Fable features about 15 hours of gameplay, slightly clunky controls,
buggy graphics and a bunk story with a dumb main character and
forgettable non-playable characters. I can't say this is a great game
with any confidences, but it did have some nice ideas, so I'll give it
a D for effort.
I did like the art style (for a WRPG) and I
liked how the character aged over the years in the game (despite how
the NPC did NOT age). I liked being able to choose between being good
or bad, but it's not enough to compel me to replay the game.
My rant:
I HATE escort missions, but guess what? About 50% of the missions in
this game are escort missions. There could of been better thought put
into the mission objectives because I hate baby sitting stupid AI
characters that just stand there as they're getting pelting with arrows
or hit with rusty swords. You can tell them to wait or to follow you,
but you can't tell them to dodge attacks or to defend themselves.
Sometimes you'll get a character that will fight beside you, but often
than not he'll die before you reach the second screen in a dungeon. So
even the mercenaries you can hire will die because of stupid AI.
----------Battle System----------
Fable is an Action RPG. Gaining experience and levels is a little
different in Fable than most RPGs. After you kill a monster, green orbs
drop on the ground, this is the experience. You have to grab that up
before they disappear. This is similar to Kingdom Heart's money system.
You also gain experience for completing tasks or quests. You can also
gain bonus experience by using skills. For example, if you use alot
sword attacks, then you'll gain bonus Strength experience, or if you
use a Bow attacks, then you'll gain bonus Skill experience and finally
if you use magic then you'll gain bonus Will experience.
When
you want to "Level Up" you have to go to the Guild, which is the only
place to level up your skills. Once you have enough experience, you can
go into three categories. Strength, which will boost your Power, HP or
Defense skills. Skill which will level up your Speed, Accuracy or
Stealth. Will which is all your magic and skill based attacks. Once you
given a skill under Will atleast 1 level, then you can start using that
skill.
Using magic skills in battle can be a little cumbersome
because there's three sub-categories for that. Attack spells, Surround
spells and Physical spells. You have to sift through these skills by
holding down the R Trigger and sifting through with the Y button. The
skills are on the A, B, and X buttons. Using items in battle are used
with the D-pad. Left is your healing potions, right is your Magic
potions, down is your Teleport and Up is a list of all of your Items.
If you hold the L Trigger then these predetermined items will flip,
allowing you to set 4 quick slot items to whatever you want.
You have to "set" your weapons once you get into a battle area, for
example, the White button will equip your Sword/Axe and the Black
button will equip your Bow/Crossbow. You can juggle between these two
on the fly in battle if you need to for quick switching, but you can
only use the two items you have set within the menu, so if you want a
different Sword, you'll have to go through the menu and set it as
default.
You get new quests by visiting the Guild stone. The
more popular you get, the more quests you can unlock. There are two
kinds of quests, a storyline driven quest, which is represented by a
Gold Card, or a sidequest which is represented by a Silver card. Once
you select the quests you can to go on, a little Gold or Silver dot
will appear on your mini map. If you follow either dot, then you'll
eventually run into one of those quests. Finding quests is a little to
simple in this game because it basically points you there.
One
thing that really bugs me is the menu system. It's not complicated, but
it is messy and the loading is slow, so I hate having to load it up.
There's also TWO menus, one for options/saving and one for the actually
game for skills and items. I hate hitting the wrong button, because it
means I'll have to sit through more loading.
----------Characters / Story----------
You play as "The Hero". The Hero never really gets a name in the game,
or maybe I forgot to name him, either way he's a generic forgettable
blank starred silent protagonist that you'll forget about 5 seconds
after you stop playing this. Anyways, as a child, the Hero's village
was burned and his sister was kidnapped, so he vowed revenge of the
murderous bandits that took everything he loved. The Hero goes through
vicious training through the Guild to seek revenge.
The story
was ok I guess, none of the twist really shocked me, none of the
characters were rememberable I guess, but it was good enough to get you
through the game. I really hate games with silent protagonist, and if
you are going to use one, atleast give him some sort of personality.
Like in Knights of the Old Republic, you can choose to be part of the
light side or dark side by taking on good or bad quests, or just by
doing alot of good or bad deeds.
----------Graphics----------
I like how they use still art pictures during cutscenes, they show a
nicely drawn art picture, but pan across it while a narrator is
talking. Gladius did a similar effect and thought that was cool a well.
The character models are nicely designed, although you'll see a TON of
repeat characters. The children in the game look a little deformed
though. When you equip new weapons or armor you can see them in battle
and even dialog scenes. They put alot of effort into the ability to
change your characters looks with new haircuts and tattoos, or even
making him fat, but that felt a little superficial since he ends up
wearing heavy armor and helmets covering all of that up anyways.
I'm not a big fan of the dialog scenes, I thought they're poorly
directed and edited together. This is big grief I have with WRPGs in
general though. I hate how they just throw together a bunch of sharp
camera angles together during these scenes. I hate the expressions your
main character does during the dialog scenes, he's mostly scratching
his head or swatting at flies 90% of the time. He's such a wooden,
stupid, zombie character that you just don't care about him.
I
HATE the framerate drops in this game. The game is almost unplayable at
times, especially if you are running in a town with alot of NPC walking
around, the background will flutter out and the everything will go into
slow motion until you stop to let everything buffer out. I hate turning
the camera ANY time in the game because it's very jerky and stuttery.
It's frustrating. The loading times are bad as well, especially when
you are freshly starting the game up.
----------Sound----------
The music is awesome, very orchestra epic chest thumping music. Some of
the best WRPG music I've heard in a long long time. I wasn't a fan of
the voices though. They use a British cast, not that has anything to do
with my dislike, but it just sounds like they used the same five people
to voice everything out. It's all samey sounding. Even the children
sound like they're voiced out by adults trying to sound like children.
It's very off putting.
----------World Map----------
The
world map is a series of connecting areas, much like modern Zelda
games. You can view an overview map, that shows you each area with
icons. This map also displays current objectives and where to initiate
them. You can teleport by finding teleport zones, when you find one in
an area, you can teleport back and forth almost doing any point in the
game. If you are in middle of a quest, you won't be able to teleport
though.
----------Time to Complete Game----------
15:28
I completed the first part of Fable at 13:15, so the Lost Chapters
section of the game was just a little bit more than 2 hours in length.
Not much of an ending after you complete the game. Credits was about 20
times longer than the ending. After the credits finally stop, you can
keep roaming around your world doing sidequests or anything you want to
do. I love when games give you this option.
