Fable III

The Good
Fable III isn't an easy game to rate on it's own merits, at least for me. I also have Fable II, and I handily consider it to be one of the best games on the Xbox 360. A masterpiece of fantasy adventure, a game delivering a deep gameplay experience unlike anything else on the system. Hell, I dare say there are no other games in my collection that are quite like Fable II, and that uniqueness is a good thing.

The same can be said of Fable III. It's that different from Fable II. On it's own, I think the story is overall better. For once, it's not about the lone hero trying to overthrow or defeat the tyrant. It's about that hero needing to play politics to build an army to effectively take back a kingdom. I like that. I also generally like the "revolutionary war" era style of the game as it's an era that is woefully underused in modern gaming. We have medieval fantasy, World War II battle scenarios, modern warfare battle scenarios, futuristic science fiction, futuristic post-apocalyptic worlds, and the like. But 18th or 19th century America/Britain? We don't see that hardly at all. So chock that up to a big plus.

Fable II had a few issues, namely, it's clunky as hell inventory system. And Fable III looks to fix everything--but it also tried to fix things that weren't necessarily broken--and this is where Fable III's problems arise. So, for the bulk of this review, I'm going to try something here. For every plus in this game, there is a negative of sorts, and I will relate them from this section to the next. Hopefully this will all work out, because I may be trying to fix a review system that isn't broken.

1. Fable III's action segments have been ever so slightly improved. The fighting action feels smoother, and using the firearms seemed to work better. The magic system has been somewhat overhauled, and allows the player to have two spells assigned at once, which are combined when used to create dramatic attacks.

2. The cumbersome menu system of Fable II is gone. No more will you spend untold amounts of time digging through your inventory to find that one book or item you've been thinking about.

3. You can finally earn experience from everything, you know, like a modern RPG. Fighting, finishing quests, talking to people, taking on small side-quests, and the like. There is one kind of experience, and you spend it how you want to upgrade your stats.

4. The map has been changed. It's now seen like a "sand table" in the pause screen. Walk up to it and press A. You can look over the world and pick a city and zoom in. And you can look around from here. It's a lot more visible than that tiny circular map from Fable II which I eventually gave up on and ignored completely.

5. The glowing trail returns to aid in directions for quests.

6. You can buy properties from the map screen instead of having to physically visit every single one of them.

7. Like Fable II, there are 50 things to shoot. In Fable II, it was stone Gargoyles. Here, it's evil garden gnomes. They're awesome, and their dialog is often hilarious. Unlike Fable II, the gnome blasting is actually built into a quest that from which, experience can be earned. It has a beginning and an end, and I like it a lot better than Gargoyle hunting, which I didn't quite grasp until halfway through the game, and by then I didn't care.

8. The story and characters are an improvement over Fable II, I think. You spend a lot more time getting to know your allies and your foes, and they have a lot of personality. Many are funny and entertaining, and yes, Reaver returns and he's still an ass.

9. You can greet and get to know pretty much any NPC, and they'll all have experience to dole out, and even small side-quests from which more experience can be earned.

10. The dog is excellent at finding hidden items to dig up.

11. The final segment of the game is really freakin' cool. The plot added a twist that worked, and a focus that was interesting and fun. Really, being king is not the end of the game--there's quite a bit left that needs to get done!

12. A new area outside of Albion, the desert region of Aurora is really cool, and features a darkly atmospheric journey that really set this game apart from it's predecessor. It was haunting, wild, and simply engrossing. Seriously, I found this to be about the most gripping and amazing part of the game.

13. The game plays a lot more like a Zelda game than the RPG-focused Fable II. Essentially, this is more like an Action-Adventure with some mild RPG elements.

14. You get to sit on a throne and hear people's cases, and make decisions for the entirety of the kingdom. That's really, really cool.

15. Some of the side-quests are quite massive and extremely fun. Probably the most hilarious one, and my favorite (and I hope this doesn't spoil anything, but instead inspires you to give it a shot) features you helping a group of nerds with their magic-infused tabletop game. The jokes, the dialog, the gamer references--all pure gold. Jokes about why one of the nerds didn't put in descriptions of items in the "game" were countered with "no one reads item descriptions anyway!" Derogatory comments made about the "game's" characters and plot devices.

By the way, the brothers with the Normanomicon also return, and that's another enjoyable quest.

1. You cannot simply buy businesses or homes right away in the game. You have to earn that skill, along with all others, through spending experience on them. I say this is good because it forced me to get into the game a bit before I went around soaking up all the fun stuff Albion offered.

2. Fable III has a lot of content and there are tons of things to do. Like Fable II, I spent ample time meandering around the world and meeting and greeting people, buying property, hunting gnomes, dressed as a chicken, and all kinds of stuff.

3. During several quests and segments in Fable III, the game is just dripping with style and atmosphere, and is beautifully moody. The graphics are absolutely gorgeous, and a pretty clear improvement over the previous title.

4. Jobs and mini-game challenges are done with a rhythm-style quick-time event. Whereas Fable II just had us tapping the A button at the right time, these mini-games are more like playing something like Rock Band. There are colored blocks each corresponding to a button on the controller, and you simply tap the button as the rhythm bar moves across them. It's more interactive, and more fun than sitting there tapping the A button at the right time.

5. Experience earned can be spent on anything, there is no "item-specific" experience like in Fable II, where red experience was used for magic.

6. The story carries over from the previous game as a continuation.

The Bad
1. Pinpoint aiming with firearms seems largely removed, or is generally pointless. Essentially, it's changed in a way that isn't necessarily an improvement. Weapon skills are no longer improved through combat. General experience is gained which can later be spent on upgrades.

1. Inventory is gone entirely. It's streamlined completely out of the game. The Fable series is often pretty funny, and reading item descriptions was something I found enjoyable. Plus, what kind of Role-Playing Game has no inventory to dig through or items to learn about? You can't even really pick what kind of food you want to assign to quick-keys. You're only allowed to carry, like, 2 kinds of food. Ooh, yay.

2. Upgrading or improving weapons is an absolute hassle. While you're skills with them are upgraded with general experience, upgrading the weapons themselves is flat-out tiring. No longer is there really any point to even finding new weapons. I snagged a pretty good hammer fairly early in the game, and after a ridiculous amount of gameplay, I managed to fully upgrade it. Yes, ridiculous.

To fully upgrade a weapon, you have to meet often insane requirements, such as killing 500 Hollow Men to upgrade one element of the weapon, and killing 150 characters with flourishes to upgrade a second aspect--and all weapons have three parts to upgrade. It takes absolutely forever and it negates any want of finding new weapons. Frankly, the "get a new weapon and tweak it with augments" in Fable II was vastly superior. There, at least, was a point to wanting to scrounge around for new weapons. Like I said, I used the same hammer, and rifle, pretty much the entire time.

1. While the map is clearer and easier to see, it's not a "true" map. It's more like a vague representation, and trying to find your way through it isn't exactly simple. It's simplified in that, "this is the basic layout of the city" but over-simplified to the point that working out individual directions through the city seem next to impossible.

2. The glowing trail is broken and surprisingly buggy. Several times, it managed to pointed me in the wrong direction. A couple times, it actually disappeared.

3. Money must be constantly spent on upkeep of every house you own, and it must be done manually (through the map screen). You are required to select each property and pay for repairs. This wouldn't be quite as bad, but apparently the people of Albion allow their homes to go from posh to total disarray in about a week or so. All they needed to do to remedy this would be to allow players to set a general upkeep cost, or go the next step to employing someone to do upkeep on a number of homes. You're playing as royalty, after all, why not have employees to handle this crap?

4. The only downside is that you don't get your experience until you kill all the gnomes, but they're easier to find than the gargoyles ever were.

5. Getting to know regular NPC characters is less fun. You can no longer select how you want to get to know them--the game simply highlights the shortcut key for you, and awkwardly, you greet most people by dancing with them. Even if you're playing as a guy and meeting other guys. It's pretty bizarre. Also, you can no longer impress or disgust a whole a whole group of people at once. I missed that.

6. They're pretty much all fetch-quests. Go find this, or go deliver that. The dog is good at finding the items you need to dig up.

7. The dog is worse at fighting.

8. The final battle is a disappointment. While the final sequence is epic as hell, the final battle is just as anti-climactic.

9. There isn't enough to do in Aurora, and the intro to the area sets a high standard the remainder of the region doesn't quit match.

10. It's not much of an RPG anymore. Granted, there's a decent experience gathering system, but this Fable is much more action-oriented than the previous one. Even the "Good or Evil" decisions have been made more blatant and less ambiguous. In Fable II, some actions could be taken either way depending on the situation. If an action is evil, it's extremely obvious.

11. While it's cool to hear both arguments on something (Reaver usually delivers the "evil" suggestion), chances are that by the time you've reached this point, you've already made up your mind. Plus, there are only two decisions--good and evil. A neutral decision would've been nice, or even two different neutral ones. Plus, I wanted to do more of this stuff.

12. As is expected with almost any game of this nature, not all side quests are good, and some seem downright pointless offering up experience you can no longer use (depending on where you are in the game). I would have preferred rewards other than just experience.

13. Making money is vastly easier than in Fable II, bordering on being too easy. For instance, I got the Achievement for building my real estate empire halfway through the game.

14. With all the content, it's a wonder why Lionhead feels the need to nickel and dime us to death with unnecessary downloadable content. Different hair styles? Different dog breeds? All of this stuff should've been included in the game from the start. If it's downloadable add-ons they want to make, then they should have some more content than this. Who the hell wants to spend real money on what is little more than a set of virtual wigs? I never once felt the need to change my hair style. I did want to change my dog to a German Shepard (as I did in Fable II which came with my Platinum Hits version), but nuts to paying extra for that.

15. The overall atmosphere of the game isn't as memorable, at least to me, as Fable II. Fable II created one of the most perfectly engrossing fantasy worlds and atmospheres I've encountered in gaming. It was beautiful and stunning and memorable. It was a pure fantasy setting. It's not as memorable here, and I don't know if it's just because of the dramatic change that industrialization has brought to Albion, or if it's just that my expectations were too high or what.

16. The rhythm bar is still a tad clunky. The framerate on it's animation isn't smooth--and it can lead to unnecessary "misses."

17. Experience can be spent on things that, I think, it shouldn't be spent on. Like upgrading your skills at a job or playing the lute. I think it's better to just do the job and gradually increase in skills and level up in the job that way. Instead, you can just "buy" the next level with experience points. Seems a little wrong.

18. But it doesn't do it Mass Effect-style by picking up right from your old save file.

The Bottom Line
While Fable III is a good game, I think it's just shy of being a great game as it rides on the heels of a great game, and not all of it's changes are for the best. It's a mixed bag of changes that don't exactly equal actual growth.

Now, this list of negatives sure looks long, doesn't it? Well, let me put it like this: Fable II is an awesome game. I think that, overall, it's one of the best on the Xbox360. And to think, I bought it on a whim, the Platinum Hits version, because it was clearance priced at Target. Seems to me I've found a lot of amazing games purchased on a whim. (Some crap, too, to be fair.) That said, I absolutely loved Fable II. And I really liked Fable III. The thing is, I don't think it's changes worked as improvements in every capacity. I adapted to them, but many of them felt awkward. Plus, the Fable series is very polarizing. I haven't played the first (yet), but from what I've seen, it's split pretty evenly--not one of these three games is a definite "best." I think Fable II is way better than part III, but to be fair, it's likely because I played Fable II first, and most of the changes in Fable III don't feel like improvements to me.

When all is said and done, it's still Fable, and all the charms and quirks that made Fable II so wonderful and so memorable tend to still exist in Fable III. Humorous characters, great dialog, silly side-quests, an air of goofiness to the game perfectly complimenting the air of seriousness. It's still a fantastic game, and I still highly recommend it.

The music and audio are roughly the same as Fable II, and the intro movie is fantastic, by the way. It may not be fair to compare Fable III to Fable II, and I'm sure this might not be the best method for those unfamiliar with Fable II. But, it's not easy for any sequel to stand on it's own. Unfortunately, they will always be compared to their precursor. And unfortunately, for me, the only way for me to really speak about Fable III is to relate it to it's superior predecessor. It's not easy to separate the two. Some might be able to do it, but it's not so easy for me.

That's what this general section is being used for: Fable II is awesome, it's brilliant, it's fun, and it's engrossing--but it had some quirks in the presentation. Fable III attempted to fix the quirks, and instead tended to make new ones. It's that simple, but what I tried to do here, was weigh those changes. At the end, I say Fable II is a must play, and Fable III is as well. Be wary of the differences, though--they make transitioning from one game to the next somewhat awkward.