One of this year’s most anticipated and hyped titles was Fable II. I think that for the first time in a long time, the excessive amount of pre-release media coverage actually did not turn me off the game, as was the case with last year’s Mass Effect (damn good thing I tried it anyway!) But yeah, I was totally disinterested with Fable II, but the more I heard about it, the more it seemed neat and kind of like something I would like to play. And it was!
I skipped over the original Fable almost completely, playing the PC version for about five hours total before forgetting about it in favour of games based on consoles that I owned. So it stands to reason that if the original game couldn’t start a fire in my heart, then the second probably would suffer the same ignorance that I showed the first, if not moreso. I’m not entirely sure at exactly what point it clicked and I decided I wanted to try out Fable II, but I think it may have had something to do with the dog. The idea of a game where you have a dog that follows you everywhere appeals to me for some reason.
Oh, wait, no. I remember now. I wanted to play it so that I could be the female character, have babies, and sell them into slave labour for millions of gold. I have yet to accomplish the last phase of this plan. Though one time I did whore out my lesbian wife to a con artist. That was neat.
So yeah, I really like the game. It’s got a lot of faults though. The number one problem being the lagginess. Oh, the lag! I can sort of understand why the game might slow down a bit when you’re in a huge fight or wandering around a densely populated part of town, but why are the menus so slow? It sometimes takes forever just to load the main pause menu screen! It’s ridiculous! And trying to get anywhere else from there is going to take you some time, so you may want to think about whether changing your hat is really worth the three minutes it’ll take to do it. Also the contols are not nearly as tight as they could be, but that’s not nearly as annoying as the menu lag. In fact, I’ve mostly gotten used to it.
On the upside, the game is plenty of fun! And it’s easy to accomplish things! Like Mass Effect, a large amount of the sidequests are shown to you by the game itself, so you don’t have to worry about missing out on the time-sensitive ones like in pretty much every other RPG. That has always been one of my most hated parts of RPGs, and any game that does away with that stress gets a gold star from me. The flashing trail that leads you to your objective is wonderful in certain cases, and the ability to instantly jump almost anywhere in the world is such a time-saver that it almost makes up for the menu lag. Loading times are pretty long, of course, but the areas are so large and pretty that I’m willing to let it slide.
I don’t know what else to say. I mean, I’ve got a ton of hilarious stories and other things about the game I could praise until the cows come home, but I don’t want this post to ramble on forever. I’ll just end it here saying that if you haven’t picked up Fable II yet, it’s maybe something you might want to consider. At least rent it. It’s so much better than the first.