Fable II

"A fun little RPG, but not without problems."

I wasn't a particularly big fan of the original Fable on Xbox. I got it, and I played it a few times, but it never really took off for me. Despite this, I ended up buying Fable 2 (in the bid to get an almost complete collection of RPGs for the 360) and decided this time I was going to try and enjoy the game, probably by getting all the achievements. At first I enjoyed it, then after an hour or two I decided I didn't like it. And then something happened, the game grew on me. I gave it that little chance, I advanced further, and soon I found myself really enjoying the game.

Fable 2 has a very similar feel to the original, in that, not much has changed. The storyline is vaguely similar, its full of predictable plot twists, a few good or bad choices (which are flawed more than anything), and its just not as good as the sidequests. When you start the game, you can choose to play as either male or female, with the game opening in Bowerstone, where you and your sibling live as homeless orphans. Rough life eh? Until a supposed magical music box enters their life (via trade, the opening sees you collecting five gold coins to purchase said box), at which they're called to Castle Fairfax. However, something goes wrong, and your sibling ends up getting shot out of the window, whom you promptly follow. Fast forward to your adolescence (I'd imagine we're talking aged 17-19) and your adventure truly begins. The main idea of the plot, which I didn't even understand until I was well on my way, is to collect four different heroes, one of them being you, in order to defeat the evil Lucien, the one who shot you out of Castle Fairfax all those years ago. With the aid of Theresa, the blind sister from the original Fable, now an immortal seer, you set out, collect three heroes (the Hero of Strength, Wisdom and Skill), and go off to defeat old nasty Lucien, along with your dog of course. As said, its full of predictable plot twists, its quite short, and there are plenty of moral choices to make, especially at the end, but they never really have an impact on the player. Although I guess that depends on the person.

Since I didn't play much of the original Fable, its hard to make comparisons, but from what I did play, gameplay is almost identical. The game is played in a third person perspective, mashing one button uses your melee weapon, the other fires your gun. Killing enemies gains you exp, of which there are four categories for: Strength, Wisdom, Skill, and General. Instead of levelling up your character, there are three different skill sets you can improve, each relating to the different experience orbs you collect. Strength for example, increases your attack, your defence, and your health. When enough Strength and General experience is earned, you can level up any one of those three factors, which each level needing more experience. Its a good system, it works well and the experience you gain from battle all depends on how you kill an enemy, meaning you're likely to get experience for your preferred method (mine was a rifle, headshot, sorted). Of course, general experience is always earned, and can be combined to earn new skills. Wisdom allows you to learn a couple of spells, all available from the start, but I found spells really crap in this game. It takes too long to charge up the higher spells by which you've already been attacked; its much easier to just use a melee or ranged weapon. Combat is decent, its nothing special but I didn't find it to be particularly boring either. You just mash X, Y or B depending on what attack you want (melee, ranged and magic respectively), whilst pressing the DPAD to use your food/potion shortcuts, which thankfully automatically appear when you're low on health, which is a nice feature. That said, whilst its not particularly boring, combat does get repetitive, and a few people out there will probably get sick of it eventually.

When you're not fighting, you're probably doing sidequests, or just living your life. The world of Fable 2 is actually really small compared to other RPGs, but it doesn't suffer because of this. I found the gameworld to be better designed, the attention was everywhere and there were never any dull places, there was something to do everywhere. Most of my time not doing quests was spent earning money. Probably the best way to earn money at the start is to take a part time job, such as woodcutting (the one I chose), blacksmithing, or bartending. All three games work the same, its essentially pressing A when a little cursor reaches the green spot on the meter, however different tactics as it were must be applied in order to succeed at each job. The idea is that you build up your chain, achieved by never missing, in order to earn money. The good thing is that if you endure the fairly dull task for long enough, you gain a handsome sum of money, with me earning 40K in about 2 hours total of woodcutting (that was me getting up level 5 for the job). After that, the easier way of making money comes in: property management. You can literally buy any building in this game, from houses to shops. Once you do, you can either move in, or rent them out, the latter being what I did for pretty much every building. Once you're renting it out, you can adjust the rent, making it lower of purity points, or higher for corrupt points. Since I'm greedy, I went with making my rent 100%. Fortunately none of my tenants ever moved, and I earned a lot of money. When you're renting out buildings, you gain income every five minutes whilst playing the game, and money is also earned when you're not playing, albeit, at a slower rate. Still, there's nothing better than turning the game on after not playing it for the night to earn 100K, for doing absolutely nothing. Shops are where the real income comes in though, particularly pubs, and the way the whole property system works is very well done. If you want to earn money in Albion, raising your rent is the best way to do it.

There is also a little social aspect to the game, which mostly comes from using expressions. Basically, if you target someone with LT, you can perform an expression, which people react differently too. Find out their favourite expression and you can easily make people love you, along with the odd gift. Eventually, you can marry a person, to which you can then have a child with, making a family. There isn't really any motive to do so though, the gifts they give you are crap and they just demand money from you anyway. I did it for the achievements, but, the option is there just to make life in Albion seem that more realistic.

So, the sidequests. Well, its an interesting system in Fable 2 in that the proper sidequests are never hidden. When you advance to certain parts of the game, all of the sidequests available at that point are shown, allowing you easy access to the sidequests. They vary, but they're fairly generic, although the odd sidequest that is definitely worth seeing does pop up. However, there are some quests that aren't shown. There are plenty of things to do in each region, for example when you buy Garths tower and sleep in his bed, you're taken to some dreamworld where an evil treasure chest likes to kill people. Once you've finished the main quest and the sidequests that appear in your quest log, there are plenty of things to do.

This brings me to my main criticisms of the game though. Firstly, the map system is pretty bad. Its fairly confusing at first where you're meant to be going, and I didn't like how the map was presented, in that I could look around it and select things, instead, it just showed me some picture with no locations shown on it. Fast travel is included though, so that's a plus. Secondly, the good or bad system makes a return, but it never seems to make a difference. Due to some of the stupid points in the game where I either sacrificed my experience for good points, or did bad stuff for, well, bad points, meant my alignment was always in the middle. I did good stuff when I could, and bad when I had to, but I never really felt inclined to do so unless bad things were to happen. You just don't care about the characters, and I never felt emotionally connected, its like I said. I did bad stuff purely to save my experience at those particular parts. I also had my other alignment meter in corrupt for raising my rent. People disliked me when I got my income, but did it make a difference? Not one I could see. Generally I found combat to be mixed, its repetitive but fun at times, although the spells are pretty rubbish, it was more of a melee or ranged game. The penalty of dying is pretty rubbish too, your character gains a scar (I was corrupt so it didn't matter anyway) and you lose a little experience. The game is pretty easy though so you shouldn't die too much as long as you stock up on potions.

I guess my main problems with Fable 2 are just generally how it works. The whole moral, good or bad, corrupt or pure system once again never really kicks off. It doesn't make much of a difference, and I never wanted to help out characters, and I just did what I felt like at the time. The main story is fairly short and weak, with the few brilliant sidequests surpassing the story. However the sidequests are also generic, and although fun, can feel the same at times. The map system for me was also a bit rubbish, and your dog, who I've forgotten to mention, is pretty useless too (although he does find some good stuff on occasion).

Its hard for me to summarise Fable 2. Whilst the game motivated me enough to finish it up by getting 1000G on it, I feel a score of 7 is suitable. Its hard to say, but whilst I'm fairly positive, I can't say there is anything game breaking. Simple put, the game has its problems which makes the fairly functional gameplay that we have, stopping the game from getting a higher score. If you like RPGs its definitely worth a look, I probably spent around 30 hours on it overall doing my achievements, and I enjoyed most of it. And if you didn't like the original Fable, well, you might want to rent it rather than take the risk I did. Its an enjoyable game, and for a cheap price its definitely worth playing.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 06/15/09

Game Release: Fable II (EU, 10/24/08)