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From storyline to gameplay, Fable 2 is an experience unlike any other. The Action RPG from LionHead brings the enchanting world of Albion to life, where your decisions not only affect your path, but those around you. Set 500 years after the original Fable, you start off as either a boy or girl where, with the help of your sister Rose, you will learn to interact with your new world. Much has changed since the first Fable, with heroes and magic all but considered myth and legend. But through the meeting with a mystical woman named Theresa (your narrator through the game), and in-turn the use of a magical spinning box, you find out that magic and heroes are very real. Unfortunately, you are not the only one to notice, and you soon meet the evil Lord Lucien, who has a profound impact on your future.

The childhood phase is short, and it doesn't take long until you're a young adult - ready for your new adventure. But you are not alone in your quests as your trusty companion, a loving dog, will be by your side throughout the game (no matter how you treat him). I must be honest, when I heard about a dog-sidekick, I imagined an annoying NPC continually getting in the way and making movement frustrating. But LionHead could not have done it better. Your sidekick will find treasure, whether buried or in a chest, warn you of danger and even attack some of your enemies. Your dog's skills are invaluable and you feel like a unit when working together.

The world opens up to you, and you're left to do whatever you please. There are several regions, each containing a large area of in-game world to explore. You can quickly and easily transport to the destinations that you have explored through the main menu, but at the same time, this doesn't stop you from taking a long walk and admiring the amazing visuals that this game has to offer - should you choose to. A clever bread crumb trail leads you to the destination of your main quest. Although at times it can disappear when you decide to do a spot of cross-country, it's nevertheless an effective way of removing a map that normally clutters the heads-up display.

The world of Albion truly feels alive, and the more you interact with the members of your world, the more immersed you become. Instead of using a lengthy (and boring) dialogue system seen in most RPGs, Fable 2 incorporates an expressions wheel. This allows you to interact with NPCs by showing aggression, being funny or even flirting. Each NPC has his/her own likes and dislikes, and you can work on this to help improve your standing. At the same time, you can instill fear in those around you, which can be just as affective in persuading the citizens of Albion to do what you want.

Although the story is not very long (you could probably do it in around 8-10 hrs), the amount of activities and side quests can easily rack up 50+ hrs of playing time. If you want to marry and have kids, you can. Maybe you've always wanted to be a property tycoon and have a wife in each village? Go ahead. At one stage I was happily married, but due to a few important quests (like saving the world), I wasn't home all the time. This caused my wife to become increasingly disgruntled, and her calls for sex become more infrequent. Something was obviously wrong. But Being a modern male, I knew exactly what to do. I arrived at our quaint caravan (I was still rather poor then) with a fair maiden in tow from a far off village. I expected this would spice things up and solve our problems. But for some unbeknown reason my wife took offense to this, and my planned swingers party soon fizzled out when I got served with divorce papers.

Gold is the currency in Albion, and like its inhabitants, it's hard not to become materialistic. Wealth is accumulated through finding stashes of gold in your quests, through stealing, or by taking up a job. I know it doesn't sound that appealing to 'work' in a game, but I found myself spending hours (in-game) hacking away at wood or serving up pints of beers to receive promotions and earn more gold. It became very addictive, and I was continually 'only a few thousand gold away from buying that store, or that new weapon.

But Fable 2 is about becoming a hero, and it ain't going to be done by getting drunk and playing pub games all day. The combat system, at first, seems very simple in nature. Your X button is allocated to melee, Y for long-range weapons, B for magic and A for evasive maneuvers. This allows casual gamers to easily jump in and play. At the same time, the more adventurous have the ability to string together attacks to perform powerful fighting moves. Experience, which is used to improve and unlock abilities on your hero, is given out depending on which method of fighting you use most. So the more magic you use, the more experience you'll receive to improve and unlock new spells. The same goes for melee and long-ranged weapons, and it works well as a substitute for classes. Even though the system allows advanced customisation, hardcore RPG players will feel a bit left out as items such as armour are no longer part of your characters make-up. Instead it uses a very basic toughness rating.

It's hard to find anything critical of Fable 2, but like my character in the game, it's not perfect. This brings me onto the co-op mode. There's 2 sides to the coin here, and let me go over the good first. The orb system, which represents other players and their position in their world, is an absolute treat. Get close enough to an orb, and you can start chatting. The advantages to this really shone through when I was playing a quest where I had to find 10 hidden treasures. On starting the quest, I bumped into a friend's orb and found he was missing just 1 of the required 10 (it's always the last one isn't it). Through our co-operation, we were able to find all 10 hidden treasures, while not affecting any change in the others world. And this is the idea of the co-op in Fable 2. When you actually join up with a friend, you don't join as your character, but rather as a henchman. This disappointed many players, but at the same time, the idea is that it's supposed to be your world, and not anyone else's. There should be only 1 hero, and that should be you. I'm not too perturbed about the way this works, but there is one major problem with it that it actually makes co-op so frustrating, it should have been left out. To stop your henchman wondering off, you are both locked onto the same camera view, with the view been dictated by the hero. Great, except when you happen to go off in different directions, where one of you are in view and the other is behind a tree. Or worse, inside a house or similar. It's so easy to lose view of your character and have him/her receive a whipping by some parsing Hobbes. You can't look or do what you want, and there's the inevitable squabble that ensues when you have different ideas of where to go. Co-op gameplay fails miserably because of this, and I wonder what exactly they thought they would achieve, especially after seeing a game like Too Human basically being condemned because of a different camera control.

A previous article already mentions the glitches that have appeared in Fable 2 (a fix should be out very soon), and the co-op camera was poorly implemented, but at the end of day, it doesn't take away from the fact that Fable 2 is one of the best games I've played. The gameplay is innovative and the story is compelling enough for it to be an unmissable adventure. If you haven't already, do yourself a favour and grab a copy!

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