I feel spoiled while playing this. Especially since I played Fable 2 first instead of this, but thankfully I have had an opportunity to finally play this and I will say that despite all the smoke Peter Molyneux blew up peoples asses back in 2004. I love the "original" Fable. Despite this being a repackage of the original game from 2004 (hence the quotes on original) I genuinely enjoy this. Of course its not Fable 2 which I am more accustomed to but this is a great way to start the series in a generic sense. Yes its a fantasy RPG. Yes its a game about morality. And Yes its a game where you are to do as you please. So far I have bought out houses, raised their financial worth, rented them out, and then slowly became a real estate magnate with the ability to light people on fire.

Now when I mentioned that it's an RPG its not in the traditional sense where you level up and get perk points or some nonsense involving complex skill trees. If you have a certain play style you gain XP for that trait. If you use magic a lot you will gain Will XP, if you use melee a lot you gain Strength XP, but if you fight from a distance with bows you get Skill XP and all of these different XP pools are fueled by basic XP orbs you gain from killing enemies for by finishing quests. The best part about leveling up your characters attributes is that it alters their appearance by making them taller, more muscular, more mystical looking, and even older. In a matter of hours of your play time your character will go from looking 21 to 65 since y'know UNLIMITED POWER.

The morality system in this game also affects your characters appearance. By being pure evil your skin turns a darkened blue with your eyes glowing blood red with the more obvious change being freaking devil horns sticking out of your skull also your hair is black because y'know PURE EVIL. But by being purely good your characters skins remains normal, your hair becomes a platinum blonde and you have a halo over your head.
You can get married, own a house, become an alcoholic fat ass, and...beat your wife with almost zero repercussions besides a divorce order and heaping wad of evil morale.

But outside of all of this great stuff I have mentioned I wanted to also use this review as a means to get my voice heard about Fable 2 and the series as a whole. Fable 2 came out in 2008 and its been a good 10 years since its release and if I still had my Xbox 360 I would still clock hundreds of hours on that game. In 2016 Lionhead Studios was shutdown and two key members of that studio went on to make Two Point Studios, the guys that made Two Point Hospital and with Microsoft Studios being the parent company to Lionhead and recent talk of Microsoft bringing more of its games to Steam I would love to see Mircosoft and Two Point come together to create a nice remaster or repackage of the full Fable 2 experience for the fans at least.

Since we are reaching two years since the launch of Cyberpunk 2077 I felt it would be nice to revise my review a third time especially since the new animated series Cyberpunk: Edgerunners has come out on Netflix which yes I highly recommend. But this review for the game, not the show, so to be blunt with the question of "is Cyberpunk 2077 any good?" I will say yes. For the most part now in 2022 it's definitely worth a try, hell even when the game launched I thought it had a strong narrative and a great cast of characters that made Night City feel alive even during its turbulent launch, and honestly I can recommend the game for the story alone, however there's more than simply a story to tell especially when you have gameplay that can be a mix of innovative and maybe tiresome for others. Personally, I think the game's gameplay beats of slowly becoming a cybernetic street ninja to be quite entertaining, especially depending on your build. For my two play throughs I either played a jack of all trades, one time and another time strictly a tech-savvy engineer that favors pistols and blades over blunt force, and this is where I draw some criticism especially with the upcoming DLC that's slated for 2023, I feel like the level cap is a little too low.

I asked a bunch of people on Reddit for some input on how they feel in regard to the overall level cap, and some people are relatively mixed. Some say it's fair and others (like me) tends to make the game more tedious by the time you max it because you will max both respective XP pools relatively early, making the rest of the sides jobs kinda feel like needless filler on a repeat play through since all the activities are tied to achievements. I know that in a recent patch they added some incentive for completing side jobs in the form of special awards from Fixers, but even then it's usually just a single item. Maybe add other awards in a tiered format for completing X number of jobs can be a good motivator, think of them as "loyalty" awards that increase with say every 5 jobs done instead of all of them being completed. But back to the topic of the level cap maybe in the DLC or even in a future patch they can increase the cap a little, I know that in some of the patches they have reworked some of the perks to be more universal adding a more customization to the player's play style but even than I feel like in the sense of a game set in this universe your character being a SOLO (Mercenary) should make them a master of more than two skill trees since that usually what is possible with the amount of provided attribute points. And I get it, this is a video game, not the pen and paper game it's based on, but I like to keep that in mind when I do play the game.

For my final closing point, what can I say that may finally reel you in for a potential purchase? I don't know. Overall I feel that in its current state Cyberpunk 2077 definitely feels more like a proper game than it did at launch even if some people still feel like it's lacking to a degree which is fine, personally I feel like it's an ok game, and you should at least give it a proper try before immediately falling back on the early criticism of two years ago, obviously CDPR are not giving up on the title given the announcement of the first DLC and now official mod tools. It's a game they still care about and still want to make better, which they have slightly accomplished in the two-year span, and hopefully they add more stuff that makes this game feel more lively, which from what I've read is on their agenda, and hopefully they follow through with those plans. But Night City as of now is a beautiful display of urban decay, corporate greed, and brutal body modification. It's inhabitants (at least the standouts) give you a slight glimmer of hope in the dark future of the New USA that anyone should explore at their own leisure.