Fable II: Good and bad
Fable II has a lot going for it. A huge world where everything can be bought from items and weapons to shops and houses. An alignment system that affects your looks and how people in the world react to you. An ability to choose the gender of your hero, buy clothes, dye them, style your hair, apply makeup and beards and so forth make a great customization tool for role-players. A social and relationships system akin to The Sims 2 where different emotions you reflect cause different results and can be used on just about anyone from store owners to whores. A family raising dynamic is also involved where you can fall in love with anyone and raise a child. There's also the ever present dog that can be played with and used as a tool to find treasure. The game has some good humor, such as failing emotions such as the fart command can cause your hero to soil their underpants. These are mostly Fable II's strong points, the world is vast, a variety of fun side quests, there's a lot of dialog and generally things to play with. This toyish quality can easily suck up hours of your time, as it did for me.
But Fable II also has its flaws. First of all the game is buggy, half the time you'll find people and social icons disappearing unless you wait for them to load, and the menu system suffers from frequent slowdowns. The game's combat is very easy and becomes dull by the end of the game. The job system used to earn gold honestly (if you don't want to steal it) are timing minigames seemingly designed to be tediously boring, they are for the most part watching a meter and pressing the A button when a blip gets to the green portion of the meter again and again until your trigger finger wears off. A lot of the monsters are reused later in the game with minor changes typical of MMORPGs to indicate that they're different (I.E. Troll -> Rock Troll). The game's main storyline isn't very long for a western RPG title, lacks a sort of "final boss" like Fable: The Lost Chapters had, and it's very easy to bee-line to the ending, missing out on all the humor, and toyish aspects that make Fable II enjoyable.
If you're the sort of person that likes to play with a game, to customize your characters, to pick and choose the right spouse/household, to work/steal money to buy the right house that fits you or buy entire cities, to make choices that matter and change the world you play in, and don't mind dark humor and a lot of voiced dialog, then Fable II is right for you. But if you're looking to avoid a game with bugs, boring minigames, and a short cryptic story, you might want to consider renting this one instead of buying it during this gaming season.
