An alright game that could've been great with some more development time and effort. Definitely not the best fable
In fact their big selling point was the fact that they essentially stripped down the game making it completely interface free. Now that's nice, especially since the menus in Fable II were pretty bothersome. It's not really done badly, but for an RPG, or any game really, there really aren't many items to put in your virtual sanctuary. Unless, you feel like going out and exploring through the highly repetitive world to find better weapons you don't need because no enemy you face will match you or provide any challenge.
The idea of providing difficult and formidable foes is simply by increasing the number of whatever goonish things you face. Either way all you have to do is hit a button or two, no real strategy or skill involved. There's no real motivation to fight either, rarely will you care about who you're bashing in other than their attacking you. The only reason I chose to specifically shoot or take a swing at something was to make my character taller and more built, which is affected by how you choose to fight. Although shooting a gun's pretty useless when you can decimate people with a spell then clean up the rest by melee.
Right about now I'm realizing I'm spending way too much time reviewing this game similar to what I did while playing it. If you played Fable II there really isn't much of a point to play this one. You're only king for about an hour or so of play time and to be honest the decisions aren't that hard to make. Unless of course you want to be evil but whatever. I've never been more "meh" about a game I was so excited to play. Story's kinda alright but nothing you haven't come across. Missions don't really stand out, kinda just go here kill stuff and thats about it. At no moment was I saying to myself, "Wow that was crazy!" It was more, "Well, I've got about 2 hours till I have to be somewhere that'll be kinda more interesting that this, let's see how many women I can impregnate."
I just ask for a fun videogame with new ideas and fun gameplay. Fable kind of had it. It looked graphically wonderful with more diverse environments and had some promise. Overall its just a game you can't take all too seriously and there's no real emotional connection to anyone in the game. Now, I seem to frequently bring it up but in order to feel motivation and a sense of achievement it greatly helps to have that connection, especially in the case of RPG's. I want to win and think about the choices I make. In Fable III I kinda just didn't care and went through the motions. This is also important to bring up because Ol' Petey Molyneux praised emotional attachment prior to Fable II, its why you had a dog. You can see it in Fable as well. Growing up with the character you play as is an effective way to build emotional attachment to him and the other characters and that simply wasn't done here. You're just given this situation, know nothing about anyone or what has happened in your life previously or your relationships and things you've gone through with them.
At the very least its still a cool looking game that will eat up a couple days, but once your done you won't really think about it at all. Your video game playing experience over the coarse of your life won't really be changed, it's more of just another alright thing that you spent some time on, like an 8th grade girlfriend, and much like an 8th grade girlfriend your relationship with this game will last about as long.