I wasn't impressed. Fable II doesn't fix any of the issues I had with the first game.
The combat is shallow and button-mashy. Everything can be killed by spamming X. The nonexistent difficulty means that there's no incentive to become stronger, which is part of what makes RPGs compelling. The lack of armor is especially strange. Having to hold down a button to collect XP was a dumb design decision. In what scenario would I not want to receive it?
The glowing trails and mandatory treasure-finding dog companion ruins most of the exploration. The gameplay for a lot of the side activities (smithing, woodcutting, etc.) consists of a dull and monotonous minigame.
The morality system is black and white like with most games from this era. You can either be a virtuous hero or cartoonishly evil. There are no interesting/morally grey decisions to make like in The Witcher 3. It's unengaging and artificial. The deeds that I got "evil points" for weren't even that bad. In what world is refusing to marry a random person immoral? You're also punished for looting civilian corpses despite there being no option to return the belongings to their families.
You can interact with NPCs, but it's mostly relegated to a shallow gesture system and they are all are essentially indistinguishable from each other, so why bother?
Character models are less hideous than in Fable Anniversary, but are still ugly. The aggressive use of bloom makes the game look dated visually. It definitely has that early 7th-gen asthetic. At least there's color...
The story and characters are forgettable. The world isn't compelling and I didn't care about what was going on.
The combat is shallow and button-mashy. Everything can be killed by spamming X. The nonexistent difficulty means that there's no incentive to become stronger, which is part of what makes RPGs compelling. The lack of armor is especially strange. Having to hold down a button to collect XP was a dumb design decision. In what scenario would I not want to receive it?
The glowing trails and mandatory treasure-finding dog companion ruins most of the exploration. The gameplay for a lot of the side activities (smithing, woodcutting, etc.) consists of a dull and monotonous minigame.
The morality system is black and white like with most games from this era. You can either be a virtuous hero or cartoonishly evil. There are no interesting/morally grey decisions to make like in The Witcher 3. It's unengaging and artificial. The deeds that I got "evil points" for weren't even that bad. In what world is refusing to marry a random person immoral? You're also punished for looting civilian corpses despite there being no option to return the belongings to their families.
You can interact with NPCs, but it's mostly relegated to a shallow gesture system and they are all are essentially indistinguishable from each other, so why bother?
Character models are less hideous than in Fable Anniversary, but are still ugly. The aggressive use of bloom makes the game look dated visually. It definitely has that early 7th-gen asthetic. At least there's color...
The story and characters are forgettable. The world isn't compelling and I didn't care about what was going on.
AtDawnTheySleep
3 months ago