Hello everyone.
Through the new 'Games With Gold' service on Xbox Live, I downloaded a title of a series I have dreamt of playing for quite some time, Fable.
I've always been interested in playing it but unfortunately my original Xbox stopped working so I never got the chance, lost interest in playing Fable left and time passed.
So last week on Monday I downloaded Fable 3, it was free, it was a series I've wanted to play before so I figured what the heck, I'll try it out.
Keep in mind in this review that I played the Xbox 360 version of the game, I've heard that the PC version is stronger in frame-rate and less glitchy.
So let's begin with the review of Fable 3 for the Xbox 360!
Story
It's been 50 years since the events of Fable 2, you are the child of the last Hero of Albian.
Your older brother, Logan, is leading the kingdom by becoming a tyrant, the people of Albian are suffering because of his rule. You escape from the castle and search for your father's tomb to find the weapons he used prior to save the kingdom.
You leave the castle in search for supporters who will follow you on a revolution against your brother. In order to save Albian you need to become king.
It's a story with a unique concept but the problem with the story is that it's very weak. It sets up an interesting story but rushes by and ends abruptly, characters aside from your tyrannical brother and your mentor are the only characters that leave an impression, every other character doesn't get much character development time, their only purpose to serve in the story is to represent a specific group of people you encounter in the game, nothing more.
This especially is apparent in the beginning of the game when you're given the choice of either letting your girlfriend being executed to protect a few innocent protestors or execute the protestors to save your girlfriend, no matter who is executed the story carries on without even mentioning the choices you made ever again.
Presentation
Fable 3 may not be strong in story but in terms of graphical presentation, it is the most beautiful world I've seen in a video game.
Albian is an age of industry so you're traveling through beautiful and mystical forests, ancient temples, deserts and bogs while also walking through the streets of industrial areas with dominating structures.
Glimmering seas, lakes, lush green forests, golden desert structures and fantasy styled industrial buildings. Exploring the world of Albian is a treat with the amount of beauty found in the world. Combining fantasy style with industrial style design.
However this does result in frame-rate cuts and occasional blurred pictures. It still is beautiful with the graphical errors.
Also surprisingly, there are many well known actors from the UK that voice act in the game. Michael Fassbender whom many of you might recognize as Magneto and David from movies like X-Men First Class and Prometheus.
Sir Ben Kingsley from Hugo and Iron Man 3.
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And John Cleese from Monty Python and A Fish Called Wanda
That's just to name a few.
Gameplay
Fable 3 in terms of gameplay is a mixed bag.
It is unique but isn't exactly the greatest and most innovative thing in the RPG genre. One of it's unique qualities instead of an inventory screen you get your own 'Sanctuary' the Sanctuary has 4 rooms, an armory, a dressing room, a trophy room where you can see achievements, trophies and gold you have amassed in your game and an in-game shop to purchase DLC for Fable 3.
The Sanctuary is actually a very interesting concept, managing your weapons, clothing and examining the mountain of gold you've collected is actually quite nice, you can even the dressing room can actually be customized to show which outfits you want to display and have easy access to. If you love to see how much money you have, the Trophy Room will be a very fun area to inspect after amassing a great deal of gold.
Amassing gold is not that great deal of a challenge due to the jobs available for you to earn money only require you to press a few buttons in a particular order that can give you more gold as you participate longer and longer on the job.
Through the new 'Games With Gold' service on Xbox Live, I downloaded a title of a series I have dreamt of playing for quite some time, Fable.
I've always been interested in playing it but unfortunately my original Xbox stopped working so I never got the chance, lost interest in playing Fable left and time passed.
So last week on Monday I downloaded Fable 3, it was free, it was a series I've wanted to play before so I figured what the heck, I'll try it out.
Keep in mind in this review that I played the Xbox 360 version of the game, I've heard that the PC version is stronger in frame-rate and less glitchy.
So let's begin with the review of Fable 3 for the Xbox 360!
Story
It's been 50 years since the events of Fable 2, you are the child of the last Hero of Albian.
Your older brother, Logan, is leading the kingdom by becoming a tyrant, the people of Albian are suffering because of his rule. You escape from the castle and search for your father's tomb to find the weapons he used prior to save the kingdom.
You leave the castle in search for supporters who will follow you on a revolution against your brother. In order to save Albian you need to become king.
It's a story with a unique concept but the problem with the story is that it's very weak. It sets up an interesting story but rushes by and ends abruptly, characters aside from your tyrannical brother and your mentor are the only characters that leave an impression, every other character doesn't get much character development time, their only purpose to serve in the story is to represent a specific group of people you encounter in the game, nothing more.
This especially is apparent in the beginning of the game when you're given the choice of either letting your girlfriend being executed to protect a few innocent protestors or execute the protestors to save your girlfriend, no matter who is executed the story carries on without even mentioning the choices you made ever again.
Presentation
Albian is an age of industry so you're traveling through beautiful and mystical forests, ancient temples, deserts and bogs while also walking through the streets of industrial areas with dominating structures.
Glimmering seas, lakes, lush green forests, golden desert structures and fantasy styled industrial buildings. Exploring the world of Albian is a treat with the amount of beauty found in the world. Combining fantasy style with industrial style design.
However this does result in frame-rate cuts and occasional blurred pictures. It still is beautiful with the graphical errors.
Also surprisingly, there are many well known actors from the UK that voice act in the game. Michael Fassbender whom many of you might recognize as Magneto and David from movies like X-Men First Class and Prometheus.
Sir Ben Kingsley from Hugo and Iron Man 3.
.jpg)
That's just to name a few.
Gameplay
Fable 3 in terms of gameplay is a mixed bag.
It is unique but isn't exactly the greatest and most innovative thing in the RPG genre. One of it's unique qualities instead of an inventory screen you get your own 'Sanctuary' the Sanctuary has 4 rooms, an armory, a dressing room, a trophy room where you can see achievements, trophies and gold you have amassed in your game and an in-game shop to purchase DLC for Fable 3.
The Sanctuary is actually a very interesting concept, managing your weapons, clothing and examining the mountain of gold you've collected is actually quite nice, you can even the dressing room can actually be customized to show which outfits you want to display and have easy access to. If you love to see how much money you have, the Trophy Room will be a very fun area to inspect after amassing a great deal of gold.
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| My Personal Collection of Gold |
Amassing gold is not that great deal of a challenge due to the jobs available for you to earn money only require you to press a few buttons in a particular order that can give you more gold as you participate longer and longer on the job.
In Fable 3 you can also interact with the NPCs of the towns and villages, either gaining their admiration for you or giving them reason to despise you.
The NPCs however are not unique and in fact offer nothing interesting or different from the other NPC you met a few seconds ago, their opinion of you can also be easily swayed from hate to admire very quickly and easy. They can hate you but after performing some nice gestures and fetching one item for them and they instantly become your friend and offer you free gifts.
They're mindless and don't think for themselves and can be easily manipulated to either love or hate you. You can kill an innocent NPC but then make another NPC instantly like you because you did a few nice gestures towards them.
The combat to Fable 3 is simple and easy, which to me is not a good thing.
You can easily win these fights by tapping one of the combat buttons. X for melee, Y for weapons and B for magic, magic is ridiculously overpowered making every other combat button almost obsolete. Your weapon has infinite ammo so you can keep shooting your enemies and then rolling out of the way to avoid being hit, rinse and repeat. You also don't have a health bar to check how well you're doing if you've been hit frequently but it doesn't matter seeing as how you can potentially go throughout the entire game without using a single health potion.
The way you upgrade your weapons in the game is in both ways unique and a slight lie, at the beginning of the game your butler(yes your butler) tells you that the more you use a certain weapon the more damage it can deal and can morph it's appearance. It's a slight lie however because they only morph if you unlock the level upgrade for that particular style of combat through the game's power-up area known as the Road To Rule. They only gain damage boosts or unique abilities if you complete certain challenges for that particular weapon, the weapons do change appearance based on certain accomplishments and actions you do in the game, but they're completely random aspects of the game you didn't even know you had to accomplish in order to change the appearance of the weapon.
There is also many interesting side quests for you to complete, these add a great deal of time into the gameplay, you can actually complete a great deal of sidequests in a short amount of time, but I suggest to play the game in short bursts, at least half an hour to an hour of gameplay because the game gets very repetitive very fast and slowly becomes very boring.
The Verdict
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Fable 3 is a game with a weak story, repetitive combat but has a beautiful atmosphere with unique ideas and concepts for an RPG game that sadly lose their quality due to mindless, recycled NPCs and giving players way too easy of tasks to accomplish to amass gold and become the most liked or most hated person in the game.
Fable 3 gets an above average score of 6 out of 10.
Thank you for reading, join me next time when I'll be doing a weapon guide on the LSAT LMG and reviewing GhostBusters The Video Game.
The NPCs however are not unique and in fact offer nothing interesting or different from the other NPC you met a few seconds ago, their opinion of you can also be easily swayed from hate to admire very quickly and easy. They can hate you but after performing some nice gestures and fetching one item for them and they instantly become your friend and offer you free gifts.
They're mindless and don't think for themselves and can be easily manipulated to either love or hate you. You can kill an innocent NPC but then make another NPC instantly like you because you did a few nice gestures towards them.
The combat to Fable 3 is simple and easy, which to me is not a good thing.
You can easily win these fights by tapping one of the combat buttons. X for melee, Y for weapons and B for magic, magic is ridiculously overpowered making every other combat button almost obsolete. Your weapon has infinite ammo so you can keep shooting your enemies and then rolling out of the way to avoid being hit, rinse and repeat. You also don't have a health bar to check how well you're doing if you've been hit frequently but it doesn't matter seeing as how you can potentially go throughout the entire game without using a single health potion.
The way you upgrade your weapons in the game is in both ways unique and a slight lie, at the beginning of the game your butler(yes your butler) tells you that the more you use a certain weapon the more damage it can deal and can morph it's appearance. It's a slight lie however because they only morph if you unlock the level upgrade for that particular style of combat through the game's power-up area known as the Road To Rule. They only gain damage boosts or unique abilities if you complete certain challenges for that particular weapon, the weapons do change appearance based on certain accomplishments and actions you do in the game, but they're completely random aspects of the game you didn't even know you had to accomplish in order to change the appearance of the weapon.
There is also many interesting side quests for you to complete, these add a great deal of time into the gameplay, you can actually complete a great deal of sidequests in a short amount of time, but I suggest to play the game in short bursts, at least half an hour to an hour of gameplay because the game gets very repetitive very fast and slowly becomes very boring.
The Verdict
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Fable 3 is a game with a weak story, repetitive combat but has a beautiful atmosphere with unique ideas and concepts for an RPG game that sadly lose their quality due to mindless, recycled NPCs and giving players way too easy of tasks to accomplish to amass gold and become the most liked or most hated person in the game.
Fable 3 gets an above average score of 6 out of 10.
Thank you for reading, join me next time when I'll be doing a weapon guide on the LSAT LMG and reviewing GhostBusters The Video Game.
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