Fable 2 is good but it could have been a lot better.
Menu gripes aside, another of Fable 2's big additions is the aforementioned pooch partner (who you can name -- and rename -- once you purchase a collar for him). Your pet is useful in a number of ways; the first and most obvious is that he's good at sniffing out treasure and dig spots (which, with a spade, results in more treasure). This might suggest that it takes the challenge out of finding free loot, but when you're dealing with Fable 2's lush, overgrown woodland areas, finding the lush, moss-covered treasure chests can be quite challenging. You can improve your dog's loot-finding abilities (as well as his ferociousness in combat) using training books. Interestingly, his A.I. is modeled after the creature A.I. in developer Lionhead's Black and White series, which explains why he's so...doglike...in mannerisms and behavior. The intention of all this puppy love: You really grow close to your dog, which carries greater ramifications deeper into the game. He's useful in other ways as well; depending on the type of collar you equip, he enhances certain combat capabilities. One collar may enhance your damage with ranged weapons while another collar raises your impact with Will spells. Other collars are just plain useless, yet they're worth investigating simply for the funny descriptions. In the end, while you may be mildly interested at first by the addition of the new A.I. canine partner, when you finally play the game, you'll realize just how invaluable he is.
The highly improved combat system is where Fable 2 really shines. It's glorious to behold, and this is where the game really separates itself from the Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republics and the Legend of Zeldas of the day. Featuring excellent melee-combat mechanics and an initially awkward but eventually elegant five-tiered spell system, Fable 2 keeps its fights out of menus. The combat and magic work so well because they're carefully entwined. The magic system features five tiers, all controlled by holding down the B button to charge between the five tiers (the higher the tier, the longer the charge). By using these Will spells in tandem with melee attacks (a quick tap to activate a tier 1 Time Control area-of-effect slowdown paves the way for bullet time-style carnage with swords, ranged attacks, or even more magic), Fable 2's combat proves incredibly flexible -- and as customizable as every other facet of the game.
For those not interested in using Will powers, melee combat stands up on its own, too. In the areas of strength, skill, and speed -- each with multiple tiers and unlockable abilities (like evasive rolling, faster and more damaging melee/ranged attacks, and overall toughness/HP) -- you can go the purely physical route. And with the help of special "augments" (items that add status effects to weapons, such as HP drain, extra gold per kill, damage resistance, and, uh...beauty), you totally thrive in combat. That said, the most effective way to play is by using a deft blend of both disciplines. The lack of a mana bar makes Will powers much easier to use in Fable 2 than in the first game; instead of forcing the player to worry about MP management, the only cost for using Will is the time needed to charge up to the higher-tier spells. Enemy attacks don't interrupt your spell casting, so this keeps frustration to a minimum and encourages magic use in battle. You can still be interrupted if you're knocked down, but that happens maybe once in 10 spell casts, allowing you to experiment with this flexible and superbly designed magic system.
The script is clever, well written, and frequently hilarious. Even the most serious characters often punctuate their ominously intoned orations with things like "Friday is poker night," which sounds mundane on paper, but in the right place, it's a genuine laugh-out-loud moment. The consistently awesome voice acting really helps -- even the tiniest, inconsequential peons in the world of Albion are rich with character and wit, and for the primary characters, the voiceovers are peerless. Ron Glass (Shepherd Book from the Firefly television series) is an especially seasoned choice for the role of the neutrally-aligned hero, Garth, and he makes his character totally believable. Julia Sawalha (Saffron in Absolutely Fabulous) as Hammer, the monk aligned on the side of good, and Stephen Fry (Blackadder) as the sinister 'hero,' Reaver, are superb in their roles as well, making Fable 2 one of the best-acted videogames yet. All three are especially effective at channeling the three alignments your character can subscribe to (good, neutral, evil), adding real substance to the plot's subtleties.
The real question, though, is how well said alignment system works. In the first Fable, your actions dictated your appearance and how people around you reacted, which was fine (and quite entertaining). The game broke down, however, in the finale -- despite having played the game as an evil badass, you could basically undo all the damage by making the "right" decision in the final moments (ditto for good guys choosing the bad decision). These choices were kind of a cop-out, because if you chose the good ending (versus the bad path) -- in which you don't get to take the villain's sword -- you could get a similar one later anyway, negating the feeling of real sacrifice. Fable 2 is different; at game's end, you receive a number of choices -- not just "good" and "bad" -- and they affect you in ways you're not likely to forget...at least, not until you take a different path to see what unlocks on a subsequent playthrough. This makes for a more distinguished game, one that resonates more deeply. Don't choose one ending because you think that whatever rewards you sacrificed can be made up later -- make your decisions count. I can tell you that I was genuinely upset with my decision when I took the good route through the game and wish I'd taken another. Fortunately, Fable 2 doesn't end when you hit its surprisingly conflict-free and almost anticlimactic "ending." Naturally, it involves a twist...but once you complete the game's main quest, new quests open up, additional properties become available to purchase, and the world changes. Areas that were once dark and stormy are now rich with life; some areas benefit from subtle changes while others experience more dramatic shifts.
The paths you take are notable for their ease of difficulty, too. Being bad is definitely more fun because it's easier. You can steal money and intimidate people into lowering their prices just by looking scary. The downside is that evil characters don't seem to reap as many Will orbs, making it harder to get the really big spells for at least the first half of the game. Good has its rewards, of course (you get a halo by game's end), but it's also highly annoying. In order to get people to lower their prices (since you rarely have an excess of money), you have to shuck and jive for nearly every person that comes your way. Dancing and flexing and whistling and playing the lute for the increasingly huge crowds that gather to watch your one-man act results in people lowering their prices for you (even when buying real estate), but it also results in massive, headache-inducing entourages following your every move. Ever try to exit a tailor's shop when Beatlemania's going on right outside the doorway? It's a pain in the ass. Still, the way you play offers tangibly different experiences, so if that's what Lionhead was going for -- and they were -- then they've certainly achieved it.
But what Fable 2 adds, it also takes away. In what is probably the game's most disappointing element, you get far fewer clothing options (notably, heavy armor choices) than those found in the original, with the world's myriad clothing vendors and gypsies apparently buying their stock from the same warehouse. I'm not sure if Lionhead plans to offer additional wardrobe options as downloadable content, but the out-of-the-box variety is pretty slim. It's tough to even find a full suit of assassin's armor, as the body piece is the only one in sight. Those Demon Doors that offered loads of side quests and treasures to find? They were numerous in the first game, but in Fable 2, you only get nine, and the prizes behind each door vary in quality. The criteria for opening them are often ridiculous, too -- like giving a Demon Door some cheese. As you might expect, the prize that lies behind the cheese door is barely worth the minimal effort involved. Still, Fable 2 offers much more worthwhile quests to make up for it, although the overall weapon selection is about as limited as the clothing options.
Fable 2 also suffers from truly glitchy interface problems. You inspect things by pressing A near the appropriate object, like a house (to see what its price is) or an NPC (to interact with/buy things from them). So it's a real pain when pressing A doesn't result in the expected response, forcing you to position your character very specifically before the game reacts. Some doors occasionally don't even give you a response, leaving you wondering whether it's a multiplayer-specific door or just busted. The game also has some serious load times...which Lionhead obviously knew because the loading screens are filled with hilarious "overheard quotes" from the citizens of Albion to help pass the time. It makes me long for that Xbox Live update that allows for full hard-drive installs of any game -- because Fable 2 needs it. The overall level of polish, while much improved from the first game, is still a little bit rougher than most current-gen games out there, and it would be much more of an issue if the game wasn't so compelling. Fable 2's visuals are much more accomplished than, say, World of WarCraft (which is set in similarly themed locales), but compared to a Gears of War, it's nowhere close.
Which leads me to the multiplayer. Offline co-op play, to be blunt, is barely worth the time. It seemingly exists to provide an extra set of hands for a younger brother, a bored girlfriend, or a wife who complains that you play too many games. The characters are strictly limited to a default good/neutral/evil man or woman with limited customization (you can tweak only spells and melee abilities, these tweaks expire at the end of the play session). Basically, co-op's just for a buddy to tag along and check things out with no long-term investment. The real action was supposed to be in the online co-op mode, where two players would saddle up with their fully customized characters and hack their way through the game together. And while this hasn't been completely compromised in action, Lionhead -- in this instance -- again underdelivers on their original concept. Players hoping to play together online are restricted to A) the host player, who has his fully kitted-out character on display, and B) the guest player who -- again -- must select from the default set of six character types. What's in it for the guest character, then? By joining a game with your Xbox Live account, you're able to take all of the experience, money, and skills earned during your online play session and transfer it back to your own character once you're finished playing. So, basically, you're sending a proxy into another player's game world. In actual practice the camera is beyond your control most of the time, as even in online co-op both players must illogically share a single screen (instead of just having your own screen, like you would in an MMO), resulting in a perpetual tug-of-war. The whole appeal of playing together in a game like this is to show off your personal style. Remove that, toss in a nightmarish camera, and factor in the total lack of an online setup screen, lobby, or multiplayer interface and this is easily the worst thing about Fable 2. It's a painful example of lost opportunity -- it was supposed to be one of the best things about the game.
Lionhead needs to stop overpromising and underdelivering with this series. If it were simply a single-player RPG, Fable 2 would be an almost peerless entry in the genre. While the disastrous multiplayer doesn't detract from the overall awesomeness, it dilutes the impact somewhat. The time Lionhead spent forcing this mode into the game could've been better used to speed up the load times or add more varied loot. As it is, it's still the best RPG on the 360. It's a series worth evolving and expanding (can you imagine a Fable set in London around the time of Jack the Ripper -- boss material! -- where you play Jekyll or Hyde -- morality! -- cuz I can!). Fable 2 is filled with more great ideas than the last 10 years of Final Fantasy combined.