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After finishing the game, I have been forced to edit my review.
I was a huge fan of Fable 2, I loved the interaction with the people, the cities, and how you could make the game your own. Fable 3 is a good successor to the Fable storyline. The main plot is engaging and the wit/humor found within keeps you laughing. The game does a good job of mixing up the action, bringing you to different places and having you accomplish varying tasks throughout.
However, Fable 3 is essentially a cut down version of Fable 2. While removing the menus was generally a good thing, the Fable 3 team went too far. I list the Pros/ Cons here, but my final verdict is that unless you know what is coming at the end of the game, the end decision will ruin the endgame (the part after the plot is done) almost guaranteed. I won't give away anything, but I strongly recommend you either be willing to play through twice, or rent the game. I was extremely angry at the Fable team after the plot was over. Forcefully shutting my xbox off, controller on the ground, angry.
Pros-
-No Menus
When I say no menus, I mean none what so ever, instead you have your sanctuary. An area that you can instantly teleport to whenever you want. Inside is your armory, dressing room, trophy room etc. All your items are displayed on mannequins and on the wall so you can pick and choose without going through layers and layers of menus. Even saving has an area in your sanctuary (not very obvious in the beginning). It sounds like it would be weird, but it really adds to the immersion of the game and works very well. A big map does the traveling when you can select areas for your indicator trail to go (same as fable 2) or fast travel to the areas that you've already visited. You can also zoom in on cities that you've visited and see more information about them. The entire idea may sound weird, but it really adds to the continuity of the game.
-Alive weapons
When I heard in the trailer that the weapons were 'alive' and would change as we used them I thought it would be neat, but weapons probably wouldn't be that different. Boy was I wrong. A friend came into my world, same levels as I was, and ALL of our weapons were totally different. I'm not saying the designs or colors, but EVERYTHING. Shape, size, color, symbols/color of symbol. Everything. This provides a very cool customization of weapons.
-World is much bigger
And I'm not kidding, after eight or nine hours of Fable 2 you basically had explored everything. I've played at least that much and have only seen five or six of the at least twenty or so villages/areas. It's huge.
-No allocation of skill points
Unlike Fable 2, where you had to choose areas to put your different skill points into, Fable 3 has a much more streamlined process. You get (basically xp, but I forget what they are called) which are earned through kills, quests, and talking to villages. Inside the sanctuary you can visit this area called 'Road to the Kingdom' or something along those lines. Inside, there is a figurative path on how close you are to ruling Albion, with chests and gates along the way. Every little way in the game, a gate is opened allowing you access to more chests, which can be opened with a requisite amount of 'xp'.
-Better Graphics
Title basically speaks for itself. The graphics are more polished although I have encountered some stuttering.
-More
Very generally, more spells, more swords, more people, and more flourishes. You can weave spells together to create amazing effects. (fire and ice robert frost style anyone?
-Amazing Variety
I have YET to find myself doing something to the point where I am bored of it. It maintains continuity throughout but manages to stay away from just 'bashing your way through'. You never know what you'll have to do next, from interacting with villagers to make them like you, romancing a married woman to get her to divorce her husband that doesn't want her, to playing as the hero inside a dungeons and dragons game.
-Combat
In Fable 2, you could pretty much bash your way through anything without having to worry about finesse. That's gone... In just about every battle I have been pushed to roll and block in order to keep the enemies from overpowering me. The enemies are various, and they always have one or two strong guys that really make you feel pressured while fighting.
-More realistic villagers
In Fable 2, if you had enough renown basically everyone loved you. Its a little harder in Fable 3. If you want that girl/guy as your significant other you need to work for it a bit more.
-Pro/Con (can't tell)
You no longer get money when the game is shut off like Fable 2. This is good, and bad. It makes it so it is much harder to get gold, but also stops the Fable 2 money cheat.
-Cons
-Graphics stuttering
The graphics have a tendency to lag or stutter during the game. This can ruin your 'lute hero' chain, and is just annoying. You can, however, download the game to your xbox hard drive which will eliminate the stuttering.
-Lack of interactivity
When conversing with a villager, you have two emotes to choose from. A 'good' emote and an 'evil' emote. If you want to shake hands with someone, but your only good option is to dance then your stuck with dancing with them. This is very annoying, and makes me miss the emote wheel from Fable 2. The world of Fable 3 also feels shallower than the world of Fable 2. This could be because I didn't really try to get to know the world until after I became king and the 'big choice' which impacts the game quite a bit.
-The choice
After you become king, you are faced with a giant choice. Unless you specifically prepare for it, I almost guarantee it will ruin your game/day. I was NOT happy.
The first part of the game was excellent, wit and humor was hilarious. Plot was twisting with many old characters brought back (reaver, therese). The end choice literally ruined a lot of it for me though.
***SEMI SPOILER***
If you don't want the end choice to make you very, very angry save a lot of gold. When I say a lot, I mean a lot. (~10 million). It is, however, easier to make gold. In about 20 minutes you can have around 100,000 which then can be invested into property. Keep investing until you get a lot of income per income cycle, then wait till you have the requisite amount of gold
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SPOILER ALERT!Having enjoyed Fable 2 to the fullest extent, you can imagine how excited I was to finally bring home Fable 3. After beating F3 in about two days, I am so upset I could almost cry. I will list the good and bad (or evil) as follows:
1. I liked the larger gameplay areas, but hated the lack of maps. How in the heck am I supposed to know where I'm going when led by a glowing trail that leads me into walls or the edge of a cliff?
2. Having more than one choice of dog breed was cool, but sometimes he leads me to 'treasure' when there is nothing there. Must be one of the many glitches I have heard so much about.
3. Hated having to repair houses and other real estate, especially since the game does not give you a 'repair all' option, and there is no indicator on each town's map to tell you that you have homes that need repairing. It may have been more bearable if the homes actually looked fixed up upon hitting the repair button, but they just look the same, which is really stupid.
4. The lack of different clothing outfits was extremely dissapointing after Fable 2's extensive collection, especially if you're a female gamer, and the makeup was ugly and unflattering. More hairstyles would have been great to choose from as well, which brings me to...
5. The shopping! Where are all the humorous and creative item descriptions we have come to know and love from Fable 2? Absolutely nowhere! I was really looking forward to reading some new ones. It also really sucks that you can't carry more than one kind of food at a time, which brings me to...
6. The health meter! or lack of it, I should say. Enough said.
7. The new Hero Sanctuary system would have pleased me more if it would have allowed you to see how many health potions or food items you had.
8. The lack of interesting items to be found in the furniture of homes will bore you to tears after three houses. You will also have about 3,000 pairs of pajamas by the end of the game, along with a lifetime supply of mutton.
9. As someone else stated, there is absolutely ZERO warning that the final battle sequence is about to take place. It was lucky for me that I had about a dozen health potions, or I never would have made it through alive.
10. If you are playing as a 'good' character, the game does not give you enough quests that focus on replenishing your depleted treasury while keeping all your 'promises' to fix Albion and Aurora. Also, although I bought up all the real estate I could, while keeping a 'normal' rent rate, I still could barely break out of the negative treasury $ by the time all promises were kept. The game simply does not give you enough time to raise sufficient funds if you play as a 'good' character. What really made me mad at the end after the final boss battle was this sickening message that even though I was the ideal 'good' and well-loved monarch, the people could care less about my victory over the Crawler because the dead outnumbered the living. What was the point of being good then? Which brings me to my next point: An empty world. After I beat the game, there is nobody left but friggin' guards. I wanted to get married, but there was barely anybody left, and NO SHOPS TO BUY HEALTH POTIONS! By this time, I had over 5 million gold, but had to resort to stealing in order to find a wedding ring and potions to do quests with, because there were no stores open. Lionhead, why did you do this, especially to a character who tried to always make 'good' choices? After getting married though, all the people miraculously returned...I'll never know if that was a coincidence, or just the fact that I had a royal wedding.
11. Since the Spire is clearly visible from the island town of Driftwood, it would have been great to have a quest there as part of the main storyline. I also prefer having Teresa as my guide, instead of that butler.
12. Seeing Reaver was pretty cool, but it would have been nice to see Garth and Hammer as well, to find out what their stories were, or possibly go on a quest with them. Yes, I know, it is pretty clear that Fable 2 is my favorite of the series.
13. The expression system stinks, although I do like some of the newer ones like hand-holding, hugging, kiss, cuddle, and tickle. I hate not having all of them at my fingertips like in F2. Being able to take a person on a date was nice too.
14. Upon beating the game, there is nothing left but boring quests, and there is absolutely no good and evil versions of the same quests during the course of the whole game. The lack of choices is unnerving, along with the lack of neutral choices. The entire game seems bent on using you as a charity fund. Also, there is only one opportunity to raise or lower the taxes to replenish the treasury.
Well, that brings me to the end of my review. I'm sure I will edit it as I find more disappointing things to put in, of which there are many. Rent this game first.
Another afterthought: The fact that your hero character talks just rubbed me the wrong way from the first time I heard her speak. It would be like playing a Zelda game and having Link suddenly stop being a mute;feels really awkward. How is the character supposed to best reflect your own personality if it keeps talking in a scripted dialogue? I just felt that I had to put this in because it really bothered me.
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**SPOILERS AHEAD** We all heard about the "touch" expression system. The "innovation" in the interface. The "improved" combat. All of those fail on many levels. It attempts to rewrite the rules of the genre and does an awful job of it. I'll cover those in a minute.My biggest issue? The king section's poor execution.
Example 1: The game refuses to play by its own rules. You earn money from your properties every five minutes of play time, correct? The time it takes you to walk from your house to the blacksmith can earn you $20,000 if you own enough property. That is why you buy stores and homes in the first place.
So, can someone please answer this: How is it that, as king, a month or more of game time can pass in an instant and you haven't earned a single extra golden dime from your properties? When you're walking the streets as king, you still earn money. However, when a king segment ends and you fast-forward in time say two months you receive no earnings. It doesn't compute how much you should have earned in those 60 days. Your potential earnings just disappear into limbo.
Money is the sole key to Albion's fate. People will live or die based on how much gold you've got in your coffers. It's a literal $1 to 1 life ratio. Yet, just when you need it the most, they take away that mechanic. Over the course of a game year the game skips ahead at enormous, irregular intervals such as three months as opposed to a standard 30 day month so you have no accurate gauge as to how fast you need to earn that money.
My wife and I ended up just leaving the game on overnight when we realized what was going on. During one of the (very) few action segments of the king chapter, we left our character in a castle room, bound the controller stick with a rubber band to keep it from pausing out and earned a ton of $$ from our properties. It doesn't want to play by its own rules? We won't play by them either.
I'm not one to use cheats, exploits, or "God" codes in games. I find cheating takes away the fun and challenge of a game, which is what I play for in the first place. That said, I did not feel bad in the least doing what I did. We used no codes or trickery. We simply did what the game *should* have done. Considering the amount of backlash the "king" portion of the game has received for its gross imbalances, I made the right decision.
Example 2: Zero grey area or thought put into the king's choices. One of the choices involves Aurora, which wants to become a part of Albion. The good choice rebuilding Aurora with a fort and letting them join Albion immediately will cost $200,000. Reaver's suggestion is for them to pay you a $500,000 dowry of sorts by mining a mineral deposit located in Aurora.
My question is this: if you let them join Albion now, won't that mine be yours anyway? I mean, Aurora is now your land. You can extract what you want from it. So... why would following the "good" road cost you $200,000 instead of earning you just $300,000? ($500K worth of mine $200K of rebuilding = $300K left over, no?) It makes no sense whatsoever.
And your other choices? Orphanage or brothel? Sewage or tree hugging? People who want their happy, pretty cake AND for you to save them from the horrible "darkness". They are all so very black and white. Politics are often about compromise. I realize Fable is not intended to be a political system simulator, but it should have at least some grasp of human nature. In WWII, when the USA was threatened by the Axis, everyday people sacrificed food, materials, clothing and more for the sake of the armed forces. That the people of Albion would be so oblivious is beyond me.
As for the other things...
Touch Expression: Sure, you can interact people now, but you can't express yourself. There are no choices beyond "good" or "evil". In lieu of a natural friendship progression wave, shake hands, hug now your first contact with someone is playing patty cake or executing a perfect dance number (complete with lift). It's a ridiculous, disappointing change from Fable II's "expression wheel". It's like someone giving you a sports car but ordering you to drive only in straight lines on a 50 foot long track. What's the point of that power when you can't tell it in which direction to go?
Interface: The sanctuary is a clunky, time consuming mess. The "old" list method from Fable II is not as pretty, but is far more expedient. Running from room to room and cycling/paging through the limited display of items took far more time than Fable II's list system. I did like the world map feature. It made it easy to navigate and manage your quests. However, when dealing with your property, a simple dedicated "repair 100%" button would have been nice when you highlight a property, instead of having to drill down into each property's sub menu. What about a "repair all" feature for a region?
XP vs. Guild Seals: Calling a cat a horse doesn't make it a horse, nor does it make you clever.
Lag/Stutter: The game is ridiculously buggy. I've had quests disappear without reason, horrendous framerate stutter at random times, speech glitches, loading glitches, and more. I have not played a game this buggy since Price of Persia: Warrior Within. I haven't fallen through a wall yet in Fable III, so POP:WW is still on top of that junk pile.
Jasper (aka the Used DLC Salesman): While I liked Jasper at the beginning, I quickly came to loathe him. It seemed every time I visited the sanctuary all he did was hawk DLC to me. The only DLC available at the time was the dog suit. I looked at it, decided not to spend real $$ for a freaking dog suit. Yet, every time I hit the sanctuary, there was Jasper prodding me to buy the "new" outfit, even though I'd looked at it several times to try and convince him I was well and truly familiar with this horrible example of fashion. I swear to God, the next time I hear "a fetching new outfit" I'm going to slay a villager.
Combat: What combat? There is no strategy and the AI is weak. The only enemies that gave me a run for the money were the Balvarines. Combat largely consists of spamming the attack of your choice. And, if you want to be even lazier, just charge up a combination fireball/force push spell and you'll barely be touched. One or two repeats and you'll clear almost any room. Add in a friend/spouse on coop and you'll breeze through. In my entire playthrough, I got knocked out exactly once, and it was because I was bored and started fooling around.
In conclusion... It's an action RPG that fails at both the action and the RPG parts. All the new things the game brought to the table are soundly borked. Poor expression and combat system. Interface design. The king chapter. The graphics are only a minor improvement over Fable II. The storyline and characters aren't as great they make themselves out to be (although I did like Walter).
I honestly don't know what the professional reviewers from gaming sites and mags are talking about when they give this game 8's and 9's out of 10. Stay away from this one.
Honest reviews on Fable III - Xbox 360
I'm not a hardcore gamer. My life is full of one husband, four dogs, three jobs, and a few time-consuming hobbies. I don't have the time, energy, or interest to spend hours hooked up to my Xbox or Wii. And yet, somehow, even on my tight schedule, I managed to finish Fable 3 in less than a week of sporadic play.But worse than the short game (Oblivion and Fallout 3 each took months to complete, Assassins Creed several weeks) was the fact that the storyline and the quests...well, they were mostly terrible.
I'll try to do this without throwing in too many spoilers, but for sensitive types: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS AHEAD. TURN BACK NOW.
FABLE 3: THE GOOD
1. It's pretty. It's no prettier than the first two, but they were both nice to look at.
2. It's gay. The Fable 3 world is a très LGBT-friendly world. In the first Fable, there were two NPCs available for gay marriage. In the sequel -which was also a disappointment -there were more. This go-round, it seems like half the planet is ready to get hitched or have a quickie behind the bushes, provided you do them a wee favor first. (See item #8 below.)
3. It requires tough choices. Unlike the first two installments of Fable, you can't be a goodie-goodie all the way through Fable 3. There comes a point where you have to make some very difficult decisions. Granted, they're boring, Sim City sort of decisions, like, should you raise the income tax rate? Should you preserve the forest or mow it down to make room for condos? Still, they provide some morally interesting plot points.
4. Your dog works better this time. Granted, he's no more useful than he was in #2, but at least he doesn't get lost now, which means you don't have to spend half an hour trying to find him.
5. You can dress like a chicken. (Seriously.)
FABLE 3: THE VERY, VERY BAD
6. Visually, it's no improvement over the other two. The original Fable came on strong, with dreamy landscapes and sunlight and chickens. Sadly, neither Fable 2 nor Fable 3 had any new tricks up their sleeves (except for those in item #2 above).
7. No jumping allowed. Seriously, your character can't jump. That stuff gets ooooold. Fable 3 isn't the only game with that problem, I know, but that's no excuse. You don't want me to jump? Build a freakin' wall, don't put a pebble in my way and tell me I'm trapped.
8. The quests are TERRIBLE. The main storyline is bearable, I'll give you that. It's broken into two major parts, and each is vaguely engaging. But the side quests -nearly all of them -involve running errands for NPCs: "Oh, hi, would you take this package to my business partner three villages over? Then I'll totally be your friend." And, "There's this thing -it's not really important, and you can't sell it or even use it -but it's buried in this random spot on top of an icy mountain crawling with monsters. Could you dig it up and bring it back for me?" It's like spending a Sunday afternoon with elderly relatives you don't like very much and constantly being asked to find the remote control.
9. It's short. Like I said, it's split into two parts. I finished the first in about three days and was momentarily very pissed off, until I realized that there was more ahead. And I thought, "Oh, this is interesting". Then I realized the second part was just a series of chores and unengaging side quests and "Should I build a school or a brothel?" Then, a few days later: poof. Done. Finito. Sure, you can still run around and do stuff after you complete the two main objectives, and I imagine the downloadable content is okay, but for $60, I've come to expect a little more than a well-tailored chicken suit.
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Let me first say that I loved Fable and Fable 2. I was really shocked when I heard this game was coming out since it doesn't seem like that long ago that Fable 2 came out. I pre-ordered it and eagerly awaited my copy.This game blows on pretty much every level for the following reasons:
It's full of glitches, big and small. I didn't see the game killing glitch that other people saw, but there are plenty of others. The dog doesn't play fetch and was terrible at pointing out treasure;
once my character was supposed to be making pies and her body was almost off the screen completely; that glowing light that leads your path was on drugs it tried to take me through a locked gate, several times it took me to the Academy even though my quest wasn't there (I guess it was trying to tell me I should be reading instead of playing the game), or it just disappeared altogether.
The world overall seems smaller than before and there just seems like less to do. You have to get people to like you to give you quests that just kind of fill up time and, really, that's just lame. Some people I know were proud that they owned everything there was to own, but honestly that just doesn't seem like it would be that hard to do because the towns are just kind of small. There really isn't that much to buy at the shops, the smaller ones only offer one item at a time and the amount of food you can carry is limited. That didn't matter because the game was insanely easy and I never even needed health potions. The magic was sadly pretty lame too. You can only use two spells at a time (after you unlock that ability) and to change them out you have to go back to your Sanctuary and change your clothes(??!!)
Also, there is only one save in this game, so if you want to go back and try something over...too bad! You'd have to start over completely.
But my biggest gripe, the totally unforgivable disappointment of this game I like playing the good character and am usually not all that interested in money. Without spoiling anything, I'll just mention that's a mistake with this game, BIG MISTAKE. It makes this game NOT IN ANY WAY ABOUT YOUR CHOICES ABOUT GOOD AND EVIL, but basically just how much money you have. Booorrriiinnngg. It made me feel like I had no real control over or connection to my character's actions. It actually made me really angry, which is why I'm writing this review. I want these game designers to apologize to me for wasting my time. Seriously.
Summary: don't waste your money. In fact, just play Fable or Fable 2 again instead.
Update: Here's a few more things that really bug me about this game interacting with people was simplified and ridiculous (why am I dancing with every total stranger that I meet? I wish at least once that some woman had slapped me for trying to do this), having to hold someone's hand when I want them to follow me somewhere (really grown man, I have to hold your hand or you'll just stand there?), repairing houses (tedious and doesn't add anything to the game. Is there a slum lord achievement for letting them all go to 0%?), not being able to find the gifts that my kids asked me for because I can't buy just anything from the gift store (I actually found myself standing in front of a gift shop yelling at the TV "but the teddy bear is right there! why can't I just buy it?! sad), not being able to put more than two kids in the palace (I adopted some kids and tried to move them in with my family in the palace and the game told me there wasn't enough room IN THE PALACE), that it took me two seconds to kill the final boss
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