Games / Game Reviews

Review: Fable 2

By Sean Booker
October 27, 2008 - 12:30

Welcome to the world of Albion, where one man’s actions decide the fate of the world. In Fable 2 you’ll find yourself in a vast environment, rich with new experiences, great scenery and thrilling adventures. The choices you make throughout your life’s journey will not only affect yourself, but the entirety of the game. Fable 2 does a great job of keeping the player interested and throwing humour at them left and right, but it sets itself back by being filled with technical bugs here and there.

Fable 2 has your character move throughout the world performing different quests so that you can further your progress in the game, though the biggest aspect of this game is its concept of moral choices. From the beginning you will be able to perform different acts based on whether you think it’s right or wrong. Choosing the morally right option will make your character more pure; while choosing the opposite will further your character towards a life of corruption. Not only will these choices affect how the people in various villages and towns treat you, but you’ll notice the environments will change as well. You'll see that performing good tasks as a child at the beginning of the game causes your home town to flourish when you grow up. On the flip side, doing bad deeds or harassing the people of your childhood home will cause it to be barren and bleak.

The huge focus on these choices is what makes Fable 2 so intriguing to play and continue through to not only the end, but hours upon hours afterwards. The game skips a set of years every now and then and because of your past actions, the world will have changed. Exploring these changes is what makes coming back to the game so fun. For the majority of your actions you’ll just be deciding whether you should: steal from this man, kill these bandits for the farmer or help find someone’s missing son. Though later in the game you will be faced with choices that may even make you pause the game and take a moment to think. Questions like: should I feed the prisoners and risk being punished and loosing experience points? Or should I starve them to death and risk the corruption points?

What will you be when you grow up?

Another reason you’ll want to keep exploring these new regions and shifting environments is the sheer beauty of them. From the beginning of the game you’ll constantly find yourself surrounded by gorgeous landscapes. From the beginning scene of your home being covered with slow falling snow to running through the fields while the game’s morning sun peaks through the trees and bathes you in light, it’s magnificent. Fable 2 indeed pushes the Xbox 360’s graphical capabilities to almost rival that of the Playstation 3. Along with the great look to the game the audio along with it matches quite nicely. Everything is voice acted, right down to the village whores, and they all bring some charm and wit to them. For instance, when joining the Temple of Shadows you’re made to eat five baby chicks live and while doing so the guard will be making comments like, “That one was even flapping its wings on the way down!” The humor this game brings definitely adds to the experience.

A new addition to Fable 2 that the original Fable didn’t have is the ability to play offline cooperative multiplayer ("couch co-op" as the developers call it) or online co-op with a friend, or anyone really. The cooperating player gets a certain amount of money and experience that the main character gets. This sounds good on paper, but is not that good when it’s actually played out. The camera is completely set to the first player and it’s hard to control, so you’re always dealing with a bad angle. You also don’t get to use your hero when you join again, instead you’re made to use a template like character. Along with that, the joining player won’t be able to do much in the world. If you choose to take up a wood chopping job while you have a friend tagging along, the secondary player will have to wait and watch you do the mini game until you’re ready to go. This turns the joining character into more of just an extra hand during combat. A cool thing about the game's online feature though, is you will be able to see your friends running around in your world set up as orbs. So you could be walking down the street and see the gamerpic of your friend come moving by. You can interact with them through things like giving gifts or even talking to them if they’re close enough.

Fable 2 Developer Diary Episode 1 - Emotions in Action Games

         

Though Fable 2 is an extremely addicting and fun game, it does suffer from several technical problems. The game is riddled with frame rate issues so you will always see some delay in the game whenever something finishes – whether it's quitting a job or finishing a battle. Several times, I had quit my blacksmithing job and while it saved and loaded the town market for me, half of the screens images where missing and replaced with a solid back drop. Luckily it did load the remainder of the town for me after a few moments. Another thing that really hurts the game is that some of the actions of, say enemies, won’t be fully brought out. More than once I had an enemy look like it was gliding over to me – instead of walking.

Also one thing to note is that for a considerable portion of the beginning of the game (more than just the child introduction section) some of the audio was missing. In places where my dog should have been barking for me to go find some buried treasure, he remained silent, but he still had the “Dig Spot” words above his head. It even got bad enough that when I was in combat, as an adult, every time I attacked something, it wouldn’t make a noise. Going through a half silent game really hurt the gameplay experience for me . It’s not very fun killing bandits to the sound of background music alone.

These guys would be so much more scary if you could hear them.

My biggest disappointment is the setup this game has for its store system. What I specifically don’t like is how they don’t tell you if you already have this item or if the sword you’re buying is actually worse than the one you have. In order to get around these issues you need to open up your own inventory and look at your current items and the stats they have. Doing that every time I want a new gun is terribly annoying, and I don’t want to have to memorize how much damage my current pistol does or if it’s a fast moving sword.

The last issue I found with the games technical aspect was the villagers themselves. Since I had chosen to be strictly as good as I could be - everyone loved me. And they loved me so much that they began to follow me around. This is fine until I would enter something like my house or a store. I had so many people following me one time, I couldn’t leave the building. What made this more annoying is I couldn’t walk into the people to move them out of the way.

The city's so beautiful, but the people never get off my back!

If you don’t feel like fighting, why not go buy a house, or in fact buy everything – and I mean everything . Almost anything in this game that resembles a building or a merchant stand can be bought, which does lead to one of Fable 2 ’s biggest flaws. The money in this game becomes so easy to get, you will never have to worry about it. Since buying a house means you can rent it, and buying a store means you get whatever it can bring in, every five minutes you will receive some money. So far this doesn’t sound like too bad a thing, but you should know that you will also be getting money when the game is turned off; therefore, every time you go back to playing, a big lump of money is waiting for you. This gets rid of the need to go out and grind for some money, or even use the various jobs offered. If ever you can’t afford something, go do a quest and I’m sure you’ll have almost enough.

Though Fable 2 does hurt itself from all these setbacks, they aren't enough to ruin the fun you will have and the experience this game brings. Most of them only show up a couple times; the audio problem for me was only there for about half an hour then it went back to being fine the next time I put the game back in. The only major setback that will keep showing up and making a difference on you is the lack of quality online play. This doesn’t however bring itself as a disservice to the game if you just avoid it, the game will do a great job of making sure you’re having fun in the single player mode as it is.

Single button attack doesn't mean you aren't in for a fun fight.

Apart from that, the replay value in this game is enormous. There will almost always be at least three different quests you can choose to go on, two different jobs to take up or you can just mess around with customising your character. You can buy new weapons, flirt with the ladies (or gents) or go put on some make up, change your hair or even buy new clothes. The character customisation in this game is huge and great. The actions you do will even affect how your body is; therefore, if you sleep way too much you’ll end up fat. This even made me choose to not upgrade my hero’s damage because I thought he didn’t look too good bulky. I decided I wouldn’t buy any fatty food, whether it healed me more than celery or not. There are so many different ways to make your character look and act like you want. You should basically never be bored with Fable 2 since there are so many things inside its world.

Overall Fable 2 does an incredible job of making sure your having fun with your game and that when you come back to play, you stay for a while. It’s a game that everyone should be able to enjoy, whether you just want to cause damage in the town or grind your way through the blacksmithing job for endless money. The possibility of huge consequences will always be in the back of your mind, so you will need to make sure you're going on the path you really want. Many a time you will find your own morals being tested just to get a bit more cash. If the action doesn’t draw you in, the striking landscape and cityscapes will. Fable 2 is a great game and is definitely worth the money you’ll put down for it.

Verdict: Buy It

Rating: 7 /10

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12