Fable 3. More than you ever wanted to know.

Fable 3

Difficulty: Super Easy to the max

Platform: Xbox 360

Time : 15 hours for main story and quick play-through, 25-35 hours if you wanted to do everything

Fable 3 is kind of tough to review as I don’t want to review it as a new game or as a game that you have never heard of. I want to review it as a bargain bin game as obviously anybody that was actually interested in this game purchased it a $60 when it first came out. So what I will do is break down this game into two parts. Part one will be for people who have played Fable 1 and Fable 2, and part two will be for people who have not. Lets see how this game stacks up with the knowledge of the prior Fables in Part one:

UGH! You know what, Fable is an awesome idea and and very interesting. Its been 3 games and we have seen the world of Albion grow and mature over generations of heroes and villains. When I first played Fable 1 it blew me away, it was the first game that really let you lead the life of a hero from a little kid to old man. Your choices would change your character and the world around you and you could do almost anything will little rules. Fable 2 sucked ass, I don’t care what you say, from the goofy look and the horrible ending/”boss” battle but it brought some good RPG elements still the 3 types of xp you earn and the different “classes” of items 1 star to 5 and of course a plethora of menus. Fable 3 said Fuck that to everything that was great about the Fable Franchise almost to the fact that they turned their back on what made the Games great.

1. You do not age. At least in the previous games your character aged with milestones and could see the effects of your life in how your character aged. Not this time, as far as what the game shows the entire story could take place in a weekend. There is no growth what so ever. Obviously your character glows white/black depending how you play but whoop di do.

2. The RPG element of the game is nearly non-existent there is only one “xp class” called guild seals and you use the seals to unlock expressions, extra jobs, ie blacksmith (who does this shit anyway) and fighting ability levels. There is no strategy to how to unlock your skills either. You don’t get to choose which once to focus on more than the other its just plane and straight forward just better sword ranged and magic, Basically makes it so everyone ends up with the same character load-out no matter how you play.

3. Menus are gone. Want to check out your map hit start right? Sure start will bring you to a graphical representation of the “menus” you will then need to physically walk to the map and then select the “map” of your area. I say it as “map” because it only shows the general placement of everything in the area so if you are lost and need to get to an area the map will only be helpful to let you know that the cave is on the north side of the area, Of course you have no idea where you are but hey you are a hero you figure it out. Once you are done with the map you figure you might want to change your weapon you now have to physically walk to another area to view and change your load out (more on this later). Now don’t get me wrong it looks cool and all but good grief I just want to change to a pistol on the fly not take 5 mins to search for it in my armory.

4. Weapons. The weapons now morph and change depending on certain guidelines you complete in the game. Find a lot of treasures, you may get a golden hue to your weapon, kill a lot of people maybe it will drip blood. These things look cool but it doesn’t matter. I could give two shits if my blade looks cool when the other weapon I just found in the dirt does more damage. There is no longer any classes to the weapons as well they seem rather random in how much damage they do and it ends up with you finding one or two good weapons and just sticking with them as usually its not worth it to change to a cooler looking weapon that is worse off then your current one. Lame.

5. Items. This is where the bullshit is so immense I couldn’t help but scream WTF! Remember in the other Fables that there were all kinds of Items and classes for the items some Items like clothes would effect how people treated you and maybe would give your character a few bonuses. NOPE not any more, sure if you dress like a bandit people will say oh there is a bandit but who dressed in the full out fit of anything, I mixed an matched and it did not matter no point in what shoes or pants I used. “But Jason who cares this isn’t dress up time” Then Why give me the option? If it doesn’t matter then don’t waste my time. Ugh and don’t get me started on the shops…oops to late I’m started. Remember how you could run into a roaming vendor and actually trade your items with them to buy a new weapon or potion? Hell you could sell your items to anybody and get a little gold as well, nice and easy, especially if you were in a pinch to buy the newest weapon. Well not anymore you can only sell your items to a pawnbroker and they are only available in the bigger towns. I know this is to be more “in the times” but its just annoying.

“Hey shopkeep Id like to buy your potion here”

“Great! that will be 110 gold”

“I have 80 diamonds worth about 3000 gold each”

“Oh you see I only take gold here so you are going to have to travel back to another town to trade those in and come back”

“Uh, ok, thats dumb, but fine, just hold this item till I come back”

“Oh no can do, see I only sell one Item at a time and its there on this podium if I decide to change what I’m selling you wont be able to get the other item any more”

*achievement unlocked* MURDER EVERYONE

The above statement is true instead of having a MENU with all the items a vendor would have for sale they would just be on a podium if you purchase all of that item then they would be “sold out” for the day its because of this I never purchased anything or sold anything. Shit, with buying all of the real estate I would just wait 10 mins and have all the gold I needed. What a fucking bother, the person who made this a rule at Lionhead needs to get his head out of his LionAss. Ugh I could go on but who cares.

Part Two (much shorter than part one I promise): If you have never played any of the Fables before this one it is actually a very nice game. Even will all of my annoyances with the game I still did enjoy the story and progress through out the game. There is also plenty to do outside of the main quest, which is good, because the main quest is quite short I’d say about 15 hours max. Plenty to find and see and explore. If you like to explore the game is well worth it. The game is also super easy, it wasn’t till after the “end game” till I really had any problems, so wives and girlfriends* may like it a lot more then other games of this type.

In short I think the biggest flaw of Fable 3 is probably my expectations for Microsoft to get it right by the 3rd game and outside of my nerd rage it was a easy fun game well worth the $15 bucks I paid, but thank God I didn’t pay $60 otherwise the “murder everyone” achievement would have been a real life achievement.. and once everyone was dead and I was soaked in their blood with fire in my eyes I would then stand on the pile of their mangled carcases and scream….

I BEAT IT FIRST!

*IBeatItFirst.com understands acknowledges that there is a greater population of girl gamers then ever before and we are happy to have them but come on, you know who is really reading this.