Ladies and gentlemen! Boys and girls! Children of all ages! Welcome back to the Assassin's Den!
"One step forward, two steps back" is the best way to describe the changes made between Fable 2 and Fable 3. Don't get me wrong, everything that was changed works properly, is intuitive to use, and is fun. But some of the changes that were made changed things that worked far better in the two previous games. So for this review, I'm going to do a list about the changes that were made.
1. Combat. This game brings back the ability to block, flourish and manually aim with your gun from the start. You even get a charged shot with your gun, which does double damage, but doesn't drop the amount of shots you have in your gun before reloading. (Don't ask me how it works, though.) And spells work exactly the same as Fable 2, with one awesome addition; Spell Weaving. What this allows is you to cast two spells at once, giving you different effects with different combinations. They also got rid of the Chaos Spell (which was useless in my book) and the Slow Time and Raise Dead are now potions. So you can cast those two spells at will, giving you a huge advantage in battle. However, you lose two things; the ability to focus on one enemy in melee combat, and the loss of the health bar. The former has no excuse for, but the latter, they replace it with a system that brings had red creeping around the borders of your screen and the quickening of a heart beat. And while that's all well and good, unless you know the system well, you're either going to waste healing items when you don't need to, or you're going to wait too long to use them and get knocked out. And getting knocked out makes you lose all progress on the guild seal you were building toward. (Something I'll get to when I get to leveling.)
2. Pause menu. Instead of a simple text menu, you have the Sanctuary, a place that you retain control of your character, and walk around to view the weapons, spells, clothes, tattoos, beards and hairstyles you have, how much money you have, as well as your stats that will be viewable by your Xbox Live partners. You also have a map that allows you to fast travel to the different areas of Albion and take on quests, and a later ability to transfer your own funds into the kingdom's treasury (which is a plot point on the game, which I will get to later.) The problem with this is twofold; first, you've lost the ability to view your quest and healing items. So if you've forgotten how many healing items you have or what quest items you have, you're screwed. The other is that if you need to pause to use the bathroom, Jasper won't shut the hell up. And that can get annoying if you have to leave the game paused for a while.
3. Money. Money actually has importance to the plot this time, and is far easier to the come by this time. The jobs this time are more enjoyable, and are more QTE than "hit the sweet spot". And while QTE are annoying, they are more of a game than what you had to do in Fable 2. You also gain money far faster from rent, and you gain more per building too. And while you no longer get money when offline, it doesn't bother me. I felt like I was cheating using that "reset the clock" trick, it was a necessity with how annoying it was to get your initial capital in Fable 2. However, you now how to buy the ability to buy property and shops in with the leveling system. And while it's not that bad (you get the ability to buy houses at the second gate, shops at the 4th), it sucks that you can't buy what you want when you want. The other bad thing is that houses now deteriorate; you have to repair houses every few minutes, or they will deteriorate so far down that you won't get rent from them until you repair them. And when cash flow is low, that is annoying. However, you won't need to worry too much early on, if you manage to get all 10 silver keys that you can get your hands on before you get to the second gate; you get 50,000 gold from a 10 key silver key chest in Brightwall Village, and you can have all 10 keys by the time you have your hero weapons (full details are on the Fable wiki, but the you'll get 2 in the Castle you start in, 3 in Mistpeak, 3 in Brightwall Village, and 2 in the dungeon you get your hero weapons.)
4. Weapons. You're restricted to 4 types of weapons this time; longsword and hammer, and pistol and rifle. But you don't lost any customization; there are a TON legendary weapons (50, to be exact), and you have the weapon morphing for your hero weapons. The morphing is done by how you play your character; everything from how much income you've generated, to how many chests you've opened, to how you interact with the people in the world, to what spells you use, etc. The problem with this is that you can't get all 50 legendary weapons in a single game, and the weapon morphing doesn't work the way you hope. You get maybe a dozen legendary weapons in a save file, so you're going to be trading either over Xbox live, or between save files. And weapons morphing? You qualify for certain morphs by performing the needed actions, but all the morphs are considered when you upgrade a chest, and one is chosen at random. So if you want your weapons to look a certain way, you're going to need to save and reload your game. Which means, unless you have multiple characters saved, you're going to be quitting out of your game each time. (PC gets multiple save files, Xbox doesn't. So if you're a PC player, ignore that line.)
5. Villager interaction. This game introduces the Expression and Dynamic Touch mechanisms, allowing for interaction that wasn't possible in the previous 2 game. You no longer have the "follow" and "wait" expressions; you take the hand of a villager instead. Even if they don't want to follow you; then, you drag them. Expression touch allows you to personally interact with villagers; you can now shake hands, hug, kiss, dance with, fart on, and threaten villagers in ways impossible in previous games. However, the way the previous 2 games does things was better. You can no longer choose what expression you want; you do what the game wants you to do. And I've gotten people I've been pulling along stuck on objects when performing escort missions, and I had to push their character model with mine.
6. Leveling. This game centralizes renown, job rating, and combat leveling into one place; Road to Rule. The currency of the Road to Rule is the Guild Seal, which you get from combat, completing quests, and interacting with villagers. However, you gain VERY little toward your guild seals in combat, and a LOT from villager interaction. And since enemies stop respawning in areas you've cleared out after a few missions, and won't start respawning until you've completed the next story mission (unlike Fable 1 and 2, where they respawn every time), you've to go supplement your guild seals with making villagers either like or hate you. However, you can safely ignore the job upgrades, since I told you about the 50k gold silver key chest in Brightwall, so it's still entirely possible to max out your combat skills by the end of the game.
Despite all these gripes, however, the game is fun to play. Yes, it sucks that I can't target a hob mage in combat, but I can still kill him with my gun and AOE spells no problem. Yes, it sucks that houses deteriorate, but they still make you money, and it's not quick and easy to repair them. Yes, the leveling system sucks, but once I learned it, it never worked against me. And above all, you don't lose out on any customization for your character either; there are still a TON of clothes you can acquire, and you can dye them any way you like. I enjoy playing this game, and you will too.
As for the story; 50 years have passed since the events of Fable 2. The Hero of Bowerstone unified Albion under his/her rule (though only her if you have a female hero save file on your hard drive. Otherwise, it the Hero of Bowerstone's gender defaults to male), and has died and been entombed under the Castle. You play as the second child of the Hero of Bowerstone, and you learn the new system through the story; how to change your clothes, the dynamic and expression touches, and the combat system. After combat training, you find out your brother, Logan, is about to execute protestors, and your boyfriend/girlfriend wants you to stop them. You're forced to choose who Logan executes; the protestors or your boyfriend/girlfriend? After you've chosen (or if you don't choose, Logan executes both), you scream to your brother "I will NEVER forgive you for this!" and he has you escorted to your bedroom. From here, Sir Walter Beck, the old king's/queen's (that's what the previous game's Hero is called in game) closest adviser, takes you away from the castle, and into your parent's tomb to get the Guild Seal, and your first spell on the Road to Rule. You're then led to the Sanctuary, where you are given your mission; gather allies, supporters and gain the necessary strength you need to lead a revolution against your brother. Once you've gathered your army and made yourself strong enough for the fight, you're off to Aurora to find out why your kind-hearted brother turned into a tyrant, and gain the last bit you need; a navy. From there, the invasion begins, and you fight your way to the castle to depose your brother.
After you take the castle (not a spoiler, btw. I mean, did you REALLY think you were going to lose this fight?), you are coronated as king/queen, and put your brother on trial. It is here that you learn the plot for the second half of the game; that "the darkness" that took Aurora is going to invade Albion in one year's time, and Logan was doing what he could to prepare for it. But since he wasn't a Hero, he is unable to fight it effectively. It is your job to prepare for the upcoming battle; both yourself, and your kingdom. And it is here that I bring up the treasury; you need 6.5 million gold in order to save everyone in your kingdom. If you choose to be a good and benevolent monarch and keep your promises to the people who helped you in the revolution, you will need to transfer either either 8.5 million from your personal funds if you choose to done 2 quest items into the treasury, 9.7 million if you don't. If you choose to break your promises and continue the way Logan did things, you will need to transfer 2.05 million if you choose to keep the quest items for your personal funds, 850,000 if you donate them to the treasury. You have 1 year to do this (which is broken down into 5 sections) before the final battle is at hand. You need all the money you need in the treasury by the end of day 121 (on Xbox. You have 1 more time period on PC), so make sure you factor in your choices for that day into your funds transfer. You get all the information how much each day of judgement will cost you on the Fable wiki, so I won't do it here.
Once you reach Day 1, you are warped to the Road to Rule one last time, given your heroic form, and are sent to the day of the battle. And I must say this is the second best ending out of the three; not as good as the fights against Jack of Blades, but FAR better than Lucian. I won't spoil it, though.
At this point, you can play the Traitor's Keep DLC, which occurs after the end of the game, but I haven't played it, because Fable DLC requires a constant connection to Xbox live. Same with Understone, which can be played after the Masquerade quest before you become a monarch.
All in all, despite its problems, Fable 3 is fun. Do not pay more than 15 dollars new for it, though.
I won't be tackling Fable: The Journey or Fable Heroes, because I don't own or want to own either. Heroes is an Xbox Live download, and requires Xbox Live to play, and The Journey is Kinect, and I hate motion control.
I may do a wrap up like I did with Mass Effect, and I'll figure out what I'll do next. Until then, happy gaming!
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