Fable 2 is like a small piece of turkey with a lot of mashed potatoes on the side.
You'll start the game as a poor kid who lives with his/her sister in the Old Town district of a place called Bowerstone. For the sake of not spoiling what happens…let's just say that one thing leads to another and your ultimate goal is to avenge an unfortunate event caused by a guy known as Lord Lucien. After you're given your motivation the story skips ahead until it reaches your adulthood. You pick up from that point on.
When you're an adult you'll get to have a dog join you on your journey. The dog was the most hyped feature about Fable 2 and I can honestly say that this feature is a resounding failure. You are rarely given a reason to care about your dog. One of the main reasons why this is true is because the dog does almost nothing. He'll point out hidden treasure chests and buried items but that's all he's useful for. He barks whenever he finds something but he won't stop until you find that thing that he sniffed out. You can be in a big fight with lots of enemies but your dog will just bark and run around in circles like a Jack Russell terrier on crack while all of this takes place. He's purely an annoyance throughout most of the game.
It also hurts me to say that most of the dog's animations would make a ten year old game jealous. Here's a fun experiment that you can try: if you have a dog in real life try and call it over and see how many times your dog will switch directions on a dime. Next, count how many times your dog walked directly through an object or another person. If the result is anything above zero then congrats; your dog is as realistic as the one in Fable 2! The technical problems don't stop at the dog, though. There are a lot of pop-in issues. This can range from a small patch of grass to a large group of people suddenly popping in view. Technically speaking the game looks unpolished.
Artistically speaking that's another story, though. All the different town districts, enemies, NPCs and spell effects are beautifully designed. In a rich district you can find very posh looking women with powdered wigs and elegant dresses. The poorer places are home to raggedy looking prostitutes and homeless people. Even the most barren forests have a charming look. You really get a sense that there was a ton of effort put into the artistic aspect of the graphics.
Many of the quests in Fable 2 involve combat and this is where things get interesting. The combat is one of the biggest improvements over the first Fable game. You'll automatically lock on to nearby foes and the one you're targeting will have a red glow around it. The lock on system in Fable 1 was nothing but a pain so that's been fixed for the better. You can kill dudes using magic, ranged weapons or melee weapons. Magic spells include basic stuff such as fire and lightning spells but it also includes some weirder stuff like confusing your enemies in battle so that they'll be washing the ground or vomiting.
Crossbows and guns are available if you'd prefer ranged combat and this works just as well as the magic does. You can [eventually] aim manually but you'll automatically lock on to a nearby foe. This minimizes frustration because this is not a shooter so therefore it shouldn't play like one. Hacking dudes up with melee weapons is decent, I guess. There aren't enough combos so it'll be easy to lose interest in melee combat. You can block with the X button and there's also a move called flourish which will allow you to break through an enemy's blocking attempts. The melee combat basically takes no skill compared to magic or ranged.
Your character's communication skills are just as shallow as the melee combat. Every other person can talk but somehow your guy/girl can only do various expressions like flipping someone off, dancing and farting. It makes no sense that everyone in the world can adore you but you've never even said a word. Being able to fart on command is great but I would prefer being able to fart as well as having some basic talking skills.
However, you won't [usually] mind being talked to because the voice acting is thoroughly outstanding. There's someone named Theresa who has done an especially great job in delivering emotion with her voice.
The strongest aspect of Fable 2 is the quests because there's a good amount of variety in what you'll be doing. Freeing slaves, collecting holy water, bounty hunting and burglarizing are just some of the things to do. There's even a good bit of humor with the bards who can sing you songs based on how you've been playing. My favorite one is "Our hero went to Bower Lake and gave that Thag a belly ache".
It's also worth mentioning that between fighting and passing gas you can transfer the gold that you earned in Fable 2: Pub Games which you got for free if you pre-ordered Fable 2. If you didn't pre-order it then you can buy it on the Xbox Live Arcade but it's definitely not worth doing so. You shouldn't have to pay for something that should've been included for free (for everyone). Imagine having to pay real life money in order to use cars in Grand Theft Auto 4. Doesn't sound too appealing, does it?
Fable 2 is like a small piece of turkey with a lot of mashed potatoes on the side. The main quest is good but short, and the game is made much better because of the compelling atmosphere and optional quests. I've handed out a lot of 8s in the past so before you accuse me of being generic with the score let me explain; if the technical problems were smaller and the story was longer then I'd have no problem giving Fable 2 an 8.5 out of 10. Plus, any game that lets you fart on command automatically has one good thing about it. Thanks for reading.