The Joy of Fulfilled Promises, a Fable 2 Review

The story is moving and the characters are either believably woeful, like the main villain, or downright lovable, like your dog companion who is possibly the least moronic NPC partner I’ve had in a game to date; which is high praise, considering most NPC partners act like they were dropped on their head repeatedly as a child.

All this praise doesn’t mean this game is without fault, though. For starters, since we’re already talking about the dog, his pathing can be downright sloppy sometimes and there were a few occasions when he bugged out on me and ended up standing comfortably about four feet in the air. That said, he was usually able to right himself and keep up with me, but it looked nasty and killed the otherwise solid sense of immersion.

Also, the game’s controls are primarily context-sensitive and this usually works well. But since the left trigger is assigned to both cinematic camera angles and for locking on to enemies in combat, cinematic sequences in dangerous areas (of which there are a couple) essentially neuter your character’s precision in combat, especially if you’re using ranged weapons. Speaking of the lock on, there were a couple of times when I got stuck in a locked position until someone hit me out of it. It’s a minor bug that doesn’t break the game or anything, but it was another buzzkill that reminded me of the plastic in my hands.

Fable 2 has a full day/night rotation as well as seasonal changes.

The only other major issue I had with this game was the item selection. I only found about six or seven different types of clothing and absolutely nothing that could be called armor. Okay, this game takes place in a time where adventurers and heroes are few and far between, so I can understand the demand for armor being lessened severely, but weapons of all shapes and sizes are still being sold everywhere. I kind of figured the demand for those two types of items would be close to the same.

One of the massive draws to Fable 2 that I’ve been drooling over for a long time was the prospect of drop-in, drop-out multiplayer. As you journey through Albion, if one of your friends is playing and in the same geographical location as you, you can see a floating orb with their gamer icon in it. You can interact with this orb in the exact same fashion as any of the NPCs. You can also jump right into their game world, or they can jump into yours. This can also be accomplished through the XBL dashboard if you’re nowhere near each other.

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