A fantastic game in its own right, but adds very little to the fable mythos
while the game world is much larger and decidedly stunning and beautiful, it tends to be a little confusing. thank god they added the "glowing trail" feature, which guides you to your objective. the map on the pause screen is practically useless. since i'm not made of money and don't have a fancy HD tv, the map is very difficult to use because of my television's low resolution (a problem i've been having a lot with xbox 360 games. i know that they're designed for HD play, but i can barely read anything onscreen in most games. i've learned to live with it). the game world is gorgeous, and the graphical presentation is masterful (water effects seem to get better and better. god the water looks good in this game) and the lighting effects are superb.
the gameplay is, more or less, just like fable. a few tweaks to the combat system are greatly appreciated. the ability to use guns and crossbows, melee weapons, and magic all on the fly makes combat fun and wild. the camera also has a tendency to zoom in and capture the action in slow motion, kind of like in assassin's creed. the quests are the typical RPG type: Go here, kill some stuff or bring an item somewhere, rinse, repeat. a few of the quests keep it varied and fun, such as the mission where you have to get revenge on a young lady for a ghost. the quests are interesting, but some of them are a bit vague, and maneuvering around albion at first can seem a bit daunting, due to its size. gone is the old fable's "stick to the path" mentality. in this game, you can hop right over those walls on the side of the road, and set out into the woods. the enemy AI is stupid, but forgivable, and the various amounts of enemies will keep you entertained.
the musical score is fantastic, and all the sound effects are pretty much what you'd expect. the musical score is pretty much the same as the old one. melodic plucking strings that keep the primary mood, and when the mood changes, so too does the canter of the tune.
a few mechanics have been tweaked. first off, just about every single building is for sale. you don't have to kill the occupants to purchase a building now. you can also buy shops and set the prices higher or lower (which affects your purity or corruption level). i'll say this right off the bat: being evil is WAY too easy in this game. it's MUCH more difficult to walk the straight and narrow in this game. that being said, it's also too easy to gain weight in this game as well. remember in fable how it was funny to go out and get drunk and vomit your guts out? i did that once. only once. and my character is a fatass. i've eaten celery and done everything i can, but he's still fat. oh well.
the game does have a few bugs. i ran into a pretty annoying one. there's one mission where you have to kill a troll and then dig under where it was standing in order to retrieve an item. since your dog is the only way to locate buried treasure, you have to wait for him to find it. after he found it, i started digging, but a monster came up and attacked me right before the little digging cutscene was over. this must have tripped some kind of switch when i started digging, because after i killed the monster, my dog didn't know where the item was, and thus, i could not dig it up. since this was a main quest, i couldn't just forget about it and go on with the game. i had to reload, and that solved it, but it was annoying. a few glitches like that are forgivable, though.
the addition of condoms and STD's is a funny one. have unprotected sex to raise your evil ranking, but you may get albion aids (i don't know what kinds of STD's there are in fable 2. i may get one just for the hell of it. but chlamydia doesn't read well on a tyrant's resume. *shiver*)
anyways, if you want my final verdict, Fable 2 is a savage and beautiful game that will delight ANY rpg fan. a fantastic voyage into a somewhat familiar world with a whole new feel. you'll see some familiar places and a whole lot of new ones, and they all look absolutely gorgeous. the game as a whole is probably the best i've played in a while. it sucks you in and delivers in almost every way possible, although it doesn't add very much to the name that it had already made for itself. while not a clone of the original, it does borrow heavily from the formula outlined in the original. i give it a 9. fantastic game that is worth a look by just about anybody with a pulse.