Fable 2 (XBox 360) by Paul R. Theimer
With a long wait, much anticipation, and another string of huge promises from producers “Lionhead Studios”.
However, Fable 2 has arrived on the Xbox 360.
The original Fable had a lot of talk attached to it; Lionhead claiming it would be the greatest RPG ever with the most immerse and unique style of game play the world had ever seen. With that said the game had a lot to live up to, which the final product turned out to be your everyday common RPG that lasted gamers all of eight hours to complete. That absolutely did not meet the criteria of being one of the greatest RPGs ever, and was overshadowed by Lucas Art’s phenomenal release of Star Wars: The Knights of the Old Republic.
Many were disappointed with the short, but entertaining final release of Fable, and expected a lot more than what was just a very basic combat focused role playing game. So, with the expected hype and anticipation of Fable 2, did it succeed where the original failed? Or was this just an unfixed sequel to it’s slightly above-average predecessor?
Let me start by stating that I did for the most part enjoy this game. I’m going to stress this, as I was reasonably happy with the game, but I also have quite a few things to dig into it about as well. The game itself is beautiful. It holds a very fantasy driven and colorful art style. From the landscapes and the weather effects to the characters and enemies scattered across the world of Albion. Fact is; it’s a much bigger game with a higher level of replay-ability including much more to explore, accomplish, and things to stray you from the linear storyline. Albion in Fable 2 is easily five times the size of the original world found in Fable, and this time around you are open to more exploration. You can jump fences in some cases, explore through the woods and find there really is life outside of those wooden boundaries and the dirt path. It offers a good variety of landscapes and environments, especially if you decide to try the Knothole Island expansion, and everything is pleasing on the eyes. Unfortunately, with the open exploration, there are environmental contact problems, you tend to get stuck on the strangest areas, especially when swimming. You eventually do get yourself out of these problems, but they should have been simple fixes and non-occurring in the final release.
Another unique addition was your sidekick, and I’m not talking about the horribly disappointing online cooperative mode which I’ll get to in a moment, but your dog. You have your own personal flea bag that follows you around that you can teach tricks that include beg, roll over, and target urination.
Oh yes, with your own potential to learn crude expressions, you can teach your canine to urinate on the leg of that annoying villager that just won’t leave you alone.
Outside of personal entertainment, your dog does serve a purpose. He will sniff out dig spots, where an indicator will appear above his head, and he’ll begin barking and circle around an area that you need to dig up to find the treasures hidden beneath the dirt. He will also sniff out treasure boxes and let you know if you are close to one. It comes in handy, and different skill books allow your dog to find more digable or treasured areas throughout the world. A nice addition that really hasn’t been accomplished in a game, regardless if your dog at times tends to get stuck much like yourself in odd terrain areas and disappears for a few minutes.
The decision making for some choices the developers made in this game just blows my mind. Seriously. My first gripe should have been a no-brainer. Instead of armor, you can collect different types of clothing that effect your attractiveness and your personality. Why they decided to include so many unwearable clothing items that has zero reflection on self protection is beyond me. Even the few pieces of armor determine how attractive people find you, and offers no kind of armor or defense bonus. You will take as much damage wearing full plated steel armor as you will wearing “paper” clothing. Really Lionhead? This is inexcusable in a role playing game, and just a flat out bad decision. Which brings me to my next major complaint. Much like the original, there are Demon Doors scattered throughout Albion, those in which you must solve a riddle or find a way to satisfy this talking slab of rock to allow you passage for the tremendous treasure beyond. You spend hours trying to figure out how to open it, to go in and find an item worth 500 gold pieces. At the point in the game when I had over 6.5 million gold and opened a few demon doors, I almost wanted to throw my controller at the ridiculously invaluable treasure that was hidden in here. And it’s not just the demon doors, you discover cool areas, or hidden parts of caverns, with large rooms devoted to one treasure box, you get all excited as you approach it thinking if this entire room is for one treasure box, this must be one of the few scattered legendary weapons. Your anticipation builds up, the chest pops open, and you find… an economy necklace that holds next to no value. It almost makes you wonder if the scattered treasure is randomly generated because of how horrid the placement is, but for whatever reason, this is actually what the developers felt would be good items to place in these hard to reach areas. At the very least, each of nine Demon Doors should have included either a legendary weapon or a unique character outfit. I can confidently say 6 out of 9 Demon Doors turned out to be worthless. Large failure in my eyes, at least you were satisfied with what you found at these locations in the original Fable.
The combat system is for the most part fun, you carry both a melee’ weapon which ranges from swords, to hammers, to cleavers, to ranged weapons that gives you the option between bows, crossbows, rifles, and pistols. I found that I personally enjoyed a longsword in combination with a rifle, it worked for me and gave me a good balance of power and speed. You gain experience from combat, which you can apply towards making yourself stronger, faster, or apply it to learning one of six possible magic spells. Yes, only six. Your experience is rather quickly spent and you find yourself in the upper two or three millions of experience built up that there’s nothing left to spend it on. Again, more options would have been nice. Your decisions in combat and what you do around people determine if you are good or evil, become evil and people will run from you screaming, in extreme excess, which gets annoying very quickly. If you are good, people will flock to you, at times not allowing you to move toward your destination as literally 75% of each town or village will fall in love with you and let you know about it every second they see you. Should you decide on one, you can get married, and have children if you decide to have unprotected sex, which may also result in an STD. If only the focus on the more important things were as detailed as the intimacy in this game. What it comes down to is really, neutral is the best option. If you are too good, you are constantly blocked by fans of you, that will literally follow you into your house and herd around you, at times not allowing you to leave because there’s fifteen villagers in your stairwell. Your ability to purchase properties, and either live in them or rent them out is a very welcome feature though, and a good way to earn money even if you don’t play the game for a few days. If you own shops, you gain a percentage of what they make during the time that you play and while you are away. A valuable feature.
With exploration does come a pretty good amount of extras, you can explore the world to find invaluable properties that you can purchase, ranging from just a few hundred gold to 1,000,000 gold to own Fairfax Castle. Each property comes with it’s own benefit, if you either make money off of them, gain a hidden quest or ability from resting there, or at times a decent treasure. There are also scattered silver keys, that open very few silver chests that yet again, contains a mixed bag of either decent equipment or something completely worthless. It’s frustrating to find 25 silver keys, and blow them on a mystery chest that contains something you have absolutely no use for. There are also 50 gargoyles around Albion, which are stone structures that mock you as you walk by them. Your purpose is to shoot these and turn them into gravel, finally shutting them up as you at times hear them for a while before finding them. Some are relatively easy to find, but a handful are just ridiculously placed and seem like they would be impossible to find without consulting a strategy guide. For every ten you find, you gain a treasure from Gargoyle Trove, and I think you can guess what I’ll have to say about what it offers. For the purpose of “The Completionist” achievement, the first treasure you do unlock after shooting ten gargoyles is “The Growl” dog trick book, as this is the only place to find it and was the last thing I needed to learn every expression, dog trick, and ability. Besides that, everything else is useless until you get all fifty and gain the last treasure which actually is worth the exploration.
I can’t express my disappointment enough with the online Cooperative mode. It sounded so good, being able to find your friends in the form of orbs floating around and be able to join their game in progress and complete tasks together. They kept it secretive exactly how it would play out until the game released, and probably the biggest failure in the game, you can not play as your own character during co-op. What?! You join a friend and you pick one of six “henchmen” to play as alongside your buddy. Why would they not let you go into their game as your own character is completely beyond me. You can only play as some lame pre-built default character with basic weaponry. Horrible decision, especially considering how much they hyped this up yet failed to tell anyone “Well, you can play co-op, but you can’t play as your own character.”
Fable 2 fixed a few problems, but still did a lot of things wrong. You are at times left scratching your head thinking to yourself “Did this game even go through bug testing?” or “What were they thinking when they decided to put this here?” It’s frustrating at times, but luckily for the most part, it’s fun. It again didn’t live up to it’s potential or hype, and in the future, Lionhead needs to lay off of the big promises and focus on making it just a solid RPG experience. They tried twice to make this an epic, unique, and groundbreaking title, yet some elements show promise but never come together, and some additions are just flat out questionable. Then need to iron out a few problems should there be a Fable 3, back away from the heavy focus on expressions, personality, and character appearance and just add in the basics that every RPG should contain. I’d like to see more weapon variety, more legendary weapons especially, and actually have them placed in those difficult to reach areas to give you a better sense of accomplishment when you do unlock a Demon Door or find that secret path after breaking a wall. You’ll spend 25+ hours playing this if you want to complete it and find everything, and it’s worth one play through, but probably nothing more than that. It does pain me to say that Lionhead did not deliver on their end again, it is a solid game, but nothing like everyone felt it would be.
Game Play: 7.25
Where do I start?
It’s fun. The combat is good, but you are so incredibly limited.
With a decent variety of weapons comes literally worthless attire, dumb treasure placement, buggy terrain problems, and very annoying interaction with villagers and other Albion residents. There is a good variety of unique quests, but you’ll complete half of them and max out your character making experience virtually worthless. Online mode should have flat out not been included if this was their approach to it.
Graphics: 9.0
The game does look nice, there’s not many graphical problems, not much slowdown. Everything is bright, colorful, and offers a pleasing variety on the eyes. Spells are pretty, although limited, the character models are good, although could have used more variety. At times it’s hard to find your wife (Or Husband) as twenty other women in the town look almost identical minus a different colored bonnet or dress.
Replay-Ability: 8.0
A big step above the brief original. There is options to explore, and there is more to do outside of the quests this time around. Collect silver keys, shoot down the 50 Gargoyles, and if you don’t get too frustrated with the resulting hidden treasures, attempt to unlock all 9 Demon Doors. You probably won’t want to go at this one a second time.
Overall: 7.75
Lionhead Studios, how nice it would have been if the simplest of things hadn’t been overlooked. Or if the person in charge of placing items around Albion had been fired in early development and someone with a brain figured out how to make opening Demon Doors worthwhile. Balance and just standard RPG basics could have made this game so much better, but for some reason, it didn’t happen. It’s a fun, yet a little more than mediocre role playing game that you will for the most part enjoy but will have you screaming at the same time. Would a patch be out of the question? Or an extra week to fix the minor but hampering problems that are embedded in Fable 2? I guess that’s too much to ask. I say for the last time, I really did enjoy this game, but my frustration levels were high during portions of it. Probably a rental or a purchase when the price drops a bit. But don’t expect Lionhead’s promises to be fulfilled this time around.
