Bigger, longer and more immersed than the original.
Playing the game for the first time I had that overwhelming feeling of total immersion. Immersion is a word used many times when describing RPG's, and it's one of the best words to describe Fable 2. As in the first Fable you start the game as a child. This I felt was the weakest part of the game, as you don't have a lot to do before you're an adult. The game seems to do away with exploration at this particular point.
It's when you become an adult hero that the game really comes to life. Running through Bowerstone and chatting people up, it's very easy to become distracted from the main quest. And it's here that Fable 2 really shines. It manages to draw you into its world by its sheer scale and trial and error system. Buying a property becomes renting it out, and then furnishing it out. One thing seems to lead to another and before you know it it's three in the mourning!
A lot of people have said many things regarding the combat in the game. At first I didn't like it at all, I wanted the simple combat system of the first Fable. However after a few battles I got into the flow of things and soon I was "switching dynamically" between melee, ranged, and magic skills. Sometimes however the combat feels rather to simple. It would have been nice to have some complex combo's for instance.
Graphically the game looks gorgeous with swaying grass and the dawning sun just two of my many highlights. The textures on the leaves for instance are quite remarkable. Of course people may say that textures and graphics don't matter, but you have to hand it to the development team. They have put everything into Fable to make it a digitised living-breathing world. Saying that there are a few bugs in the game that will no doubt be fixed with patches.
When you play the game as much as I have you realise that the development team have a far greater vision in mind. You can tell what they really want to achieve from Fable. Maybe by the time we have the next generation of gaming consoles their dream can become reality. Which brings me onto the co-op gameplay.
With co-op, you can invite a friend into your Fable world, however they wont appear as their hero. Instead you're given the option to select a pre made hero. Gold and experience can be shared between both players. It's a lot of fun, even more so online with a friend. Like I mentioned previously, you can see that the development team have greater ambitions for the game, co-op being one of them.
Finally I will say Fable 2 is the best game I have played in many years. It takes the ideals of the first game and improves on them but not to a dramatic state. You will probably feel like Lionhead have tried to play it safe with some of the features in the game. However overall this is an amazing RPG that is not to be missed by anyone, even if you don't like RPG's.