Certainly, there's been a lot of stigma attached with the series (I say series because there are plans in the works for a Fable 3, 4 and 5) since the undelivered promises of the first Fable.

I personally do not trust user reviews, as much of the time, the users who write those reviews are 12-year old kids with no grasp of english who focus on one aspect of gameplay and are more or less ignorant to precisely the amount of work that goes into making a game.

Amazing what next generation technology can do, the devs got almost everything they originally wanted for the first Fable and managed to squeeze all of that into Fable 2. In other words, a lot of the promises that were made for Fable 1 but were unfulfilled ended up making it into Fable 2, among the most noteworthy having kids.