Currently Playing: Fable 2

I've put several hours into Fable 2 but I've been debating what to write on here about it for ages. The difficulty comes from the fact that I'm enjoying it but at the same time I'm not sure I'm really 'getting' it.

On the one hand it's a lovely looking world and it's fun to explore the towns and the shops looking for proprties to buy and trading goods to kit your hero out. On the other there's not a lot, in my opinion, to actually do.

The main quest involves trying to recruit some people to stop some evil dude (I haven't really been paying a lot of attention to the chatter as you can probably tell), But to do this you mainly walk along following the handy glowing trail. Which I like. The main thrust of the tasks though is always combat. Even in the dungeons it's one battle after another. There's no Zelda like puzzles or exploration really required. Having said that the combat is mostly fun. The inventory handily shows you which of your equipment is the best too.

There's plenty of side quests although most of these involve combat too. One side quest did have me revenge a ghost of a jilted lover by finding the man in question and having her fall in love with me. The interaction is achieved by picking various displays from a wheel of choices. For instance blowing kisses or giving the thumbs up. It's not a particularly elegant solution. Although I do like the little stat numbers that pop above all the NPCs to show how they've reacted. Pull at your gun or sword in town and it scares everyone. As in Fallout 3 you can behave either good or bad and you characters reputation is affected accordingly.

There's plenty of depth to the world of Albion too. It feels very organic. I bought a house and married a local woman (It's a fine lesbian wedding as I'm playing as a woman) then got annoyed when she followed me every where.. So I shot her. Which was fine. Until a local guard tried to arrest me and so I shot him too. Sadly they didn't turn a blind eye so I left town killing a number of guards along the way. On my return sometime later I was promptly arrested and forced to do community service (Although, surprise surprise, this inovled walking somewhere and then killing stuff).

The combat is solid and as you earn experience you can learn new moves, I've upgraded my range abilities cos I like to keep my hands clean as much as possible. Oh and I should mention the dog shouldn't I? I never found the dog in Fallout 3 but this dog (I've called him PS3) is your constant companion helpfully pointing out hidden treasures and barking happily.

I should also mention the lack of frustration. If you die you come straight back to life (You do lose some experience but a miniscule amount). You receive a permanent scar but other than that no problem.

By all accounts it outta be the perfect RPG for me.. But still I don't feel like I'm getting the most out of it.. Perhaps I should experiment some more. The lack of a decent map makes this difficult though. I can't even find a couple of the properties I've bought.

Still overall it's probably going to hold my attention long enough to push on to completion of the main quest at least.