Fable: The Lost Chapters

"It's a Fun Game with a lot of potential, but it fails to be all it could be."

When the X-Box first came out, there was a swarm of hype about a game that was supposed to be absolutely revolutionary. A game with a massive world and a character you can lead down the path of good or evil and make your own decisions about everything. It would feature online play, so you could take the action online and compete against other heroes.

Four Years and many content removals later, we have Fable. A game that fails in so many ways to reach what it aspires to, both on a conceptual and technical level. It's still a good, fun game, but you see glimpses of what it could be, and it makes you yearn for more. Fable: The Lost Chapters is an updated version of the game that was released for the PC a few months after the original version was released. The Lost Chapters adds a few extra quests as well as new items and spells. It's nice to have more, but well, it's not without issues.

Avo and Skorm

Fable is an action RPG. You equip weapons and armor, use items, and gain experience. Battle takes place in real time, and incorporates Melee, Range, AND Magic combat. Combat is fairly simple. You lock on to enemies by holding the Right Trigger, and attack with the X button. Guard with Y, Guard Breaking attack with B. You equip your Melee weapon with White, Bow with Black, and Magic can be accessed by holding the trigger. This part of combat I found to be quite good. I could access any type of combat with ease and use it as I wanted. Melee combat works well enough. Targeting an enemy makes you face them, and you aren't even required to target the enemy to attack them. Range Combat….not so well. The Hero doesn't always face quite the right direction or angle it right, and if you move too much, he'll lose his lock and you'll be forced to retarget. Further, it's difficult to change targets. I'm still really not sure how to do it, and the way they suggested really didn't work. Further aggravating this issue is the random traders that walk along the roads that you fight on. Since you CAN attack anyone, you'll often times find yourself targeting the trader instead of the actual dangerous enemy. I found Melee combat to be the most useful, and once you adjust a bit, you can do fine, but it was awkward at times.

Possibly the biggest draw to the idea of Fable was the Good/Evil concept. Unfortunately, this is a post KOTOR world, and so that idea's old hat. It's executed fairly well, but, well, unlike KOTOR, where after you traveled down a path, it was fairly difficult to turn it around, Fable's actions really have little consequence. It's fairly simple to go from Good to Evil, Attractive to Scary, and vice versa. That said, it's still implemented into the game very well. Almost all of the major story decisions have options, a good choice and a bad choice. You can usually gain something from both (though the evil choice's results are often more immediate and direct), but they may not be equal benefits. This is probably Fable's biggest replay feature, taking the Good path or the Evil path. You can only do one on a playthrough. The decisions are frequent enough that it's not a waste of time to do both a good playthrough and an evil playthrough. In this aspect, it trumps KOTOR.

My other personal favorite aspect of Fable is how much affect that the Hero can have on the world around him, both minor and major, and himself. You can attack anyone, anywhere(though some will fight back). You can break laws, you can get AWAY with breaking those laws, you can fight the guardsmen, you can get married, you can buy a house, You can rent a house, you can improve a house, etc. There are many little things you can do. The selection is not too small, and can keep you entertained for a while. I was a little disappointed there wasn't more to it, but well, that's the way things go. Still, you have a decent amount of customization options for your Hero, from title to sexuality to hairstyle to tattoos.

All is not well in Albion

Unfortunately, Fable just falls short in many areas. The level up system is unique, featuring four types of experience to use on the three different aspects of your character, but there's not enough to it, especially when you add in the Lost Chapters content. It's rather simple to max out your characters stats in many areas quite a ways before the end of the game. Which brings me to Fable's second biggest flaw, the ease. Enemies are slow to attack, and only pose a threat when you're at your weakest. Bosses are predictable and easy to avoid. If you get a few of the right abilities, you'll become nigh invincible and reap in the experience, furthering your invincibility. As you get better, your growth curve will FAR out do theirs. Plus, except at the VERY beginning, potions are cheap, plentiful, and heal for an enormous amount of Life (or Will). My Late game character simply put up his Physical Shield and zipped through a couple Will potions when Will ran low. Plus, even if you WERE to somehow die, there's also Resurrection Phials that you can carry that will revive you to full health. You can buy them, but the game gives you several.

The game also has a number of technical issues. The world is divided up into several regions which the hero travels through. Each region isn't very small, so you'll find yourself traversing these regions quite frequently. This wouldn't be a problem, if not for the MASSIVE loading that takes place. There's far too much loading. Loading a save game takes a long time, and even traversing regions takes a while. It's simply annoying. Also, the game has bugs here and there. Some are exploitable, while some are just things glitching in and out (such as hair color).

But Fable's biggest issue is the length. Even leaving the game on for long periods of nothing (I was doing other things) AND including the Lost Chapters content, my game ticked in at 16 hours. And I did just about EVERYTHING. That's short. If I didn't mess around and waste time, it would have been significantly less.

All Fables have a lesson….

Pros
+++ Character Customization and building
++ Easy access to all of your abilities
++ Your Hero can have a great effect on the world around you.

Cons
--- Too Short
--- Too Easy
-- Some graphical glitches…

Fable isn't a BAD game. It's a good game. I was entertained, it excited me at times, and I was decently involved with the story. But it's just a day late and a dollar short, as the saying goes. There's just not ENOUGH to Fable. This is particularly amazing when you consider that the game has been in development for about 4 years. I wonder what they DID all that time. This is particularly disappointing because you see how great it could be. The foundation is there, they just didn't build on it enough. As it is, it's kind of a disappointment.

Bottom Line – It's a borrow game. You'll be easily able to get through everything once in a single rental, maybe twice. It's worth noting that it's only $20, so it's not THAT much more expensive to buy, but there are better budget games.Also, if you've played the original Fable, don't bother. The additions are small, and mostly tacked on to the end, when your character is so strong that you'll breeze through them anyway.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 01/04/06