I shatter the catfight!
I've been playing Fable 2 for the last few days.
Seriously Peter really shoulda kept his mouth shut once again but I was ready for this one. I came into it not expecting much more than what was given.
Well it's your standard fair. I won't spoil anything for anyone but that is hard to do considering it's cliched to high hell.
The whole "emotion will play a big role in how you play" idea is kinda broken at times. Well an example of that. I had gotten married, I had a child with my wife. I went around, questing, making money, whatever, been away from home for a while. I decided to give my wife a visit to see how my wife and child were doing. (a long stint of heroism makes coming home an emotional moment ya know). Well I come home, there is a big fat black guy named Pete, my wife nowhere to be seen. Go to find my son, also a rather chubby black fellow himself... grown to a child. Wife MIA. Emotion broken. I left home with a big fat WTF on my mind.
The combat of the game itself tho' is fun. I was actually playing and finding myself laughing at the fact that it's very Fallout 3esque. We know what Fallout 3 is going to bare as far as combat and VATS and such. Well in Fable 2 as you progress with your skills Strength, Skill, and Will, you can unlock new abilities. The florish attacks this time around no longer require one or two of your attacks to be blocked, rather you hold the button down, let go, and florish. Sometimes and it seems random your florish will cause a slow motion death camera (much like Fallout 3's VATS). But the similarities don't stop there. Targeted aiming also comes into play. As you progress through the Skill skills... you can start to take aimed shots. Head, chest, and groin. Looks like Fable one upped Fallout 3 on the groin shot. The slow motion deaths themselves never really seem to get old considering they only last a second or two.
On to the will. As far as this goes, as with the first Fable this is one of the moments you wish you had a keyboard instead of a controller. The major problem being that there are 8 or 9 spells but only one button for magic. How they did this is a charge up like tree. Map lighting to first tier, fire to second, time to third, and so on. The major problem being the fact that later on they charge so fast, I will want to cast lighting but cast fire instead. It really shoulda had a button map system if they were even gonna have magic at all. In the end you just have to configure it right to your own way I suppose. Didn't fiddle with it much because it gave me a headache.
I do find tho' the most in depth (term used lightly) is the good and evil, purity and corruption type system, can be alot of fun to mess around with. This can go into story elements tho' and coulda been more in depth (sometimes corruption/evil points are awarded for blatantly retarded reasons, eating meat and having a beer and things of that nature, tho could go back to the "everything in moderation is fine" aspect) but is used in a unique manner. I buy I shop, I own it, set the prices to my hearts desire, the higher I set it, more corruption, the lower, the more purity (which also seems to be bugged at times, locking it at 0 but still corrupting me somehow) but a nice idea. In total how I run my businesses will effect the local economy making it better or worse. Can be exploited.....
When it comes to the story itself and how emotion plays into it, it kinda can affect how you feel at times but it's just a big fat MEH. I don't know if I feel any emotion at times and the ending itself made me feel nothing at all. This is the biggest problem I had. There was no reason to feel emotion though Peter (and his big mouth) was making it out to be epic but can't be taken seriously from the source. The main story itself is rather short and the game does not have any real consequence for the choices you make. If the people love you, you get a discount, if they fear you, you get a discount. The main story quests generally do the same thing. You can do something nasty but later down the line it really doesn't matter. You are not really punished for evil nor rewarded for good, kinda the opposite.
Over all though, this is a fun game that can keep you on the couch for a while if you enjoy action RPGs. If you can really call it that. In the end, I found myself enjoying the combat and honestly acting like an asshole in a world filled with uptight snobbery.
If I were to score it it'd be a 7.0 out of a possible 10. Flawed, over hyped but still a helluva lot of fun at times.
