I finished Fable 2 this week. Really good game, if you liked Fable you’ll love Fable 2. The writing is absolutely brilliant, especially in the tertiary characters and the random townsfolk you encounter – it was a constant pleasure to listen to the dialogue and chuckle at the persistent flow of oddball jokes and bizarre characters. Buying property and managing the economies of the different towns, especially early on when I was working mundane jobs to get the seed money to start my real estate empire, was really cool.
The lack of armor was an interesting design choice, but it made customizing the character with clothes and dyes pure fun with little impact on gameplay. Without the need for considering an outfit’s armor value I was just able to dress my character in whatever I thought the coolest costume was – which is kind of nice change from having to tolerate a ridiculous avatar just because some horrifically ugly helmet gives me a +1 bonus.
Although I thoroughly enjoyed it, after a little while I started to feel like the combat was rather perfunctory (just like the original Fable). And when my character had a family to maintain it started to feel a little like The Sims with swords – I’d have to stop bashing bandits and run home because my virtual wife was unhappy with the relationship. Interesting the first time or two that it happened, but it got really old really quick.
All in all, a very good game and I definitely recommend it.
