Good game with many flaws that bring down what could have been an absolutely amazing one.
The game itself seems as if they tried to ease into the difficulty and then never made it harder. The combat system while entertaining gets repetitive and once you learn how to fend people off and live your ok. Even if you never learn that there's not much of a consequence for dieing, you gain a scar and lose any experience that is on the ground then pop back up to continue killing where you left off, no reloads, no discredits, just those simple things. The good and evil bars are still there but were changed a little and now include a purity and corruption slider which affects how your character looks. While these were great ideas it really doesn't matter what you choose because either way the gameplay is the same. Yes people react differently and their dialog is slightly different but you get the same story either side you go.
That aside they did a good job at the interactivity from having to court a girl and get her to like you before marriage and the choice between unprotected and protected sex all the way to how open environment it is with many quests that require you to explore much of it.
This is one of the saving graces of this game. If you find the story getting a little hasty then why not start a family, or work to get money so that you can buy property, or do one of the multiples of side quests that will send you all around the place. In this game there is always something to do even if it's just exploring because you want to find everything.
The story is decent and at times can be very compelling and drag you in to the point of not realizing how much time you have played that day. The problem is that it feels a little rushed, it kinda just throws you from one to the next without much explination on who the characters are, what it is that you are doing this for, or even how any of it really matters. Seeing as how this game takes place 500 years after the first Fable I expected a back story on how the world changed, and in general what led up to everything thats goin on now. Saddly I was disappointed, you get a quick backstory on your character that you play through and a 2 minute cutscene on something that happened somewhere in that 500 year gap. Your kinda stuck there being told "You have to do this cause your the only one who can."
The graphics are wonderful, though the modeling doesn't seem to have changed between Fable 1 and Fable 2, and coupling that with a decent score there will be many a time when you get sucked into the game.
Choices were supposed to be a big thing, how even one small choice could make a huge difference in the future and yet many a time it went unnoticed. Sure there are changes both immediate and in the future but only in two cases were they actually obvious all the others were very subtle things that will go largely unnoticed.
Overall the decision to once again leave out many of the promises that they had will certainly bring down the hardcore fans, but good graphic and a decent sound score coupled with how interactive the game is and a decently engaging story will be plenty to keep your average gamer happy if not ecstatic.