A well meant mess. A conglomerate of awful and great ideas. This is Fable II. It's practically every Peter Molyneux game.
Fable II is the sequel to the oft revered original that served as one of the cult classics of the original Xbox alongside games like KOTOR and Jade Empire. People often attribute the main success of the original Xbox to Halo and whilst that classic did carry a lot of the weight in Microsoft's desperate fruitless attempts to keep up with the runaway PS2 train, so many overlook that if not for those little cult classics, the original Xbox would have had so little depth that competition with Sony's number one son would have been hopeless.
However, moving into the next generation, that cult classic necessity wasn't that anymore as Xbox moved on to becoming the quintessential "online bro" gaming console. There is nothing necessary about Fable II. It's scale, options and integral design is so utterly needlessly complex for a second generation Xbox title. Just the notion of your character and the world around you aging in real time both visually and mechanically is something that a game has not again achieved to this very day on 16 January 2021.
The ambition shines through so hard that anyone playing this game as young as I did on my first time through is certain to be enthralled by the sheerness of the adventure ahead of them. With improved controls, story (still somewhat lacking), design, sound, everything. This is the pinnacle of microsoft RPGs.
Fable II is the sequel to the oft revered original that served as one of the cult classics of the original Xbox alongside games like KOTOR and Jade Empire. People often attribute the main success of the original Xbox to Halo and whilst that classic did carry a lot of the weight in Microsoft's desperate fruitless attempts to keep up with the runaway PS2 train, so many overlook that if not for those little cult classics, the original Xbox would have had so little depth that competition with Sony's number one son would have been hopeless.
However, moving into the next generation, that cult classic necessity wasn't that anymore as Xbox moved on to becoming the quintessential "online bro" gaming console. There is nothing necessary about Fable II. It's scale, options and integral design is so utterly needlessly complex for a second generation Xbox title. Just the notion of your character and the world around you aging in real time both visually and mechanically is something that a game has not again achieved to this very day on 16 January 2021.
The ambition shines through so hard that anyone playing this game as young as I did on my first time through is certain to be enthralled by the sheerness of the adventure ahead of them. With improved controls, story (still somewhat lacking), design, sound, everything. This is the pinnacle of microsoft RPGs.