Fable II Review

Fable II's reputation ran ahead of its substance, and this grade is the correction. The good is real: the dog remains one of gaming's great companions, sniffing out dig spots and cowering when you go cruel, and Albion's leap forward five hundred years into a tricorn-hat age gives the series' humor new targets. But Lionhead sanded away every source of tension. Combat is one button per discipline with no stakes, since death costs only scars and experience specks; the economy collapses the moment you buy a few shops and let rent tick in real time, even while the console is off; and the main story is a brisk, oddly paced revenge tale against Lucien that resolves in a single anticlimactic button press, a C carried entirely by Theresa's narration and Stephen Fry's Reaver.

What is left is a pleasant place to express yourself and nothing to overcome in it. Charm is not challenge, and a C says so.