My Fable III review.

[Recycled Human]

Don't worry, I seek clarification not debate. I'm perfectly content understanding that others were dissapointed, I'm not as content seeing lots of people posting 'fable 3 fails because glitches and it's so easy and the story wasn't that 'good''. All these points are valid but lack supporting evidence to back up the claims. Without support the arguments are weak and a weak argument is inflammatory not constructive. It develops a mob mentality pushing others to jump on a bandwagon of general disinterest and it would be a real shame if the only reason people didn't like the game was because they played the game on easy mode.

You make perfectly valid points 'the game should have had fights that required planning or different tactics, I shouldn't have to change my playstyle to achieve what I want, the crawler lacked the dramatic 'foil' I wanted in my villian'. And that's the difference between inflammatory and critical, just a little bit of explanation.

I don't intend to come off as preachy but it's not like I can express myself clearly using only text. Words have multiple meanings and feelings wrapped around them, and they tend to be personal attachments, it's not like I can tip toe around everyone. If I hurt your feelings, I'm sorry. It wasn't my intention.

Thank you for answering my questions and I'll pose a second to help in clarification, both you and the op seem to has similar issues with the game, can either of you provide an example of your idea of a better game? Fallout is the closest I can come up with, but it's not as personal to me as fable.

 

[Bluedrake]

Thank you for answering my questions and I'll pose a second to help in clarification, both you and the op seem to has similar issues with the game, can either of you provide an example of your idea of a better game? Fallout is the closest I can come up with, but it's not as personal to me as fable.

It's okay. I always worry about coming off as offensive. If we can discuss this in a calm and civilized manner, I'm fine with it.
I hesitate to use the word "better" because every game has it's merits. Some just have more of what I want than others.

Some of the things I like and the games that provided it:

Solid, flexible combat system and enemies with nasty teeth. Two games that gave me that were Bully and Prototype. In Bully, you could just beat up your opponent, but you could also tackle him to the ground and pound him, grab him and throw him away from you, use weapons (pg ones, like firecrackers, stink bombs, itching powder). Also the ability to finish your opponent off with a humiliation move (wedgies, for instance) was fun. Bully was not a hard game, but the number of ways you could trounce your opponents made up for it.

Prototype had a variety of "weapons" (main character is a shapeshifting mutant), but you could grab guns from soldiers, throw cars at helicopters, throw people at helicopters, highjack tanks and helicopters, karate kick helicopters. A fair few bosses required strategy too. Some were too fast for the slower weapons, others were slower but tougher, and then the final boss was fast, tough and a general pain, but oh so satisfying to kill (took me 30 tries).

Fable 3 was not flexible enough for me in that respect. The combat system is reduced to sword, gun, magic, and as I said earlier the last two are so overpowered that it makes the other one seem cheap and useless. I would have prefered if some enemies were resistant to certain elements or even to magic in general, some requiring blunt force instead of slashes, etc. You know, required me to think my battle plan before I rushed into an area.

I also never felt in danger in Fable 3. In the other two games, especially Prototype, I had many moments of "oh sh*t I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die...arrgh! I'm dead!" It made my beating that section all the more satisfying. (I actually got up and did a victory pose after beating the final boss of Prototype).

Off-main quest fun: I like side missions and mini games, and again Bully gave me that. There's really a lot of stuff to play with (classes, jobs, bike races, go-kart races, errands, arcade games, carnival games and such). The Elder Scroll series is all about the side missions, so I was in Heaven when I played that. You could join various factions with interesting side quests too (less so in Oblivion, but the ones they had were pretty good).

Aside from jobs (which got old quickly), Fable 3 did not offer me much. Most of the sidequests were fetch quests or hack-fests, or both at once.

Compelling story: I must confess I'm a Final Fantasy fan, and most of the series gave me some pretty interesting stories with fun characters to play with. Sure, they are linear, but I don't mind because I want to find out the rest of the story. The story doesn't have to be great or the most original thing ever. It just has to pull me in and make me believe I'm there.

Fable 3 fell short of that goal with the storyline. I failed to get sucked in because it didn't feel personal. I was fighting for the greater good before I was fighting for myself, and that felt backwards to me. I like when the villain makes it very personal, so I really want to find him and punish him (Jack and Lucien did a good job of that, even if revenge against the latter was not as epic as I would have liked.)

Power to the player: I want to feel powerful in a game. They're escapist fantasies to me, so I want my character to be superhuman or a god. Many games made me feel that but none more than Prototype. The player character is powerful beyond belief (and yet the game remains a challenge).

In Fable 3 I felt more like the enemies were weak compared to my character being powerful. Fable TLC did a better job of giving me that feeling of being an omnipotent god.

So yeah, that's some of the reasons Fable 3 left me unsatisfied. It just didn't answer my needs as a gamer. I think part of the problem is that it tries to blend too many genres together (RPG, Sim, Adventure, Action) and does none of them to their full potential. It also gave me a claustrophobic feeling, like my feet are glued to the floor and I'm walking through a tunnel (a large tunnel at times, but still a tunnel). I can't jump, I can't duck, I can't walk over a one-inch piece of rock because the game says so (in any of the caves, for example.)

Sorry for the wall of text.

 

[Mastperf]

It's still someone's opinion. I know you personally might think of it as being wrong, but it doesn't make that the person who's opinion it is wrong by any stretch of the imagination. We're allowed to think what we do, that's the beauty of having free will, and it absolutely does not make our opinion wrong. There's counter arguments for everything, and like Dark said, if someone I looked up to lost, in my opinion, they wouldn't stop being the greatest.

For example, I personally thought that Halo sucked. It's not my type of game, and I was really lousy at it. Does that mean my opinion about it is wrong to someone who thinks Halo is the best game ever? No, because for me, it was a lousy game, hence, my opinion is justified.

Your opinion on Halo would be a preference and we've already covered preference. If you take two people who have beaten all others and put them against each other only 1 can be the best. You might like one better but if he loses every single time to the other then those who thought the loser "the best" were wrong. When opinion meets irrefutable fact it can be wrong. If we race 20 times and you beat me 20 times you are better and everyone whose opinion was that I was the best is wrong. Some people probably held the opinion that Tiger Woods was a moral person and would never cheat on his wife...those people were indeed factually wrong.
I'm not arguing peoples preference about Fable 3 are wrong, I'm just arguing against the notion that opinions can't be wrong.

*text*

Reviews on games are scored on preference, not fact. Some things are based on facts. Someone opinions can be wrong based on fact. If someone's opinion is that California wasn't prone to earthquakes only to have a major one the next day, it's pretty obvious their opinion was wrong.

 

[MaleficRaven]

Fable 3 was not flexible enough for me in that respect. The combat system is reduced to sword, gun, magic, and as I said earlier the last two are so overpowered that it makes the other one seem cheap and useless. I would have prefered if some enemies were resistant to certain elements or even to magic in general, some requiring blunt force instead of slashes, etc. You know, required me to think my battle plan before I rushed into an area.

I strongly disagree with what you said. First of all, neither guns nor magic are overpowered and the only reason one could possibly misconstrue the latter as being "too" powerful is because it has the ability to strike multiple enemies at once instead of the other two which are pretty much single-target only. Melee, however, can hit several enemies at once, it just depends on how close they are to each other. Still, just because a certain form of combat can hit multiple enemies doesn't make it overpowered.

So... magic should be limited just because you find it to be overpowering? How exactly is that fair? First of all, that would contradict Lionhead's goal of giving us choices because it would force you to use something else. Secondly, you're not forced to use magic (except in the beginning but you don't even use that much anyways) so if you consider it "overpowered", don't use it. But you don't really have any right to complain about it as it isn't detrimental to your gaming experience.

 

[Kessd]

So... magic should be limited just because you find it to be overpowering? How exactly is that fair? First of all, that would contradict Lionhead's goal of giving us choices because it would force you to use something else. Secondly, you're not forced to use magic (except in the beginning but you don't even use that much anyways) so if you consider it "overpowered", don't use it. But you don't really have any right to complain about it as it isn't detrimental to your gaming experience.

He has a right to complain about whatever he wishes. He found magic overpowered, you didn't. And to say not to use something in a game is like saying "I baked a cake for us to eat, just don't eat it."

Anyways, I thought the combat was fun, not challenging, but fun. I can see how some see it as bland, and I agree. After a while of seeing the same enemies die in the same ways it became a nuisance, but it was fun nonetheless. As for the story, I thought it was good, but poorly executed. It seemed that I became king in a matter of weeks, and there was little to none characterization. The only things I know about Benn Finn is from a series of papers scattered about various levels. The character weren't bad, just again, poorly executed. Yet over all I found the game to be satisfying. I would like to see more character in the next Fable though.

 

[Recycled Human]

Prototype I've played and experienced the same highs you mentioned, the timer on the final boss caused me to restart more than I ever dreamed! I never played bully but it sounds like I should.

The point you made about fable trying to be so many things at once is possibly my favorite comment on the game thus far. It did try very hard to be so many things and fell short of that goal in many ways. I guess the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts for me, as I took people that I admired from pop culture, or characters from my own thoughts and dropped them into this game. And the thing that impresses me is that it's not a stretch to fit them in.

Combat needs to evolve, but I'm curious about several recently hidden aspects of combat. Are finishers random? Did they actually remove counters? Do weapons change depending on flourishes/blocks or dodgerolls and quick attacks? I know most enemies have a specific pattern for their own attacks but I do wish there was more 'must be defeated by x, y, b' or Zelda style, block the projectile back to the enemy then kill them. I've managed to suffice with melee fighting balvarines where perfectly timed blocks and rolls are paramount to survival, but it would be nice to see some depth involved.

I remember on my first playthrough I kept thinking 'where are the puzzles and the memorable quests?' only to find two really impressive ones at the very end. I would have liked more of aurora to explore but maybe dlc will fix it...

Dragon age had some rewarding and well told off story quests. Some of the best weapons/armor in the game were off the beaten path and drenched in lore.

The only way I could be more satisfied with fable's protagonist customization would be more of everything and a fallout/da- like 'make your face' and of course potions. I felt the apothecary this got ripped off this go around.

I may have to play one of those games mentioned again just to see if I'm being unrealistic XD!

 

[Bluedrake]

I never played bully but it sounds like I should.

Try it! It's a fun little game. If you've played GTA the interface will feel familiar. It's the same company.

The point you made about fable trying to be so many things at once is possibly my favorite comment on the game thus far. It did try very hard to be so many things and fell short of that goal in many ways. I guess the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts for me, as I took people that I admired from pop culture, or characters from my own thoughts and dropped them into this game. And the thing that impresses me is that it's not a stretch to fit them in.

Yeah, that's pretty much a hit or miss formula. It hit with, it missed with me.

Combat needs to evolve, but I'm curious about several recently hidden aspects of combat. Are finishers random? Did they actually remove counters? Do weapons change depending on flourishes/blocks or dodgerolls and quick attacks?

I think finishers are random. I came across a cool one with the pistol involving a Hobbe. It actually jumped and "swallowed" my arm, pistol and all, and was promptly shot off. Classic! I think counters are gone. I haven't seen one in the game so far, and I used melee a fair bit (if just to get the achievement). I'm not sure about the last point.
[/quote]

 

[MaleficRaven]

He has a right to complain about whatever he wishes. He found magic overpowered, you didn't. And to say not to use something in a game is like saying "I baked a cake for us to eat, just don't eat it."

Strange... I thought I replied to this. Anyways, he doesn't. Magic being supposedly overpowered is not detrimental to his gaming experience (which I previously stated) and therefore, it's not affecting him thus rendering his complaints invalid. In essence, it's the equivalence of me complaining about melee being too strong or too fun despite the fact that I don't use it. Of course, that's assuming he doesn't enjoy using magic or that he doesn't use it enough to make it the focus of his gaming style (like myself).