Fable: The Lost Chapters

The Good
The best aspects of Fable: The Lost Chapters to me was the music and audio. The main theme song was composed by Danny Elfman, a veteran of the movie soundtrack industry and it's such a fitting and memorable tune that you shouldn't be surprised if you find yourself whistling it to yourself every so often! Sound effects and voice-acting are also top notch so Lionhead definitely didn't fail in those regards.

The game itself is one in a small niche of games (including the likes of Knights of the Old Republic) that explores the ideas of moral alignment and which have virtual denizens that respond accordingly (i.e. cower in fear if you're evil, or cheer you on if you're good).

The amount of detail put into your character's physical appearance is also worthy of merit. If you get beaten up too much during fights, it will show in the form of battle scars over your body. You can also equip your character with different clothes, hair styles and tattoos (which you can make yourself if you're the creative sort). Your character also ages with time, so as you approach 60, you'll start noticing more wrinkles and liver spots.

The Bad
Even though the game is apparently longer than the original Fable on X-Box, it is still rather short for a RPG. I finished the game in ~30 hours and that's after completing probably 90% of the quests for a particular alignment (good or evil). The ending was also slightly lackluster, hinting towards a sequel IMHO.

Even though the graphics overall are good, shading is a bit of a problem on modest video cards. I have a Radeon 9800 Pro and I couldn't put the maximum shadows setting on. The reason I was attempting to was that the shadows looked rather blocky on the models, even though everything else looks exceptional.

For a PC RPG, there may be the impression of limited freedom when compared to its counterparts. As this game was ported from an X-Box, areas tend to be small and there'll be a lot of loading screens to go from one location to the next (however this is reportedly much quicker on PCs than the X-Box, so it's not too much of an issue). Most of the times you pick to do good or evil things only have two choices rather than games like Knights of the Old Republic 2 where you have multiple choices and where the good choices don't necessarily turn out that way.

The Bottom Line
Fable: The Lost Chapters would appeal to console gamers out there who want to try an RPG with slightly more freedom than standard fare or for PC role-playing enthusiasts who want a short but fun action-oriented RPG. It is nothing revolutionary but it does manage to carve its own niche by borrowing some of the "good vs evil" elements from games like Knights of the Old Republic and some of the simulated life antics found in games like The Sims. Not exactly "the greatest RPG of all time" as Peter Molyneux would lead you to believe, but a fun game in its own right.