Fable: The Lost Chapters review:2 stars (Warning this game has problems) - Although this game as reviewed by others might be fun please know that there is NO SUPPORT. The game has a lot of loading and saving problems and there are a lot of people that can not play it on their computers. All of the sites for this game say that eventually they will come up with a patch to fix their serious problems but that has not happened yet. You may be buying a game that you cannot play. Their only advice is to play something else until, or if, they get these issues resolved.3 stars (Fun but very disappointing) - When I bought it I was hoping for Morrowind with more features. What I got was a very pretty game, with some new features, but was too short, didnt have enough story, was way more linear than advertised, was too easy and too expensive. When I finished I didnt get that satisfied feeling like I normally get after finishing a good game or a good book. I will probably only play through it once more just to see the other ending.
Graphics were excellent, combat was intuitive, nice spell selection (not too many spells), I loved some of the visual things they added like tatoos, scarring, hair cuts, you can become fat or skinny depending on what you eat, get big muscles or have no muscles. These and other what I consider small but integral things should definitely be in future RPGs. Some pretty big things were missing though.
First you cannot play the game as a female charater. Im a guy, but hey some times I like to play games as a female. Second, the story was very thin, hardly any character development. Interaction with NPCs is way too mechanical. Over the game you age about 25-40 years but hardly anything happens to flesh out who you are in relation to the other characters. Sure you can get married, be come good or evil, big and strong or small and magical but why should I care about you as a character? Why do other characters in the story care about you? Why should I care about any of the other characters in the game. We learn basically nothing about anyone except basic events in their life, nothing about what they like or dislike, what theyve done, what motivates them. I mean, you learn more about the mercenaries you can hire from their side comments and interaction with each other than you do about the character's sister or his school roomate who play major roles. I very much missed the dialog and character depth, both payable sexes, and multiple races of Morrowind and Neverwinter Nights.
The game was just too darn easy and it doesnt have any way to increase the difficulty. I blasted through it in a weekend and did most of the side quests (even though they were mostly for money, which you have too much of anyway) and even the extra area they very obviously tacked on at the end. The only way I found to make it more difficult was to run around naked and use less expensive weapons. The early game was good but by the middle and definitly at the end I was destroying everything. The bosses are all way too predictable and with a little magic, some parrying and a few potions you barely even get injured most of the time by the normal enemies. There was never a time when I was killed or thought I might die.
I really hope there is a Fable II because I think they could do a better job, even if they reused the graphics engine and just hired some better story deveoplers they could make a much more enjoyable game.
Of course maybe my preference for story driven games is what makes me dislike aspects of this predominatley hack and slasher.3 stars (It's good, but not great) - I found the game fun. It lacks in some respects like extent of voice tallent (all/most females sound the same), story, and creativity. But, the worlds are rather great to roam in and the monsters can be tricky.
Still, the mechanics of the game that you are encouraged by the instructions to challenge are rather flawed. Economics allow you to do some rather brutal things like buy everything from a vendor who sells cheap and sell them back at the new (high) market price.. and repeat for as long as you want to be as rich as you want. Oops, a rather major game flaw.
Secondly, the game ends early with the defeat (holding back spoils) of the enemy... and the game continues. Just to beat him again, and then the game very suddenly ends in credits!
I didn't like that, especially with side-quests still pending. I left with the feeling that the developers made the game too short in beta and then found that they had to extend it for a bigger game.
Thirdly, but not lastly, the game has an amiguous save fuction. In other games you either have save-points or you can save anywhere. In this game it is mixed and ambiguous. I simply kept the PC and game running and paused it when I wasn't playing to avoid loss of progress (which I've had). |
