Well, this was actually one of the games I have been waiting for forever, and suffice to say, Fable met the standards I was looking for. It did not however, do much to exceed them. Let's start of from the beginning: in Fable 2 you start as a youngster (be you boy or girl) in the streets of Bowerstone city, a major city of the game. You go through the tutorial, learn to fight, shoot, etc, etc. Finally, your childhood comes to an abrupt end (which is pretty intense, but will not be mentioned due to spoilers) and you swear revenge on the man that has wronged you, Lord Lucien. From here, the plot becomes one of the usual "gather the three McGuffins to defeat said bad guy". And while it's a bit overused, Fable used its magic and made it work for them. Now on to the gameplay, and the things that I like: when I heard about Fable's controls, I stared dumbfounded at my screen, believing this game would be ruined by horrible controls. Surprisingly, the Fable controls are intuitive, interesting, and a breath of fresh air to the usual A=Jump, X=Interact, R=Attack, etc. The inclusion of a dog and exclusion of the mini-map is something Peter Molyneux (lead designer) focused heavily on. I genuinely cared for the dog and spent several periods of time merely playing with him. However, I would shoot my dog to get my mini-map back. While the inclusion of a golden bread crumbs trail helps to navigate (it really does), I still need a mini-map to have any real sense of where I'm going. Throughout the game, I had no sense of direction or location in proportion to everything else of follow the golden trail and don't get lost. And the golden trail seemed a few cards short of a deck, if you know what I mean. Taking too much time to load, my character would often run too fast, and have to stop to let it resume its leading. Now, onto what I think one of the most important things of the new Fable: the magic system. In most games you are given a set amount of spells with a set amount of mana, magicka, or some other power source to use them. In Fable, the only requirement to cast you spells is patience. Holding B in Fable lets you charge up your spells, ranging from weak spells in slot 1, to devastating powers in slot 5. And with the ability to choose which spells are at which spots, a lot of creativity is involved. So, what's good about this? This means that magic users no longer have to have a cart full of magic potions to make them a viable threat (they still need the cart of healing potions, as you're as squishy as ever). This also means casters can stand alone on their abilities, without having to dip into melee or ranged skills. So, why does this fail? Well, because by the time I've charge my spell to level 5, half my health is gone from being beaten to death by voracious enemies, and it turns out that the wrong spell was in the top slot. I'm now dead. Spells in Fable 2 can take forever to charge, and after a certain point it's better just to pick up a pointy stick and stab your enemies. Spell selection also feels a bit restrictive, you only have on bar for you spells, limiting you to 5 spells total, and switching spells in combat is so unintuitive it makes me just gnaw my controller. Finally, the spell selection is very limited. There is roughly 8 or so spells, where half of them are damage. Granted, they're different kinds of damage with slightly different perks, but they're mostly just damage. Right. So time to wrap this overly verbose monstrosity up. Fable 2 was an enjoyable game. I had fun wandering of, doing little things, buying real estate, everything that Molyneux promised. However, it was short, the ending was a bit of a bummer for me, and the whole game felt like if you had just included or fixed a couple of things, it would have been like the original Fable plus the real Fable 2 combined. I'm hoping that there will be some downloadable content coming up, because I genuinely enjoyed the game, even with its flaws.
