Fable 2

After over two years of playing it on and off, I finally finished Fable 2 yesterday.  I thought it was a really good game, but not as good as the first.  I like the idea that you can now buy shops and houses, thus creating a constant income for yourself once you get a few of the more profitable businesses under your belt.  I didn't like the fact that they removed armor and replaced it with a dress-up Barbie type clothes system.  I remember my character at the end of Fable 1, decked out from head to toe in the best armor in the game.  He looked almost like a walking tank, definitely not someone you would want to mess with.  I have to admit that my character at the end of this one did look cool, but in a stylish Jack Sparrow kind of way.  One of the hooks in an RPG game is that your always looking for better loot, and Fable 2 really doesn't do that well here.  There isn't a wide selection of weapons, and once you find a legendary you won't be going back.  As you progress farther into the game, you do find a wide variety of different clothes that can be mixed and matched.  The game also has various dyes that you can find, which can be used on your clothes to create all kinds of different looks.  That does make up for it a bit, but it's not a replacement for a nice suit of full plate armor.

Fable 2 has a distinction from other RPGs in the fact that your character isn't really restricted to any class.  There are three sets of abilities; one each for Strength, Skill, and Will.  Strength is pretty obvious as to it's benefits, the other two are for thievery and magic respectively.  Although you can specialize, I always spread my points out among all three.  Here is where no armor comes into play, as your defense and health are directly ties into various abilities.  You can't survive long without investing in some strength abilities, and skill is pretty much a requirement to use ranged weapons effectively.  I didn't do much with magic for the first half of the game, but did pick it up later on.  By the end I was using powerful area attack spells first, then finishing off whatever didn't die with blade or blunderbuss.

Your actions also dictate the appearance of your character.  Getting knocked out in battle will produce very visible scars, and continued use of magic will begin to show as powerful runes start to appear all over your body.  The same can be said of your morality, or lack thereof in some instances.  Spend time killing and robbing innocent people, and you'll begin to grow horns while your eyes turn blood red and your face starts to crack and darken.  Likewise, the people of Albion will react to your appearance.  They'll cower in your presence, or simply run away in fear.  On the flip side, if you play the good guy like I did, your character will appear radiant and full of life.  I couldn't go anywhere without mobs of people following, wanting to give me gifts or just stand in awe.

One of the most interesting aspects of the game is how you can affect the world.  The story takes play over several years, from starting out as a young child to late adulthood.  Even in the beginning, the choices you make have a drastic impact on the world.  One example is you can do various jobs for people to earn money as a child, one of them entails finding some lost arrest warrants for a local guard.  He'd like to clean up the streets, but needs those warrants to do it.  Of course there's also the criminal element, and they'd like to make those warrants disappear.  After you return as an adult, your choice has a pretty big impact on that particular section of town.  In my game it had a thriving economy and virtually no crime, so it's pretty obvious the path I took.

Another interesting thing about Fable 2 is that even when you aren't playing, the game still takes that time into consideration.  When I first rented it, I managed to get to Bowerstone virtually penniless with only the scraps on my back.  I walked through the streets, going from shop to shop as I realized it would be a long time before I could afford anything.  Doing quests didn't seem to pay much out, so I started working jobs at the local blacksmith making swords.  When that got old, I switched over to serving beer at the local inn.  I managed to save up enough to actually buy the inn, so that meant I now had an income that paid out every five to ten minutes.  It wasn't much, but it was a start.  After a couple more hours of play, and a crap load of swords, I had saved up enough to buy the blacksmith as well.  So thats' how it went for awhile, and thus also how my Albion real estate empire was born.  Shortly after that I quit playing the game for several months, until I managed to work a deal in trade and was able to start back up again.  As noted above, the game keeps track of time even when you've long forgotten, so I received a huge payment of several hundred thousand gold for all my back rent.  Naturally I took all of that cash and put it back into buying properties, and before I knew it I owned over half of Bowerstone.  By the time the credits rolled, I owned about every building in the game and had well over 3 million in gold.  Fable 2 doesn't actually end, so I was able to keep playing to finish up everything I missed.  After the end, there is one last major piece of property to buy.  Castle Fairfax, home to the main villain for the entire game, is put up on the market with a 1 million gold price tag.  By that time money was of course trivial, so I bought it first thing.  After that I was pretty much done with the game, but I at least went in and looked around before saving.  The castle is gigantic, comes with it's own butler, and is just all around cool to own.  All in all it was a fun ride, and now I feel I'm ready for Fable 3.