The worst BEST game ever!
Fable has so many good points about it to make it a masterpiece and yet so many bad points to make it terrible, yet when the two mix together you get a pleasant experience and a sense of accomplishment while still feeling like you beat a terrible game.
First the story, the story is OK. It's very simple and cliche. You start as a young boy living in a small village with your family and neighbors when one day a band of thugs attacks and pillages your village. You manage to survive and end up in a Hero Academy that trains well... Heroes. After you finish it you set out to seek revenge and beat the bad guy. The story also gets very dark as you progress through it. I don't want to spoil anything but I will just say that the story bears no surprises. So as you can see the story is one of the bad points about the game...
Graphics and sound on the other hand are a good point indeed.
The game looks and feels real. The environment and details are amazing to look at even by today's standards. The Non-player-characters are very three-dimensional and their voice acting is top notch! It's always nice to hear anyone talking and you might never want to skip a cut-scene.
Gameplay. Now this is difficult to define. It's good yet bad at the same time. As i have said before, you play as the young boy who just lost everything he ever had to a gang of pillagers and you are out for revenge. You kill monsters and do quests to receive green orbs (experience) which you spend to power up your characters abilities. You can have a number of weapons and spells which looks and sound great but it's terribly balanced because even if you want to become a powerful wizard you will find it extremely difficult and just cut through enemies using your sword, though, once you accumulate enough points you can improve your spells and actually use them more effectively. When you do quests, you can chose various boasts to go along with them. These boasts are like special conditions which you need to fulfill in order to receive bonus experience and gold. Sometimes they are ridiculous (don't kill anyone except the boss) and sometimes they are easy (beat the quest in a limited amount of time). I think this is a great addition to which other RPG's should look up to.
One of the very simple yet very satisfying aspects in this game is the alignment system. Depending on how you do quests and how you react to characters you will receive good and bad points. These points will change your look, the quests you receive and how people react around you. For example, if you kill a lot of innocent people and only look after yourself you will start to grow horns and claws and people will run at the sight of you (It's nice to be popular!). If you are good on the other hand, your hair will turn from dark to blond (why blond??? Am I evil because I have dark hair???) and people will cheer at you and thank you for all you have done. It's a beautiful feeling no matter which side you chose.
Now let's talk about one of the worst aspects of this game- The difficulty.
This game is very very very easy!!!
It's so easy it's incredible!!!
Most RPG's, just like this one, don't have a difficulty setting, so it all depends on how many side-quests you do, how many monsters you kill and such. In this game you start as an all powerful and you get even more powerful as you go on. The game never gets hard, and I mean ever. Every little thing works in your favor no matter how hard you try to mess it up.
One time I ran into a large group of creatures (like 30 of them) at a low level and I just swung my sword a few times and they were all dead! And even if I wasn't able to beat them, I was overstocked with all the health and mana potions which the game very generously puts everywhere. Ok, maybe it takes just a little bit of effort, but by the middle of the game you will undoubtedly get bored of how easy everything had become. So, the difficulty is definitely a bad point.
The controls are weird! I played this game on both Xbox and the PC! And both felt weird. The xbox controls work kinda better but still feel weird. It's like they tried to put the most inconvenient buttons possible for each command. Still, as inconvenient as they are, they work perfectly once you get used to them.
Now I'd like to point out a few good and bad points that don't really add anything to the overall experience but are fun to mention.
Good Points:
The humor. It's fresh, a little dark and very funny. You probably laugh a few times because some moments are really funny.
Voice acting. I already mentioned this, but i need to elaborate a bit more. It's really amazing. Everyone speaks so naturally. Everyone even has an accent, mostly British which is always nice to hear.
Relaxed atmosphere. Because of it's easy difficulty you are always at ease. You may even play this game lying down.
Bad Points:
The entire world looks like a single path. Even though the graphics looks nice and it feels like you can go everywhere, it's pretty much just one path from the Hero academy leading to the end game, with an occasional crossroad and a town. It feels claustrophobic!
Classes. If you are planning to be a warrior or a wizard you better prepare for a disappointment. Like I already mentioned before you will probably swing your sword most of the time, but sooner or later you will reach a maximum point in it and will have to start spending your experience points on something else like magic or speed skills. So in the end you will become something like a spell-sword, assassin or even a thieving warrior with magic spells. It's not really that bad but it angers you when all you do is swing a sword and yet you aren't a warrior.
Narrator. Like I said, the story is nothing impressive, except when the narrator starts talking. He has a cool voice, but whenever he talks you know something bad will happen. He will simply say : So everyone died THE END!, The Hero got tortured for 50 years and died THE END! and such things! It leaves a very bad taste in your mouth.
So that's Fable for you. It's probably the worst BEST game ever!
It's obviously fun to play and enjoyable but also has way too many bad aspects about it which almost spoil the entire game for you, but when you look back the good aspects just barely win over the bad ones.
You will love and hate this game at the same time! Such an experience can probably be obtained only from this game!