Release: January 13, 2009
Developer: Lionhead Studios
Publisher: Microsoft
Genre: Role-Playing Game
***Post-release content is a somewhat different beast to full retail titles and as such we do not currently award fixed scores to such products.
Editor’s Note: We’ve implemented a simple scoring system: BUY IT/TRY IT/FORGET IT. However, DLC is somewhat of a different beast from regular ‘full retail’ titles so we’ve decided against giving it a final rating… since we make our own rules, we’re exercising our right to break them.
That’s what games journalism is all about.
Available for download since Tuesday (Jan 13th), the Knothole Island DLC is the first of what we hope to be numerous expansions for the world of Fable 2; offering up a new island to explore, with its own problems, unique items and a couple of other nice surprises.
It’s not going to take most players very long to finish the quests on offer (about 4 hours), and despite the high level of the enemies most players who have played through the main game’s story will have a character strong enough to easily handle the challenge.
Without giving away too much of the plot, the inhabitants of Knothole Island have historically had the ability to control the island’s weather system. The problem is that over many generations the technology needed to manage the climate has been lost, resulting in a permanent, harsh winter. It’s your job to retrieve the devices and restore normality to Knothole’s climate.
The quests themselves are somewhat over reliant on hitting switches with a combination of melee, ranged and magical attacks. While they don’t pose much of an intellectually problem, some may struggle if they haven’t built up their skills enough as quick, accurate aiming is essential to success. It would have been nice to have more variation to the puzzles, as the switch system gets old pretty quickly.
Aside from the designated dungeon areas, in which quests are completed, Knothole Island is a fairly small place, consisting of a few shops, houses and other miscellaneous buildings. The shops contain a selection of items unique to the Island and will be particularly welcome to anyone who is not happy with the appearance of their hero. For example, there are potions to remove any scars you may have picked up over the course of your adventures as well as those that significantly reduce the size of your belly and one’s height.
The most interesting of the shops is most certainly ‘The Box of Secrets’. Items in the Box of Secrets are only obtainable through trading certain items for a mystery product. The items you’ll need to posses in order to collect every item range from the very common to the very rare. Despite some of the items being indisputably cool and very desirable, it’s difficult to say whether it’s worth the effort. Many items you’ll to trade are truly difficult to come across, often requiring travelling around the world checking the stock at various stores and improving the state of a town’s economy.
This of course won’t be necessary if you’ve already turned Albion’s economy into a financial behemoth, and indeed if that’s the case then acquire said items shouldn’t pose much trouble at all. As with everything in Fable 2 the way you have played up to this point will set the difficult the task at hand.
As we’ve come to expect from Lionhead the writing is fantastic, with the residents of Knothole constantly blurting out funny, satirical and sarcastic comments about you and the world of Albion. There’s also the more than welcome addition of the ‘Shrine of Resurrection’, which will allow you to bring your dog back from the end – if indeed you lost your faithful companion during the game’s finale. For many of us (me included – Ed) this will be worth the cost of the download alone.
The 800 MS point asking price means that you’re probably only going to consider buying the content if you were especially taken with the full game. That’s likely for the best, as once the quests have been finished the relative lack of content make it difficult to recommend for all but the most hardened Fable followers. Even so, for true fans the unique items, potions and the shrine of resurrection – combined with the quests – will seem like invaluable additions to the experience.
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