Fable 3

Ok, i've been away, because I'm at college and college life is really hectic and hard to manage. When i finally do get settled down i will start writing for the paper and then you can expect stuff, but until then...sorry.
But other people will write stuff, this is Soulbanish's review

This is my first time attempting a blog post so please don't eat my soul and devour my remains.

Sometimes, less is more. This is not the case for Fable 3. There will be spoilers in this review so if you care, turn back now.

In the fable series each game has its own options. However, the further along in the series you go, the less options you get. In fable 1 you had the choice between 12 different weapons, Now, we go to Fable 2 where they took out a couple of weapons and put in a few with a net loss of 1 weapon. Not horrible but they should have been more concerned about putting things in than taking them out. Now, lets cut ahead to fable 3. Now you have 4 options. Pistol, rifle, sword, and Hammer.

Now, even if we ignore that, there's still the matter of Will spells. In Fable 1, you had 18 with a fair amount of versatility in terms of character concept. In fable 2, you had 8. Not a lot but there were at least a few that worked for different concepts. Now you have six, all of which are blasting spells and until you get a specific upgrade you can only cast one at a time.

Now, this is forgivable. I can forgive plenty of mistakes if the game itself is good but Fable 3 has plenty of other problems.

One of my least favorite changes was to the inventory. Instead of an inventory, you get what is essentially a dressing room. You get to look through several different mannequins each wearing various items. To me, this seemed like an unnecessary change and they could have focused on something else.

Next, lets talk about the Health bar. It no longer exists. I have no way to tell if my character is dying short of an onscreen D-pad flashing red. Now, not all games need a health bar. For example, one of my favorite games, Super Mario brothers doesn't have one. However, this is because in that game all enemies deal the same damage and you either die in two hits or one. In fable 3 though, damage is variable. In a game where damage is variable such as the Megaman series, a way to measure health really helps.

A really odd thing is that they apparently expect you to play a guy in the game, because in order to get into a Mercenary camp you have to look like a Mercenary that's currently knocked out. The mercenary has a freaking beard. Yeah, you're a girl and you have to get a beard. What.

A new change is that your weapon evolves as you upgrade it. This just changes the look of your weapon. This is a gimmick and does not improve the game for me one Iota. I would prefer that they had focused on other elements than something that's only there for aesthetic appeal. Know what else appeals to some people's aesthetics? More than two types of weapons for each category. Now, I don't deny that looks are important in a game. However, I think they would have been better served by making different options for the various components than a gimmick that I have no clue how to control.

Now some weapons upgrade by you doing specific things. This wasn't a bad idea and there are items for both good and bad characters. However, there are at least two weapons that, if you want to upgrade them, you have to have a lot of sex. I just have to ask why they did this. Who is this supposed to appeal to? Honestly, I don't mind sex being in the game but when I get the swinging sword and see what I have to do to upgrade it? I have to ask what five year old thought that was funny.

Now, let's get onto the plot.

The plot has been done many times before and it wasn't done very well here. Your character is the brother of the evil overlord, finds out he's the “Chosen one” and is helped to reach his full potential by a mentor and a wisecracking sidekick to overthrow his brother and then save his homeland from an unknown force. Now, being cliche isn't bad but this just felt like the writers were being lazy. I didn't particularly care about any of the characters and I didn't particularly hate any of them, with the exception of Reaver. One other complaint I have is that you don't get any indication of when the eldritch abomination is going to attack. On my playthrough I planned on selling the properties I'd bought to finance the resistance. However, due to the fact that I didn't get any indication of when the attack was going to happen (Goes from 112 days to 1) around 650,000 people died. Not as bad as it could have been but if I'd had any indication, there would have been no civilian casualties.

Slight rant about Reaver here. Feel free to ignore it. Reaver to me seems like a complete monster. He has literally no redeeming features and yet, for some reason, you aren't allowed to kill him. I think my problem with Reaver is that there's absolutely no justification for what he does other than that it entertains him. The evil Overlord is attempting to protect his country from an eldritch abomination (Although that seemed to come out of nowhere.) and the Eldritch abomination is an Eldritch abomination. Reaver will kill you if you annoy him. So, you're allowed to kill the evil overlord and the eldritch abomination, but not Reaver? Why not? He's arguably worse than the evil overlord in

Okay, back to the game itself. There are some things I like about the game and I'm going to talk about them here. The Co-op mode in this game? It's actual Co-op. While the second character is somewhat ignored by the plot you get to actually customize that person, and you can take that person back to your own game and play through the plot on your own while keeping what you earned from your adventures with your friends. This alone gets points with me.

Another thing I like is the humor. Maybe it's just that some of the humor appeals to me personally, but I feel like they actually got people to write the jokes for this game.

Another thing they did that I felt was a good idea was getting rid of the experience system from previous games. Those were fairly easy to break and now you have to make some progress in the game to get better upgrades. The game is still pretty easy but it's definitely better.

Final verdict? A 5 out of 10 or average. Some of the stuff they changed didn't need changing, they took stuff out instead of putting it in, and due to the fact that almost nothing in the plot varies, the game feels like it was rushed out. In fact, considering there isn't even a two year difference between the release dates of fable 2 and 3 it probably was. It's still a fun game to play with your friends and the flaws aren't big enough to make the game unplayable. There are probably better Co-op swords and sorcery games out there but this one certainly doesn't seem bad. I just feel they could have done so much more if they decided to delay the release date.

If a decent amount of people like this review I'll review a few other video games I've got lying around.