My Xbox 360 has been acting as a showpiece with that little coat of dust. Every now and then, I would have friends come over for a couple of hours or gaming.
 
But then, I started playing Fable 2 and things changed. At first, I thought “meeh – let’s give it a shot” and then put it back on the shelf. Oooh, I was soo wrong. This turned around to be a controller-grabbing game. There is so much to do, that you can spend hours of your life on it. The below might come as a spoiler, but I’ll do my best.
 
About the game
This game is a RPG (role-playing game) where you have a final quest to kill the villain, but you have other side quests to help build your reputation, skill and ability to fight better. This game reminds me of World of Warcraft, but it’s more of a single player game and how you decide your character to develop and be loved by the other people. You follow the main quests as well as some side quests to help you reach your final objective.

Game start 
You start off by choosing what you want play as – i.e male or female. I chose the boy and proceeded from there. You are then presented in town as a young kid with your brother/sister in a small town. You do mini quests and the whole thing acts like a tutorial – how to use walk, run, fight, interact, and so on. 
 
Things take a turn, and you will end up growing to a “young adventurer” starting off in a Gypsy town. You follow the prompts and explore a little – learn about the various shops, stalls and real estate that you can buy and move in to or rent out. You can interact with other people in the game via social, fun or rude gestures.
 
Your Dog
You also have a dog as a companion who is always by your side through the game. He/She (however you want to name it) helps fight with you as well as finds treasure, or items that are buried (which you can use your spade to dig up). Items include gold, jewellery, health potations or general items. I think if I was to loose my dog, the game would get a little boring. He’s good fun. You can praise him, punish him, teach him tricks, play fetch, heal him or give him a treat. He fills the void every now and then.
 
If your dog is scared to follow you in certain places, just praise him to give him a confidence boost.
 
The regions of the game
Shortly after you’ve explored the Gypsy camp, you make your way to the bigger world – Bowerstone’s Town Square is a big market place with lots to do.
 
The graphics are beautifully done and add to the experience of game play. You walk or run around through areas and the lighting will change from day to night. Shops will close at night, and if you have a house you can rest overnight or carry on to other parts of the world. If you’re bored of doing quests, run around places and open up other regions.
 
Money
You will need money (or in this case gold) to buy things. So how do you earn enough gold in Fable 2?
 
In various towns that you go to, you can buy real estate and then rent it out (or furnish it or and resell it for a profit). You can even buy stalls or shops where the shop owners pay you rent & profit. If you own a shop you can walk in and take the gold from the cash register. You can also steal it from shops that you don’t own – but that could lead you in trouble. I haven’t tried anyways.
 
Once you have a portfolio of real estate – then every 5 mins you will earn gold, both while playing the game and while not playing the game. So while I am at work, my character is still making money (not as much as when playing but still enough) – and once I log in to play again, I’ll accumulate that money. Currently with my portfolio, I earn about 4000 gold per 5 minutes of game play. You can put up the rent to get more cash – but that makes you “corrupt” or you can leave it at market rate. You can even put it below market rate to get people to like you and gain “purity” but sacrifice on how much gold you earn.
 
You can also make gold by learning to become a blacksmith. There are 5 levels and to be promoted to each level you need make a certain amount of gold from that job. Each consecutive sword that you make will multiply the amount of gold you earn. Now this can get boring as you progress through each level – but it’s a good way to make gold if you invest 15 – 20 mins. The same can be done if you want to learn to be a woodcutter or a bartender. I did the blacksmith job and I am now a Level 5 blacksmith (the highest you can get I think). I’ve made approx 35,000 gold (if not more) in going from level 1 to level 5. You can also gamble if you’re feeling lucky – but I found this a tad boring.
 
Things to buy
There are heaps of things you can buy – and it seems like you have a bottomless bag to store it all.
 
You can buy books which allow you to teach your dog some tricks or how to he can become a better treasurer and fighter. My dog is a level 4 on both.
 
You can stock up on food to revive your health. You can buy potions to gain skill, will, strength or experience. There are furniture shops where you can buy items to deck out a house that own and then re-sell it for a profit.
 
A tailor shop lets you dress up your character. Or you can buy weapons from the blacksmith. A stone cutter sells augments that you can add to your weapon (if it supports it). These augments could be, say earning gold for each kill by that weapon, or say gaining health points for each kill.
 
A Jeweller can sell you various expensive stones or jewellery to give a woman (or man if you prefer). Some towns have pubs, if you want to get drunk.
 
Some smaller towns will have traders that walk around – you can interact with them and sell unwanted items. Some traders far away will give you more money for unwanted items. In your region map you can find places that have shortage on items. You can travel between towns to stock up on them and then gain a profit by selling it to the areas facing shortage on those goods.
 
Social
Through various expressions in your ability, you can interact with the people in the game. There are fun gestures like dancing or playing with your dog, as well as rude gestures like giving them the finger. Further more, you can give gifts to the ones you like or even autographs to the kids who ask for it. Note: you have to stock up on gift items.
 
Your appearance also plays a part in the way people thing of you. Dressing smartly and being in good shape helps.
 
While food can revive health, food such as pies and some others have fat content. Eating fatty food will change your appearance by adding on more weight and this impacts your attractiveness. You can be attracted by others and can even marry the sex of your choice. Once married you move in with them to a place they own or a place of your choice. You can start a family and pay for their expenses too. You can even attract men / women for a casual encounter – but I advice buying protection from a general trading store if you are not ready to start a family or catch diseases =)
 
If your spouse in the game is treated badly, they will most likely leave you. You can have multiple wives or husbands in different regions if you like. Also your spouse may cheat on you and you can then get rid of them by going to the tower of shadows (the evil side). I haven’t ventured much around here yet.
 
Sometimes in the game, you will overhear someone saying they would love to go to another town. You can get them to follow you and take them there.
 
Fighting and Combat
Fighting and killing bandits or things against you will allow you to gain experience, strength, will and skill. As you accumulate these, you can trade them for further levels of training.
 
You get experience points for fighting and doing certain quests and actions. By adding up your strength, skill or will points with the experience points you can improve your level in either strength, skill or will.
 
Strength is your brutality, toughness or physique – this will enable you to do better style attacks, give you a longer bar for your health and increase your damages respectively. Strength points plus experience points let you level up. This is useful for Melee attacks.
 
Skill is more for your ranged weapons and you can build up on accuracy, speed and style. Here you need skill + experience points to level up.
 
Finally you have Will. This is where you can call on certain spells to do damage around you. Shocks, blades, Inferno, Vortex are a few to mention. You can also gain the ability to revive the dead or use time control to go back a few seconds and re-attempt your fight. Here you need will + experience
 
There are shops and traders who sell potions that you can use to regain health or gain more experience, skill, strength and will. Once you earn those, you can trade it for better levels of spells. The level of each spell goes from 1 o 5… The higher you go the more damage and more radius coverage around you. You can even target your spell to an individual.
 
As for weapons, you can use swords, crossbows, guns, axe, and hammers and so on. Choose the one that does most damage and is quicker to either reload or quicker to re-hit.
 
Conclusion
This game is brilliant – I look forward to finishing it and is currently the primary game I play when I’ve got time. You almost make yourself be part of the character – like avoid doing things that you would do in real life. You can decide what is good and evil and do those quests only. I heard there is a quest where you have a choice between keeping your dog or gaining something else. If I ever stumble upon that, my dog is staying. Like I said before, he is a good companion to have by your side, and doesn’t give you that lonely feeling when you’re travelling at night. If you have Xbox live, I believe you can even see other game players online and possibly work together with them. I can’t remember.
 
The graphics is great, and while there are a few bugs (like interactions, or standing on the right spot to active things) the game is still fun to play. I rate it 4.5 / 5.