Somehow manages to be even worse than Fable 1.
I wasn't a fan of the original Fable by any measure, but I had heard enough good things about its sequel, that I went into Fable II with only the best of intentions. The game certainly makes a good first impression, just like its predecessor, with polished graphics, a stylish cartoon fantasy game world, and solid voice acting throughout.
Everything else about Fable II, unfortunately, just falls off the rails. The overall storyline never gets its hooks into you. It starts flat, it continues flat, and it ends flat. If you play through to the game's completion, it's easy to wonder why exactly you've put so many hours into such an empty game experience. At least in the original Fable, the storyline had its moments of imagination and the pacing kept you entertained, if not overly impressed with the somewhat cliched plot. Here in Fable II, it's just boring. The characters are boring. Your nemesis is boring. The sidequests are boring. I literally had to force myself to finish this game, always hoping that something would develop that would explain all the rave reviews this game has gotten over the years. But cripes ... it never happens. Fable II might be the most boring RPG I've ever played. Maybe if you're under the age of 10, you'll get more out of this experience as it's definitely on par with a below average Saturday-morning cartoon in the story department.
The game mechanics don't help matters either. Combat is a button-mashing affair against repetitive enemies throughout the game's dozen or so hours of gameplay. By the end of it, at least your character has powered up enough to make fairly quick work of foes so you can get on with the ending and stop playing if you share an OCD completionist mentality like I do. You can play around with combinations of magic and melee to try to keep things interesting, but spellcasting quickly becomes a chore as you must hold-and-charge up each spellcast as a meter fills up to unleash one of 5 levels of spell power. If you just tap the button, you'll pop out only the wimpiest of spell damage, so each and every time you want to do a powerful spell, you have to sit there while enemies are plunking you with your button depressed and charge up that spell.
Fable II also famously made use of a pet mechanic, but your dog is fairly useless in combat and only serves as an aesthetic companion in your travels, with his own set of emoticons that I'm sure second-graders will never get tired of. I assume Lionhead tooks its cues on pets from World of Warcraft's Hunter class, but here unfortunately they're just a pain. Constantly getting in your way with collision physics that force you to constantly bump into and around your dog. Of course, there's the "digging" minigame, where your dog sniffs out an unending supply of potions, jewels and whatever around Albion, and you'll enjoy the 5-second digging animation I'm sure well into its 100th repetition or the 5-second chest-opening animation to pick up your 100th healing potion.
Oftentimes, there are games with promise but a lot of hiccups that force you to put up with annoyances for the sake of a great story or fun game mechanics. Here in Fable II, there's zero payoff that comes with its abundance of annoying traits. It's hard to think of a more disappointing game I've played through in recent years, so please, if you're an RPG fan and you've held out this long on Fable II, trust me ... you're not missing anything. Like, at all.
