The game you have been waiting for, might not be the game you want.
User Rating: 7 | Fable III X360
As a die hard fan of the rigninal Fable, I got my hands on Fable II and sucked everything I could out of it the second I popped it into my 360. With that game, I had fun, but was somewhat dissapointed, and didn't get the overall expierience of the original game. With Fable III, I recieved a somewhat similar expirience. The orignal Fable was praised for almost everything that it did-it's innovative storyline, good and evil system, and the way you had a choice in what type of combat you would specialize in, it was all there. However, Fable II and III both suffer from the same problems in my opinion. There are two major ones that I see-The over excessive little things you can do (For example, in Fable II, all of the pointless emotions that you would only ever need to use once or twice throughout the story), and the overly tweaked combat system. The original Fable left both of these things short and sweet-a few different categories of emotions to please villagers with when you needed a small laugh or maybe wanted to actually gain something by using them to get something out of a villager, and the combat systems choice of specialty-magic, melee, or ranged. While you coukd eventually get all of your skills up, you played through the game with mainly one of these. Molyneux might have realized that the pointless emotions were there, and somewhat fixed that in Fable III, but on your way to become king, you will be making choices more often than you will be using the emotions that are still there, and still there for no reason. Not only are the emotions still somewhat uselss, there are many other small trinkets and items scattered throught the game that you are supposed to find, which you will also find useless, but revealing what they are might bring spoilers to the story-which I loved, by the way, I'll get to that- My other problem was the overly tweaked combat system. While I did enjoy the morphing of weapons to fit your character, it felt like there was more flash to the combat then needed be. The mixing of magic, while it may sound cool, does not really effect the combat as much as you might think. It is fun to mixand match selections, however, even though it doesn't add much to the gameplay. Now that I got the bad stuff over with, on to the parts of the game that were good.
The descision making. This definitely shined through the rest of the game. It really makes you feel in control of the game. Right off the bat, you're hit with a descision to either help someone special, or a large group of people. I found myself pausing and actually pondering what the consequence of each descsion might be. Not only will the end of the game be influenced by your descision, but so will everyone in the game world. Whether or not you choose to send an area into poverty because a self centered descision or to help an area prosper is completely up to you. You will be given the choice, and it will be up to you, and you alone. There is no wrong way to go, as there are in so many other games. You will see the effect on the landscape you walk due to your descision, as the world will physically change if a desicsion is that big. My other fine point to this game is the storyline, BECAUSE it is so influenced by your descision. I could go into so much detail of the games storyline and talk about how great it is, how immersed you will feel, and how it will make you want to keep playing, despite some of the flaws in combat. But doing this might reveal spoilers, and I want you to expierience this game your way.
Overall, while this game is defnitely not what I personaly wanted it to be, it does have it's very fine points and stands out amongst many other games. IF you are into a storyline more than you are into an action-oriented RPG (Such as Fallout: New Vegas, which I enjoyed much more than this game), then this game might be a rental for you more than you might think. If you are interested in an RPG with a strong storyline, and descion making that REALLY does show, than this game is for you. I played it, enjoyed it, but personally think there could have been a few changes that would have made it near perfect. All in all, if you are any amount of a fan of Fable, I garuntee that you will still have a large amount of fun with this game.
