Fable 2, like most Lionhead games is both wonderful and flawed, and when I say flawed I mean, pretty damn flawed. This is why I will start with the bad stuff:
Firstly this game has so many bugs and glitches it would be impossible to list them all. Walking around Albion I was stunned to find whole buildings disappear before my very eyes, at one point my daughter (yes you can have a family) became catatonic and would not respond to anything my character said or did. I tried reloading; shutting down the console etc, but my precious daughter remained unresponsive. In the end I had to get the game to take her into social services just to get her off the street.
Other things that are a little irritating are for example the loading times. They aren't very long but they are so frequent that it starts to damage your immersion with the game, the fact that Fable 2 has quite linear mapping as well makes me question why there is so much loading when the world isn't massively open? Also your world map is in your inventory and not brilliantly user friendly. I feel like it would have been much better to have a mini-map in the top right hand corner of the screen that you could of set locations on. This would have also solved another irritating problem: "The glowing trail
" okay granted you can turn this off in the game but it is annoying having a bright light guide you round your quests every step of the way.
As other people have mentioned the camera is also pretty irritating, you can hardly get a good look at your character as it is positioned too high up which also stops you feeling quite so involved with the game and also using your "Expressions" can be annoying and clumsy, for example you should have been able to save certain expressions to the directional pad instead of having to bring up separate menus and scroll through them, it just seems a bit messy.
Basically all my gripes and nit picks are over things I just felt they did better in Elder-Scrolls Oblivion but this game also has a lot of thing that Oblivion doesn't.
There are a hundred reasons to buy and love this game, first and foremost is the pure undiluted charm this game radiates! The accents, the dialogue, the humour and the quintessential British-ness in Fable 2 are outstanding, so many times I caught myself chuckling away at some casually thrown one liner.
Fable 2 itself looks great and brings forward much of the same style from the first Fable, the environments are beautiful whether they are lush green forests or creepy swamps and even though the actual story is quite short there is plenty to explore if you are a completionist and want to find every piece of treasure or every gargoyle. The voice acting is also fantastic and I hardly heard any repeated dialogue what so ever.
Having a family is a definite plus, you can be a man or women and find a number of straight, gay or bisexual partners. You can sleep with prostitutes, get drunk or just plain massacre a village if you feel like it and everything has consequences on your appearance and how people treat you, for example drinking all the time will make you both fat and corrupt.
The cut-scenes in Fable 2 are, despite being short, breathtaking; the animation is brilliant and when you finally get a long awaited cut scene it really feels like a reward for progressing.
Another thing I loved about this game was the dog. Yes I know it doesn't really do that much apart from sniff out treasure and chew the odd bad guys leg but it has so much character, especially when reacting to you or your expressions. It even changes appearance based on how good or evil you are. I guess that is what I like most about this game is its character.
Overall I did enjoy this game even if I felt it was an unfinished masterpiece. I would say to the hardcore RPG fans that expect to fully customise their character and have over fifty hours of game play: This may disappoint. But I definitely recommend this to anyone who enjoyed the first Fable or anyone who wants a fun pick up and play adventure with bags of soul.
