Rule with your Heart or an Iron Fist, decided who lives and who dies, marry your one true love or have a harem of wives (or husbands) across the land. The choice is all yours in Fable 3 as you lead a revolution and assume control of a nation.
Much like the first two Fables you find yourself a young and inexperienced hero sheltered from the world and looking to your teachers and guides to find meaning in your otherwise normal life. As you journey across the land of Albion you are presented with a number of moral choices and opportunities to build your heroes knowledge and skill-sets, these choices and skills will shape your experiences and your heroes.
Work with a variety of weapons from Hammers, Pistols, Long Guns and Swords, toss in some magic and your ready to go. Each of these skills is upgradeable multiple times and when paired together can unleash a hell-storm on your enemies with faster reloads, stronger spells and longer melee combos. While the solution is nearly identical to Fable 2, it worked… one button for your melee weapon, one for ranged and one for magic spells… and as the saying goes if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
Other upgradeable skills include moneymaking jobs like; Lute Hero (a play on guitar hero), the pie maker and the returning Blacksmith. Building on these skills and matching consecutive successful patterns builds a coin multiplier that will be extremely helpful in building some early investments and help with acquiring much needed weapon upgrades. Other upgrades include good and bad interaction skills ranging from Hugs, dancing and handshakes to farts and burps you can use to manage your relationships with the locals.
Controlling your hero can be a bit of a challenges from time to time – trying to focus on a specific villager in a crowded area, or locking on to an enemy is inconsistent and occasionally frustrating, especially later in the game as your notoriety increases and the villagers are trying to get near you for various interactions and relationship building interactions.
The online Multi-player was atrocious in Fable 2, and a complete reworking of this portion of the game was a MUST have for Fable 3 and Lionhead delivered. Gone or the nightmares of past multiplayer, replaced with a workable and true co-op experience, from marriage, divorce, investments and children you can experience it all with your friends (local or on live).
Overall the team at Lionhead put together a great product, with significant improvements over the previous Fable releases. Giving additional moral choices and an improved character development system and a straightforward storyline worked to set this game apart.
Pros:
- Improved characters and story lines
- Lots of Melee and Ranged Weapons
- Multi-player you’ll actually want to play
Cons:
- Little improvement to weapons and magic systems
- Immature relationship interactions
Feed Your Console gives Fable 3: 7.5 out of 10
I’d give it more like a 4 or 5 out of 10. The story line has gaping holes in it and overall the game is both short and easy. I know that they wanted to cater to the ‘average’ gamer – a game that anyone could play but as a below average gamer (I only own a handful of games and play occasionally) it was a cakewalk, far too easy, far too short, far too simplistic. It’s pretty and had a great cast but those are really the only positives.
Even as king, the shortest part of the game, there are many choices you should be able to make that are simply not an option.
All of that is not even getting into all of the glitches and bugs, the high price tag or the things that were pulled from the game and then put up as DLC.
If I had it to do over again I would have waited and bought it used, or just rented it. The average gamer can cruise through it in a weekend and the replay value is slight.
I don’t totally disagree with you Justin, but I don’t totally disagree with Matt. The thing about Fable 3 for me was the “Fun factor”. I really had alot of fun playing the game alone and with some of my buddies. The Interaction system did take a turn for the worse but I can’t honestly believe that Matt didn’t like the “Immature relationship interactions” – Matty, I’m saving one up for you brother.
=)