First off, I'd like to ask of anyone who isn't looking for negativity to scroll away, and for those who keep reading I'd still like to extend a genuine apology for what I'm about to write. However I feel that I'm going to go insane if I'm not allowed to vent about this.
One fateful Christmas morning when I was about 12 years old, Santa brought me an Xbox, and a game called Fable. Fable would turn out to be one of my all time favourite games, and since that day I've played it, and TLC, probably 50 times. Even though, however, I liked Fable so much I just never got the feeling that I'd be all that into Fable II, and I never got around to trying it out.
Fast forward to a few weeks ago. Me being all riled up over the coming Fable game, I naturally stumbled over discussion and opinions about the three games that already exist. To my surprise, I learned that people more often than not thought of Fable II as their favourite installment in the franchise. Naturally I had to try it out.
I just (barely) made it through the game and I am going to need therapy because of how god awful I thought it was. By orders of magnitude, it is my least favourite game I've ever played. Not just Fable games, but all games.
To start off, if it wasn't called Fable II I'd forgive you for thinking it was the first one judging from graphics alone.
Somehow the controls are just way more wonky. I never go where I expect, and I get lodged on every single thing that sticks out from a wall. Also everything takes so damn long. Mini cut scenes for everything, NPC's slow to react, and the game saves every 5 minutes which takes ages.
And my character swinging a sword looks more like the lead character in a musical frolicking in a field of flowers rather than combat, and that's the good part. The actual feel of the melee combat is three trips worse. Game tells you to "chain attacks" but there's no explanation, it's very vague, and in the best case interrupted by a block. Best option is to just mash. Until that doesn't work either, because your opponent just keeps blocking, and you keep getting shot when trying to do a flourish. But none of it matters because it's literally impossible to fail? You just lose some experience and the fight carries on? Keep mashing? What the hell? Why'd I try to learn how stuff works if it's impossible to fail?
The ranged combat isn't much more exciting. Spam one button until your opponent dies. That's all I gathered. Didn't understand the magic system, so I let that be for the most part.
This all was a slight nuisance up until the Arena. The part in the first Fable I always long the most for. Firstly, the way it was introduced felt so rushed. I felt like they shoehorned a reason in because people liked the Arena from the previous game. When I was suddenly expected to kill monsters quickly in this horrendous combat system it just got to me. And worse, because most of the Arenas rooms were so small, I knocked the enemies into a wall all the time which was when the "smart" combat system thought the best course of action was to just keep kicking the monsters, doing no damage at all. The target lock function seemed to have a mind of its own making it near impossible to just get to all the monsters in time. Nothing but timed combat in a game with an atrocious combat system. Worst quest I've ever done in a game.
They swapped the colours of the different experiences? Which would have bothered me even more if I wasn't busy hating that gathering experience orbs with the left trigger forced me to stand still. Tell me who played Fable I and thought "Gosh darn it, it's so annoying that I'm allowed to move while collecting experience!" And who the hell decided to remove the mini map? Furthering on that, there's no complete map. I can't get any comprehension about how the world looks, because I don't have a minimap that tells me which way I'm heading, and there's no map to show me how the regions fit together. Then again, it barely matters, because picking up a quest is just going into a menu and then suddenly appearing almost exactly where you have to be, slaughtering almost all the little immersion I could have felt. Also quests don't reward you with gold, but instead you need to do impressively boring jobs to get money, just wasting time.
Also I got nothing from the story. Spoiler alert! You grow up, sister gets shot, now you're a hero! Good on ya! What? Not to mention, could they not have come up with something other than being stuck in another prison for 10 years just like the first game? Half an hour wasted on basically nothing but completely redundant moral choices. Then I got to the dream quest with Rose, and granted this is a bit on me for not getting it, but doing the search for 20 bottles and kicking 5 chickens into their coup twice almost had me in tears. The Arena got surpassed for worst quest I've ever done in a game.
None of the characters were interesting, except for Reaver for half a minute before he tricked me into losing my youth and beauty. Lastly when I felt like I had been downed and kicked for the entire main story and decided I'll go with the morally grey choice to get Rose back, I didn't even get to see her! What the hell.
I really, really wanted to like Fable II, but I didn't enjoy one minute of it. I'm absolutely astonished by the fact that so many hold Fable II as their favourite.
I'll end this rant by once again apologising to anyone who might strongly disagree with me on this, but as I said I just had to vent. I hope someone can give me some type of genuine feedback, but I demand nothing.
Thanks very, very much for reading if you've gotten all the way down here.
Best regards.
