Fable was short, buggy and way to easy.
I did like the art style (for a WRPG) and I liked how the character aged over the years in the game (despite how the NPC did NOT age). I liked being able to choose between being good or bad, but it's not enough to compel me to replay the game.
My rant:
I HATE escort missions, but guess what? About 50% of the missions in this game are escort missions. There could of been better thought put into the mission objectives because I hate baby sitting stupid AI characters that just stand there as they're getting pelting with arrows or hit with rusty swords. You can tell them to wait or to follow you, but you can't tell them to dodge attacks or to defend themselves. Sometimes you'll get a character that will fight beside you, but often than not he'll die before you reach the second screen in a dungeon. So even the mercenaries you can hire will die because of stupid AI.
----------Battle System----------
Fable is an Action RPG. Gaining experience and levels is a little different in Fable than most RPGs. After you kill a monster, green orbs drop on the ground, this is the experience. You have to grab that up before they disappear. This is similar to Kingdom Heart's money system. You also gain experience for completing tasks or quests. You can also gain bonus experience by using skills. For example, if you use alot sword attacks, then you'll gain bonus Strength experience, or if you use a Bow attacks, then you'll gain bonus Skill experience and finally if you use magic then you'll gain bonus Will experience.
When you want to "Level Up" you have to go to the Guild, which is the only place to level up your skills. Once you have enough experience, you can go into three categories. Strength, which will boost your Power, HP or Defense skills. Skill which will level up your Speed, Accuracy or Stealth. Will which is all your magic and skill based attacks. Once you given a skill under Will atleast 1 level, then you can start using that skill.
Using magic skills in battle can be a little cumbersome because there's three sub-categories for that. Attack spells, Surround spells and Physical spells. You have to sift through these skills by holding down the R Trigger and sifting through with the Y button. The skills are on the A, B, and X buttons. Using items in battle are used with the D-pad. Left is your healing potions, right is your Magic potions, down is your Teleport and Up is a list of all of your Items. If you hold the L Trigger then these predetermined items will flip, allowing you to set 4 quick slot items to whatever you want.
You have to "set" your weapons once you get into a battle area, for example, the White button will equip your Sword/Axe and the Black button will equip your Bow/Crossbow. You can juggle between these two on the fly in battle if you need to for quick switching, but you can only use the two items you have set within the menu, so if you want a different Sword, you'll have to go through the menu and set it as default.
You get new quests by visiting the Guild stone. The more popular you get, the more quests you can unlock. There are two kinds of quests, a storyline driven quest, which is represented by a Gold Card, or a sidequest which is represented by a Silver card. Once you select the quests you can to go on, a little Gold or Silver dot will appear on your mini map. If you follow either dot, then you'll eventually run into one of those quests. Finding quests is a little to simple in this game because it basically points you there.
One thing that really bugs me is the menu system. It's not complicated, but it is messy and the loading is slow, so I hate having to load it up. There's also TWO menus, one for options/saving and one for the actually game for skills and items. I hate hitting the wrong button, because it means I'll have to sit through more loading.
----------Characters / Story----------
You play as "The Hero". The Hero never really gets a name in the game, or maybe I forgot to name him, either way he's a generic forgettable blank starred silent protagonist that you'll forget about 5 seconds after you stop playing this. Anyways, as a child, the Hero's village was burned and his sister was kidnapped, so he vowed revenge of the murderous bandits that took everything he loved. The Hero goes through vicious training through the Guild to seek revenge.
The story was ok I guess, none of the twist really shocked me, none of the characters were rememberable I guess, but it was good enough to get you through the game. I really hate games with silent protagonist, and if you are going to use one, atleast give him some sort of personality. Like in Knights of the Old Republic, you can choose to be part of the light side or dark side by taking on good or bad quests, or just by doing alot of good or bad deeds.
----------Graphics----------
I like how they use still art pictures during cutscenes, they show a nicely drawn art picture, but pan across it while a narrator is talking. Gladius did a similar effect and thought that was cool a well. The character models are nicely designed, although you'll see a TON of repeat characters. The children in the game look a little deformed though. When you equip new weapons or armor you can see them in battle and even dialog scenes. They put alot of effort into the ability to change your characters looks with new haircuts and tattoos, or even making him fat, but that felt a little superficial since he ends up wearing heavy armor and helmets covering all of that up anyways.
I'm not a big fan of the dialog scenes, I thought they're poorly directed and edited together. This is big grief I have with WRPGs in general though. I hate how they just throw together a bunch of sharp camera angles together during these scenes. I hate the expressions your main character does during the dialog scenes, he's mostly scratching his head or swatting at flies 90% of the time. He's such a wooden, stupid, zombie character that you just don't care about him.
I HATE the framerate drops in this game. The game is almost unplayable at times, especially if you are running in a town with alot of NPC walking around, the background will flutter out and the everything will go into slow motion until you stop to let everything buffer out. I hate turning the camera ANY time in the game because it's very jerky and stuttery. It's frustrating. The loading times are bad as well, especially when you are freshly starting the game up.
----------Sound----------
The music is awesome, very orchestra epic chest thumping music. Some of the best WRPG music I've heard in a long long time. I wasn't a fan of the voices though. They use a British cast, not that has anything to do with my dislike, but it just sounds like they used the same five people to voice everything out. It's all samey sounding. Even the children sound like they're voiced out by adults trying to sound like children. It's very off putting.
----------World Map----------
The world map is a series of connecting areas, much like modern Zelda games. You can view an overview map, that shows you each area with icons. This map also displays current objectives and where to initiate them. You can teleport by finding teleport zones, when you find one in an area, you can teleport back and forth almost doing any point in the game. If you are in middle of a quest, you won't be able to teleport though.
----------Time to Complete Game----------
15:28
I completed the first part of Fable at 13:15, so the Lost Chapters section of the game was just a little bit more than 2 hours in length. Not much of an ending after you complete the game. Credits was about 20 times longer than the ending. After the credits finally stop, you can keep roaming around your world doing sidequests or anything you want to do. I love when games give you this option.