Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

20 to 40 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Guilty pleasure"

Many people will probably disagree with me, but I was perhaps one of the few who really did not like Fable 1 much. It had its great points, but the lack of freedom and overall consolisation, without fun combat to begin with, ruined it for me. Fable 2 was not even on the PC! What was I to expect from Fable 3? Well, I expected something bad, really bad. But thankfully, as always, I kept a cool head, written the review only after finishing it and tried as much as I could not to be biased. It is then I saw that Fable 3 not only exceeded my expectations, it was also the better of the two Fable games for the PC platform. I see the main positives in very fun combat, interesting graphical design of locations and nice sounds. The negatives are of course the dumbed down RPG elements, the horrible and utterly boring relationship and characters and lastly, for most of the time, boring storyline and quests.

Graphics 8/10
The graphics in Fable 3 are decent and actually pretty nice art-fantasy looking, of course they're not photo realistic Witcher 2 style graphics, but they can hold their own against other games. Environmental graphics look splendid, the forests, the lake and sun, the snowing, even the cities they look very fantasy-like and ultimately gorgeous. The bad factor in graphics are characters. I mean they have this fable look around them (exactly like in Fable 1), but alas the look is not to my liking, so points down for that. Still, the characters try to match the art style of the environments, but in my opinion this art style is not suited for characters.

Sounds 8/10
Music is great, moody and mostly fits the location it plays in. You most probably won't file any complains because of it, or because of the equally good sound effects. What the dragged the score down for me were the voices and characters. The characters themselves are very one-sided and shallow, each of them has only one single agenda and conversations with them are equally boring. The voices themselves although done with a high quality are not exceptional either.

Story 7/10
For me, the weak point of the game. The story is like this, you have an evil brother who is the king and oppresses the people, so you have to what? You guesses it, replace him. Of course he is very shallow and one-sided, which doesn't help the story at all. Now the first 3/4 of the game all you do is gather quite boring allies so that you can finally get on that throne. This all is pretty boring.
Now for the good part. When you are finally on the throne you will learn about the true antagonist of the game. Now this part is immensely interesting since the enemy is really special, very interesting, very well designed and you get to experience this new enemy first hand, only a short time before you get to be king. My opinion of the game and the story (was at about 2/10) got multiplied 4 times when this was revealed to me. The rest of the game you will spend preparing to fight this new enemy. The story could have gone from crap to almost greatness just so, just like that. That is, if...if it were not for the damn ending which was again exactly like the beginning, crappy as hell. But I give them a plus for trying, they bungled the ending but made a worthy antagonist to equalize the impact.
Also to note here, the relationships both with friends and lovers are a joke, perhaps the worst part of the game for me so points down for that as well. In fact the story (and characters) would have been a 3 or 4 if it wasn't for the really interesting antagonist.

Gameplay 9/10
Now I expected gameplay to be bad. And true, it is watered down, very much. First, there are no skills to have, only your melee, ranged and magic to upgrade. Then, the armors don't give you any armor so you might as well run around naked or in a pyjama. After that the difficulty even on "challenging" is easy, but note, only in the start and middle of the game! Lastly since there no special skills don't expect tactical combat, you only hack and slash away.
Now that we got the negatives out the way let me tell why I gave it a 9. The combat is FUN. Yes, just that. It is not tactical, not turn-based, you have no skills, it is totally watered down, but god, it is fun. Just like the combat in, for example, Silver. Just plain fun. The reasons why this is, are:
1. Difficulty. Of course first you have to get through the start and middle of game till you start meeting real challenging enemies, like balverines, white balverines who can chop you down in 3-4 hits, who always jump around so that you cannot hit them and who have generous health pool. Yes, especially on "challenging" the combat becomes superb fun once you gather enough seals (kind of like levels in the game) to start spamming tough monsters.
2. Using of everything. In many games I just max out 1 or 2 spells and pound enemies with them. Nothing else. For example, Witcher 2 had great combat until I maxed out magic and in the second half I just spammed fireballs everywhere which killed everyone effortlessly. Fable 3 is one the few games where I used everything, some enemies I killed in melee, some in ranged combat and some with magic. I combined these three in almost every fight and it was fun doing it.
3. Slowmotion. I know, I'm sucker when I consider the matrix slowmotions during fights to be cool, but still, they are. Nothing like charging your hammer for 3 seconds then in slowmotion hitting some thug over his mouth with it, which sends him flying through the air most probably dead. After game completion you will even get invisible wings which light up when you charge your weapon, and damn, it is cool watching a feathered chick hit somebody over his mouth with a warhammer in slowmotion, it just is.

Replayability 7/10
Well, you have an evil way to do things and a good way to do things, as expected. This gives the game certain replay value, but alas, like Gamespot noted, there really are no interesting moral choices so I would skip a second gameplay if I only considered this factor. Alas, as said previously the combat, once you get to a certain difficulty, is damn fun, so why not try it again?

All in all, this is probably the second watered down consolised game (after ME2) which I enjoyed immensely. It really isn't an aspirant in RPG of the year category, but it definitely is a fun game to play for anyone who hasn't got a stick up their as*, that is, if there is currently nothing better unfinished around.