All work and no play, makes Jack a dull boy!
Usually, in the video game market, sequels tend to be better than their predecessors. Same can not be said for movies. This is because games are mostly driven by game play, and supported by it's story and graphics. Whereas movies are driven by story and acting, and are supported by their special effects. If anything, games excel at producing better sequels by improving the base of the their game play mechanics, even when the story isn't as epic as its predecessor.
I see Fable 3's game play as regressing from a formula that was outstanding in the original Fable game. It's almost like they are trying to oversimplify everything; I imagine to make the game more accessible to a larger audience. Needless to say, little skill is necessary in order to slay your foes in this version of Albion. However, by oversimplifying it, it has also became more clunky. Most of those changes occurred in Fable 2. In my personal opinion, I like the block button separate from the attack button. Then there is the magic part of the game; In each successive game, they trimmed it away. In the first game, there was so many spells to sort through that it was cumbersome to try and switch to the spell that you would need; not to mention that some of those spells were so powerful you could spam them and never have to worry about getting hit as long as you had enough will potions. Fable 2 tried to make the magic system less cumbersome and the combat more challenging by making you charge spells to the appropriate spell power level. They trimmed back on the number of spells; but limited you to use of one spell at each level; so you could in fact have the same spell for all five charge levels, or put a different spell at each power level. Fable 3 cut the spell number to 6, but they utilize a gauntlet/spell weave type system. You can now either use one spell; or you can wear two different gauntlets and weave those spells together. Shock and Blades together makes a nice mix. Shock them in place and skewer them with blades.
Fable 3 has the best story of the 3 games; it also has the best graphics. However, it felt longer then Fable and shorter than Fable 2. Also, that story is rather short. Simplified version of it: 1.) Run away from the palace; 2.) Gather one group of allies; 3.) Gather another group of allies; 4.) Gather one more set of allies; 5.)Revolution; 6.)Prepare for War/Holding Court; and 7.)Save the World from utter annihilation. Here in lies another issue I have. Fable finished with an epic battle against Jack of Blades, and in Lost Chapters you had an even tougher battle against his resurrected form of a dragon. Fable 2 didn't even have a final boss battle; this chapter ended with a battle that in no way tests your fortitude. Why get rid of the epic boss battles? I want to fight some thing like the Kraken again. But in the latest installments, bosses are nothing more than glorified grunts, and maybe slightly stronger with no new tricks. Anyway, going back to those short plot quests, is a bunch of mundane side quests that become available in between key points in the main story. Some, like 2 or 3, give you some adequate loot. Most give you 5 to 10 guild seals and nothing else. Then there are some repeating side quests you can do to to earn some chump change. Money is primarily first made by finding loot, working, and trading. Once you unlock, via the treasure chest in the road to rule, you can buy houses and businesses. That's the best way to make money; and the reason that people think it's too easy to make money. You need to earn between 10-12 million in order to save all your people from annihilation. Even with all properties owned and getting normal rents and profits, will take 10 hours of waiting to gather that amount of gold. Not to mention they added degradation of property, which requires constant maintenance. If rentable properties get in too bad of shape, tenants will stop paying their rent. This is extremely tedious, and a horribly micromanaged system. It would have easily been fixed if you could repair all properties at once; even if it was one city at a time. Instead, you have to address each property individually; and you should be repairing all properties every 4-5 hours to be safe.
Interacting with the people, is overly simplified as well. Press A to interact and then 2-4 random expressions pop up; which is frustrating if you need a certain expression, like when trying to open up a demon door while in co-op. However, the expressions are more personable and a lot more easy on the eyes. You only need to hold the button until the chime and shake to give off a perfect expression; there is a 99.99% success rate.
One thing that makes an RPG a RPG is character and weapon customization. They extremely cut back on character outfits and appearance options. Now the weapons are where the biggest disappointment lies. There is no weapon customization. In order to improve your weapon, you must perform some mundane tasks, or some tasks you'd perform naturally over the course of the game. Also, those weapons need to be equipped in order to get credit; so you need to micro manage between weapons to fully upgrade them. Also, most of the weapons cater to an evil character as opposed to good. The weapon changing with your playing style is nice eye candy; but it doesn't make the game special in any way, or the weapon. The sad reality is: an ordinary and crude looking weapon dealing 150 damage does the same damage as a a legendary and gorgeous looking weapon that does 150 damage. A special weapon needs to be special, in every way. Calling a weapons special, doesn't make it so! By there being so little variation between weapon appearance, and negligible difference in damages dealt, you'll wind up choosing your weapon based on pure damage (hammer), speed (sword, and/or by what particular bonuses each have. You may even choose a weapon based on how easy it is to upgrade compared to other weapons. To me, this ambitious endeavor failed because they took too much choice out of picking your weapon and locked you into certain upgrades. If every weapon is legendary, then is any weapon really legendary? They should have kept the ordinary weapons and augmentation slots; and legendary weapons should be naturally augmented without giving up augmentation slots and allow you to make these weapons better than the best fully augmented ordinary weapons. This is what I felt failed in previous Fable games, that legendary weapons weren't as good as normal weapons because you were so limited in customizing them and they just weren't as powerful. RPG players love to customize and create characters that can destroy all opposition. We spend hours and hours to build and shape our character to maximize combat efficiency based on our playing style. Fable seemed to miss this point completely with this game.
This game is also riddled with bugs. They added hand holding to this game; which I think is absolutely ridiculous, considering how they implemented it especially. NPCs can no longer be trusted to follow you, so they need to have you hold their hand. Is this a game about looking both ways and crossing the street, or is it about saving the world!?! This can be glitchy. When you can run hand-in-hand you could be running with them to their destination for between 5-10 minutes. Sometimes it won't allow you to run, and you slow step hand-in-hand across a whole map to reach your destination. You can fast travel sometimes while holding hands, but it drops you quite a walk away most of the time. All of a sudden, a short run feels like trying to swim against the current and can take a minute or two to travel 10-20 in game yards (or meters for those on the metric system). The dog, is still as annoying as the one in Fable 2. It will bark, let you know a treasure or dig spot is close, but then starts to lick itself or wander around like it didn't know what it was calling to your attention in the first place. It gets annoying real fast when every 10 steps you take your dog is barking; and then it takes it's merry time to lead you to the spot. The fairy dust trail that guides you to your quests, is completely broken. It often completely disappears, and leaves you completely lost. This could be saved with a useful map system, but Fable 3 doesn't have a map system; just a crude simplified fast travel/quest map. Which is only good for telling you that there is a quest there...somewhere. Also, the Lute Hero achievement seems bugged, where it keeps resetting and doesn't let you progress to actually achieve it.
This game seems to also force co-op play. It does this through a demon door, making weapon upgrades only accessible through completing co-op actions which activate them, and certain achievements.
Fable 3 is fun while you are actually playing it; but too much micromanaging makes it feel like you are spending more time working than actually playing. We play games to escape work; we don't play so we can be rolling pie crusts or micro-managing real estate repairs. This game had so much to build on, and a great foundation to work with. Instead, they regressed and tore up parts of the foundation that worked; and neglected other parts that are essential for a everlasting RPG. Being it is fun while being played, It is better than average; but too many bugs, oversimplified gameplay mechanics, and a step back from it's RPG foundation leaves it too raw to be good. That's why it gets a 6 rating. It's a good action adventure game; but it's supposed to be an action adventure RPG hybrid. The RPG part of it was extremely faint, if at all visible at best; mostly experienced during your short time holding court as ruler (which was the best innovation of this game; and the time I enjoyed the most. Sadly, it's a really short and too short for being the most important and influential part of this entire game). Ultimately, they can't keep trimming the RPG aspect of the game if they plan on continuing the franchise. It can't be limited to farting on a villagers head, micromanaging real estate, working, and some choices that have little to no consequence other than how the villagers view you. In the end, evil or good, you will achieve the same end; however minus a few townsfolk and/or some areas completely ravaged or revitalized depending on some of your choices.