Fable II

Honest and Unpopular Reviews No. 55 Fable II (Xbox 360) I completed Fable II today. I almost quit this game very early on. This might be the slowest start to any game I've ever played. The first 30 minutes were downright dreadful, and the loading screens being unskippable cutscenes didn't help either. It took 3 to 4 hours before it started to actually get entertaining. Really, it didn't pick up until I got to the Crucible. That's when I felt a little bit of redemption for sticking with it. The story wasn't good, and it got weird. It got dark in a hurry with Lucien murdering your sister Rose while you're both still kids, then coming back years later to murder your dog too. The fighting mechanics aren't the best. Taking the game's age into account, I guess it's fine, although I've played older games that had better CQC. The second half was great. After the Crucible the pacing improved quite a bit, with more action and more fighting. There's a lot less pointless dialogue too. That lasted right up until the end, when it all became so anticlimactic. All of a sudden the game slows down. You're doing slow walks and listening to characters babble on and on. Then you finally get to the last fight with Lucien, and what a letdown that was. It was funny watching my character get fatter and fatter as the game went on. He started off a skinny little kid and was morbidly obese by the end. In total, I think it took about 12 hours to get through the story. I rate Fable II a 3.5 out of 5.