This game has some interesting innovations, but a lot of shortcomings. I'd rent it first before buying.
This game isn't too much of a stretch from its predecessor - Fable. The story, while interesting, was typical and the plot twists were somewhat predictable. For an RPG, there were some mild innovations to be realized in this release and some shortcomings to address.
Gameplay/Mechanics:
The gameplay was interesting and fairly straight forward. Nothing too complicated. The combat system is pretty easy to get the hang of, but terribly unchallenging and remains virtually unchanged from the beginning of the game until the end. While you may improve your character's strength, skills and will the combat isn't greatly affected by these things, at least not to the degree by which it is affected by your weapons and their augments.
Something that bothered me was there was no distinguishing factor (besides appearance) between someone who exclusively used one of the combat forms (will, strength and skill) and someone who used all of them. There are no penalties for being a Jack of all trades in this game, infact it tends to be far more affective in combat. Only using one or two of the combat types typically left you a far less formidable hero against the countless enemies you must fight. The storyline justifies this, but doesn't change the fact that it makes the game very unchallenging. The only way to truly challenge yourself in this game would be to restrict yourself to only one form of combat, but even still, after a short period of time when augments and certain weapon types or spells at certain levels become available that newfound challenge quickly fades.
Which bring me to my next gripe - money. Money is ridiculously easy to make in this game. Aside from a glitch that could bring your character hordes of gold, you could simply buy everything you can afford in Bowerstone Old Town. Since you automatically get a 50% discout on the base value of all items at all the stalls there from the very beginning of the game, you could then continually resell the items you purchase there to vendors in Fairfax Gardens where they will pay you slightly more than the item's base value each time, which allows you to continually double your investments.
After doing this a few times, property investment becomes one of the next goals to consider. While the developers have certainly added a very interesting concept to the genre, the fact that you can earn gold from not having your xbox on seems terribly ridiculous, especially when considering the ease with which money can be made in this game in the first place.
There's also two scales by which your character's appearance and NPC's opinions of your character are made. Firstly is the bar of Good vs. Evil, which rates how "good" or "evil" your character is based on a few actions. The second bar measures how "pure" or "corrupt" your character is. Anything from major story choices to eating certain types of foods could affect these bars and the two don't always go hand in hand. This again becomes another easily manipulated game element. Good/Evil and Pure/Corrupt points are very easy to earn in simple deeds and your character's story choices never have a permanent affect on him, which is disappointing and unchallenging.
Lastly I'll talk about character interaction. This was one of the larger gripes I had with this game. Your character's interactions with any NPC in the game is reduced exclusively to gestures. Whether it be putting on a hand puppet show, or farting until you've soiled your pants, you character will never speak a word to another character in the game... EVER! This makes the world terribly less interesting, and to make things worse every NPC you encounter with a few exceptions to the story are one of a million just like them. Every town carries maybe two or three varieties of characters who are all essentially dressed the same, and because of the lack of depth or character interaction, pretty much are the same with the exception of their names being different.
Conclusion:
RPGs are terribly difficult games to make because they have to address a larger number of ingame mechanics, but I felt that developers could've done a better job. While they brought some interesting concepts to the RPG world, like property investment, character interactions that can result in marriage and children, there was more work to be done here.
Making money is far too easy and makes the game terribly unchalleging. Combat is stale and unchanging, and lacks the logical penalties that would be in place to prevent Jack of all trades type characters that make the game even less challenging.
Character interaction is terribly limited and every character looks the same, there's not enough customization to NPCs or your own character. Overall, I felt that it's worth playing if you enjoy the series and want to see it's continuation. There were some interesting aspects to the story itself depending on your character's choices that would be worth seeing. However, if you're new to the series or just looking for a good RPG, I'd rent this one.