Fable II

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Fable II
Tweet Topic Started: Feb 11 2009, 10:49 PM (254 Views)
LK	Feb 11 2009, 10:49 PM Post #1
iminspace Posts: 18,081 Group: Active Ancients Member #794 Joined: July 28, 2005 Gender Male Coins 5	Fable II Developer: Lionhead Studios Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios Release Date: October 21st, 2008 Genre: RPG Platform: Xbox 360 Rating: M - Mature Microsoft released Xbox originals on the Xbox 360 some time ago, and one of the games it was first featuring for download was the original Fable. I downloaded it, tried it out, and I wasn’t a big fan. Sure, it was fun, but I wasn’t really into it, and ended up never completing it. Fable II looked awesome though, right when I first saw it E3. When it came out on October 21st of 2008, I hesitated at first because it looked very similar to first Fable, and I didn’t want to have to do that all over again. As I found out though, Fable II is a really good game. Not only did is surpass my expectations quite a bit, but it ended up being one of my favorite games of 2008. Fable was supposed to be “the best RPG ever created”, and though it definitely wasn’t, Fable II has a very strong argument. It does everything the first Fable tried to do, and made it work for the first time. If you didn’t already know, the Fable series is known for making important decision based on how good or evil you want to be. Say a dude wants you to collect a bunch of warrants for him that he lost. If you want to be good, you would give the guard the warrants back, but if you want to be evil, you would give them to a convict. The first Fable had these decision, but they didn’t make a huge impact on the World. In Fable II, each decision could absolutely effect the world of Albion, so you have to be careful when choosing. Note: The next paragraph contains early spoilers. Fable II starts with you (the Hero) in a giant city called Bowerstone, you and your sister are stranded infants in the Old Town district that live on the street with no parents, and no home. You start by following your sister to a traveling merchant, and he offers a Magical Music Box for 5 Gold Coins. You then do different deeds for people around the town to collect enough coins, and eventually unleash the magic of the Music Box. Your sister wishes to live in Fairfax Castle, but nothing happens when they use the Music Box. Early the next morning you’re awaken by Fairfax Garden Guards and are ordered to Fairfax Castle to meet with Lucien. Your sister is murdered, you are shot, but you are saved just in the nick of time to recover. The story is awesome, it has to be said. It’s basically just a revenge story to get back a Lucien, but it drives the plot forward very well. The way you progress through Fable II is like seen in most Zelda games. You go from one dungeon, then to the next, all for getting further and further into the game. You will have to try and find the Hero of Strength, the Hero of Will, and the Hero of Skill. Once you acquire all three of the Hero’s, you can then set off to defeat Lucien. The main story quest, if down from start to finish, can be completed in 3 or 4 sittings, which is very short. It will only take you around 4 or 5 hours. But Fable II isn’t only about getting through the story, you’ll be distracting quite a bit, and extends the game a lot. You can invest in tons of different houses and shops, you can gamble, and you can even marry a women (or a man) and even have kids. You’ll start off with minimal amounts of money, so buying and investing in shops is a bad idea to begin, but once you make enough money to start buying shops, then it’s a really good idea to invest; shops make you tons and tons of money in the long-run. Gambling is kind of fun sometimes, but its mostly a way of making money, but it’s the most difficult way to do so. Fable II’s controls work really well, and the combat is surprisingly very satisfying. You have you normal attacks with you primary weapon with the X button, and you can eventually learn to block by holding it down, and you can also learn to charge up your attack by holding it down while holding the direction of the enemy. Your ranged weapons like a gun or a crossbow is shot by pressing the Y button, and you can eventually learn to aim you shots by holding the button down. Will is used with the B button, and if can be charged up to 5 different strengths, and each stage can be a different ability if you so choose. I personally liked using my ranged attacks more than the others. It never killed the enemies quickly, but I was never in a position to get hurt. Strategically you could shoot someone until they got to you, then swipe them up with a sword, but I found that just shooting them was the best. The RPG elements in Fable II are quite minor. It’s an action-RPG, meaning you will never have to stop, go into a battle, fight a monster, then gain experience. Instead, you kill an enemy with 3 different kinds of attack: Close Combat by pressing X to attack, Will (Magic) by pressing the B button, and Skill (long-ranged weaponry) by pressing the Y button. You gain blue experience points for killing enemies with Close Combat, you get yellow experience for killing enemies with Ranged Weapons, and you get red experience for defeating enemies with Will. You also get green experience as well, and it can be combined with other experience for spending on abilities. Holding down the Right Trigger after you’re done killing enemies will attract the experience you earned, and can be spent of upgraded your abilities in the main menu. Your abilities are stuff like your accuracy, your strength, and other magic attacks like fire, electricity and others. Spending your experience on items is a nessessity as the enemies get a lot tougher as the game rolls along. Something like toughness, which ups your health, is absolutely needed, and if you don’t upgraded this ability, you’ll die... Like, a lot. The Will abilities are all unique from one-another, but it still seemed like both the fire and electricity spells were the best in fully powered up. You can also buy more and more weapons that do higher damage, or have a quickly swipe. Most of the Katanas are the best because they are fast, but usually they’re not as powerful. You can also inject Augments into different weapons if they have an empty slot. Augments make your swords and ranged weapons have different abilities like inflicting fire damage on enemies, or upping your strength, but you take more damage. Weapons cost a lot more if you want them with empty Augment slots, because some Augments can be really, really powerful, and really useful. You will go through many different stages of your Hero’s life, starting from Childhood, then to Adulthood. If you have kids, and they’ll grow up and start running around just like real life. Towns will transform, and businesses will flourish. It’s always nice to see a crappy town filled with homeless people and prostitutes transform into a nice city after only a couple of years (if you’re in Westcliff, pay the guy the 5000 gold coins). You will also want to make people like you more, and this is where the expressions come in to play in Fable II. You start off the game with not very many expressions to choose from, but once you find more and more books, you will learn a lot more. Expressions are used to get citizens around different towns to like you more and more to eventually want to marry you, or give you discounts in their stores. It’s not like this is a major breakthrough or anything however, because all you do is try and get one of their meters higher and higher by doing the same expressions over and over again. Usually a citizen will have different likes and dislikes, so if you do a certain expression that they like, their bars will do up quicker. Visually, Fable II is great looking, just like an HD Xbox 360 game should. It has great unique classical look to it, that is very british inspired, but the result is awesome. The effects like the fire and electricity is awesome, the character models have great animation, and the cutscenes look fantastic. Fable II does however have a weird glaze over it, sort of like a mystical mist or something. This may not seem very bad at first, but after a while, it can get distracting, like the game is too bright or something. It makes the game feel very fantasy-like, but I wouldn’t liked it better without. Fable II can also be very dark sometimes, and changing the brightness to be better sometimes makes other areas and the menus too bright. Fable II not only looks pretty good, it has a great soundtrack to boot. While the sound effects are decent, the voice acting is just as good, even if some of the thick British accents can get a little overdone at times. Plus, impressing people with expressions not only makes them say the same things EVERY SINGLE TIME, but each villager has the same voice. Every area of Albion has a unique track flowing in the background perfectly, and all the music reeks of fantasy. You don’t have to worry about the sounds in Fable II, it sounds perfectly fine. Overall, if you own an Xbox 360, you should purchase Fable II. Not only does it do what the first Fable did in terms of Albion changing with every choice you make, Fable II is just a fantastic game overall, and is way better than I ever imagined it would. Fable II has its issues, absolutely, but everything from the great soundtrack, gorgeous visuals, satisfying combat, to just plain amazing value, make up for every shortcoming. Fable II may not be the very best 360 game on the market, and it may not be best looking, but absolutely buy Fable II.
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zane09	Feb 11 2009, 11:08 PM Post #2
Burst link! Posts: 6,602 Group: Active Ancients Member #6,754 Joined: December 30, 2007 Gender Male Coins 11	This game was amazing. It is also one of my favorite games of last year.
	Holy Crap I'm old


Wasteland Survivor	Feb 15 2009, 10:09 AM Post #3
Goomba Posts: 10 Group: Goomba Member #11,704 Joined: February 14, 2009	Amazing review and an amazing game.



koopakid223	Feb 28 2009, 10:44 PM Post #4
ChuChu Posts: 59 Group: ChuChu Member #11,764 Joined: February 27, 2009	never really like the game i thought it could have been better. online was not that great. it still felt like it was missing something.. and i would have love to have been able to fight a boss. its still a good game just not great..



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