I know I'm a bit late to the party, but in my defense, there's a reason why it's taken almost 4 months for me to play a highly anticipated RPG that should be right up my alley.  The first Fable was ultimately disappointing for me, and Fable II has been described as more of the same.  After sinking my teeth into a substantial portion of the game, I'm going to agree.  Only it's better.  And worse.

For the uninitiated, Fable (and II) is a basic RPG with a twist. It's set in the standard industrial-revolutiony world with magic, swords, and guns but no machines or indoor plumbing.  Your character comes from nothing only to discover that he or she is really Very Special™.  You travel the world while ultimately seeking out some end goal involving a dubious mentor and avenging a family member. Like many games that don't want to be pidgen-holed into being too linear,  there is plenty of side content to distract you and entertain you while you make your way to the end boss.  Fable's niche includes a world where your actions and decisions can drastically affect the landscape (give the guard the warrants, trust me), and affect your appearance.  You shape the legend around your character. Sacrifice the farmer and bandits rule the land or kill the bandit leader and the same land turns into a thriving city.  Get beat up badly and grow scars. Use brute strength and grow muscles or use magic and get weird glowy lines all over your body.   Do evil things and grow horns or do good and butterflies follow you around.  

You get the idea.  

The sequel looks and plays the same, but there are some key differences. First off, you can choose your gender.  City life in general has gotten a boost.  You can now have children and take odd jobs in the form of mini-games or do some combat-related mercenary work.  Your handy, dandy notebook magically keeps you up to date with the world around you, which helps you play the economy to your advantage.  Turn a lucrative profit as a landlord by swapping out the furniture in a run-down shack and increasing the property values.  Fable II automatically collects rent for you (even while you're not playing - but at a reduced pace), so there's no need to race back to make money like in the previous game.  

Making money hand over fist certainly makes the rest of the game a breeze, but there's something not quite right about all this.  I'm 2/3 through the primary quest line and after spending all the money I need on weapons and bonus potions, I've still got enough money to be as attractive as possible, and a very wealthy land owner.   Where did I get all that money, and why is something so mundane distracting me from what should be the point of the game?  

Speaking of distractions, this game comes with a puppy.  He travels the world with you, reflecting your good/evil nature as much as you do.  He does tricks to impress the townsfolk, finds treasure for you, and rips out the occasional throat.  He's a good puppy and he means well, but I'm not sure why he's there.  As a veteran RPG player, I'm much better at finding the hidden treasure chests than my dog, and even with his treasure hunting ability maxed out, it takes him a while to sniff out dig spots when I know they're lurking near by.   He barks more often to say "hey, you just found a treasure!" than anything else.  He's adorable, though, and extremely well animated, so I forgive his faults.

Have you noticed what I haven't mentioned yet?  Anything related to the main quest-line as being improved or even interesting.  The combat has gotten an upgrade but not enough for me to be impressed.  In a good RPG, I feel encouraged to continue the plot because I'm invested in the characters and want to know what happens next.  Not so in Fable or it's successor. I'm only compelled to finish a story-line quest because I can't get back to my gift-bearing family until I do.  The game has no sense of urgency, no consequences if you spend game-months between stages in the main question line, and no real momentum propelling you forward.

I'll tell you what it does have, though: gaping holes in game logic and design. There are long pauses in cut scenes which are confusing.  Sometimes I walk away because I think something's over when it's not and other times I'm waiting for something when the game didn't properly process my input and hasn't given me any clues that it's still waiting for me.  Some aspects of the game are only truly playable after you've reached a certain level of renown, but the game doesn't do a decent job of hiding the aspects until they're available. A simple "You're now famous enough to accept gifts from villagers" in conjunction with hiding the gift indicators beforehand would have saved me 25 minutes trying to get the blacksmith to hand over the present he clearly had for me.  And while I'm whining about the blacksmith, why when I get engaged to him do I need to buy a house? He's already renting from me.  Why don't I automatically get a share of his business until we're divorced or I kill him?  I'm sure he feels emasculated that I bought it out from under him.

And those villagers.  They follow you around everywhere you go, blocking your way until you scare them into scattering and getting upset when you try to have sex with your wife in your own home. Why the developers didn't put some sort of threshold barrier on the NPCs so they didn't wander into your house (or give me a polite way to say "please leave" instead of blasting them with harmless lightening, or hiring a body guard or something) I have no idea.  

I am grateful there is no "jump" in this game which means no obnoxious platform jumping level and no accidentally falling off ledges to your doom in the middle of a fight.  HOWEVER, it makes navigating the realistically uneven terrain a nightmare of not-obvious "walls" you can't get around and makes swimming near rocks a complete nightmare.  If your dog or a few random villagers/victims are following too close behind you, you can get stuck until the AI works itself out.  And when the time comes that you do need to jump over a fence or hop down a series of cliff walls, finding that sweet spot where the game will let you activate the vault command can take forever. So does finding those dig spots, picking the right villager out of the crowd to propose to, etc etc.  

I could go on for pages about all the bugs and quirks with the situation-senstive button system.  I've ended up proposing to the wrong person, flirting with someone when I wanted to entertain kids with a puppet show, and gotten stuck "looking" at a traveling vendor that was miles away when I really needed that button to shoot the bandits that had chased him off. These sorts of issues are so frustrating because it seems like just a bit more code logic (if in combat then deselect villager) was all it would have taken to fix these issues.  The development team just had their priorities out of wack, I guess.

And that's really the crux of my issue with Fable 2.  

The life simulation aspects have been fleshed out so that they feel like more the point of the game than keeping the Evil Guy from ruling the world.  Is that a good thing?  Do we need a hero who learns how to chop wood or master the perfect pour to earn a bit of extra cash?  Do I even need my dog to tell me where to dig? I've played Animal Crossing, I know what a potential dig spot looks like.  This hero would have preferred a bit more time tweaking the interface (no mini-map in the HUD?!), fixing the selection sensitivity, and getting rid of some minor but far-reaching bugs instead of making $8 an hour as a blacksmith.  It's not enough to prevent me from playing, because although I'm certainly not a Fable fangirl, it's my type of game and it's engaging enough to work through the quirks.  I'd rent it for a couple of weeks or wait until a used copy drops to about $30.

Fable II leaves me with the impression it was created to show off the world they built instead of tell a story.  This would have been "fine" had the game been in better shape and not, you know, called Story.

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