Games / Game Reviews

Review: Fable 3

By Sean Booker
December 19, 2010 - 14:42

Fable 3 proves the point that despite trying to streamline a game to make it more inviting, when poorly put into practise it can end up feeling more tedious than what you started out with. The majority of the game feels either far too easy or a complete bother when dealing with the user interface (or lack thereof) and what Lionhead has put in its place. It was a complete shame to see such witty humour combined with a completely lackluster product.

You start off as the prince of Albion and son/daughter of your hero from the second Fable game. Apart from mentioning your father/mother, there is actually no cross over between the save data in Fable 2 into this one - which was a little depressing. In a franchise all about your choices, it would have been nice to see some of my actions carry over from the last game to this one. Your main goal is to try and create an army to overthrow your brother – the current and ruthless king of Albion. For the majority of the game, you’ll be meeting people and gaining their trust by doing various odd jobs.

From the start of the game you will be reminded of the great humor and witty dialogue that you’ve come to expect from the Fable franchise. And like each game before it, Fable 3 is still quite funny. Several of the missions feel extraordinary in themselves and some of the options you have when interacting with the AI is great.

Where Fable 3 falls apart is mainly in the ridiculous choices with the user interface and how evident it is with the main game. To start with, there is no Start menu, instead, hitting this button will send you to mystical room where you can change clothes, view the world map, equip weapons and etc. Though this doesn’t seem like much of an issue at first, it gets incredibly bothersome the more and more you have to use it. Any time you wish to fast travel, you need to enter into this room, head to the map, load up the map and then pick where you want to go before it begins loading the next area. It also proves how tedious this can become when you realize this is the only form of any sort of map to the game. There is no mini map in place so seeing what is located in the town or areas around your location is no longer an option. This became incredibly irritating when I wanted to seek out specific buildings and quests to perform.

This leads to the next key issue with the navigation in Fable 3 – it only works around half the time. When fast traveling to a certain place or person, the game constantly warped me into weird locations. For example: sometimes it would put me only at the entrance to the area and give me a glowing trail to my destination, while others would have me literally spawn on top of the quest giving NPC. At one point the game positioned me in between a wall, table and computer player only to find myself stuck in this small corner.

The combat then becomes quite the double edged sword with this interface. Unlike the second game, there is no longer experience points to be put toward individual battle styles. Now you gain emblems for killing enemies that can later be used to purchase higher level magic and weapon strength. Doing this is fine but it allows your primary weapon to become so powerful that you never really need to use anything else. Since the combat is so easy in Fable 3, every battle just becomes a bother since there’s no suspense to it. The game does vary this up slightly by granting you different abilities and enemy specific weapons but the only way to switch to something else requires entering the mystical-start-button room, heading to the weapons hall, loading the weapons hall, walking over to the new weapon, selecting and equipping the weapon then exiting the room and loading the main game back up.

I should point out however that the online co-op has been completely fixed from what we saw in the second game. Instead of being fixed to one camera angle, each player can run as far apart from the other while in the same area. You can also trade items and give gifts to one another quite easily. The option of marrying another player is quite fun and humorous and playing with someone else allows you to accumulate more money and experience medals to bring back to your own game.

The second part of the game has you as the king of Albion working to fulfill the promises you made throughout the first section. This mainly requires you to go through a series of cut scenes and two option choices: keep your promise or not. At the risk of delving into a bit of spoiler territory, this latter portion to the game isn’t fun at all and almost seems tacked on.

Unfortunately, my verdict with Fable 3 is to skip it entirely. Though the writing and humor is still to par with what to expect, the irritating lack of menus and boring combat drag it down. And with such a weak ending, the game leaves an awful aftertaste in your mouth.

Verdict: Skip It

 

Rating: 4 /10

Last Updated: January 17, 2025 - 08:20