moral questions, and the game even ends with three choices based on what kinda of moral answer you go with. Many of these scenes actually have really good consequences (similar to the Old Bowerstone section where your choices as a kid affects the town). Unfortunately, the game was far too short to really use this more than a few select times.

Graphically the game was decent, not mindblowing, but fun to romp around in. The music was pretty good, but not memorable. But I think one of the downsides was the controls. I found the spell selection system so cumbersome that I only used 3 magic spells and tried to level them in their spell slots for the majority of the game. One button gameplay, though innovative, was meh and sometimes a bit annoying. Having guard, power attack, simple attack, and counter attack all on the same button was just asking for some confusion, especially when the screen has some ten enemies, five of them are using nice bright spells or long range weapons that only had to the chaos of battle where you end up just button mashing (although shooting was quite fun). 

Pros: Good Morality system, tons of side quests, easy learning curve, no permenant death.

Cons: Controls were iffy, main story line was short, one of the endings REALLY sucks

Gameplay: 7
Story: 7
Controls: 6
Graphics: 8
Sound/Music: 7

Overall: 7/10 

Buy if your a fan of this genre, rent if you're interested. Seriously... you don't need that much time.