Rodney McKay
Member
I never understood the praise for 2 (Yeah yeah opinions). It was painfully easy, the story wasn't good, and the final confrontation was one of the worst in video game history.
The dog was awesome though I'll give it that.
Easy: They were all dirt easy. The actual gameplay itself was better (more smooth, less clunky) than in Fable 3. I did enjoy Fable 1's combat a lot too, it was quite enjoyable. Surprisingly, there was some actual depth to Fable 2's one button combat. I HATED it when I first played it, but after some time I picked it up and gave it a chance and ended up enjoying it, especially getting the timing down on shooting the guns quickly.
Story: Best in the series IMO. Perfectly captures the dark fairytale aesthetic and tone the series tries to go for. Man looses his wife and becomes corrupted in his quest to bring her back.
Final Confrontation: Honestly don't remember it, but the series has always been terrible at endings. Fable 1's was pretty mediocre and the black goo monsters from 3 were stupid too.
Also can't forget that the game has the peak of the series humor as well. The side missions in particular are the best they've ever done some fun DLC missions as well (controlling weather in one and being inside a snowglode town from the first game in another) and they really filled out the game nicely.
It also had a great meta-game where you could buy all the property in the game (another thing that Fable 3 managed to somehow make less enjoyable, even with adding more features and functionality to it).
And there was some well done time jumps that actually let you effect things on a large scale with your decisions (a bit of a cheat, but it works). Whether you funded a town or not will change if it's a nice place or a pirate shithole, and what you did in another place also changes things a lot.
Honestly, I feel like Fable 2 came the closest to what the series was suppose to be out of all of the games. I just want it on my goddamn PC with the rest of the games!