Fable: The Lost Chapters

"One of those games that requires you to dig just a bit deeper"

I got Fable: The Lost Chapters for Christmas of 2005. The hype had caught my attention, as did the lackluster reviews. I want a RPG for the Xbox and to be honest I thought Morrowind sucked, I prefer seeing my character in an action RPG. Now, I have completed Fable and I must say, I can see why people complained but I think you will find a fun game if you look past the many flaws.

The story is very simple. It is your birthday and as a young boy you must do some good deeds to get some money and buy your sister a present because it's her birthday. The village is attack, everyone dies but you. You are taken to the Guild where you're trained until you reach the age of 18 or something. From there you go on your way. Will you be good, or will you be evil? The choice is your but to be honest; it holds nothing to the actual story. Quests are forced and you must do them as it says. You can't kill the man that you are to protect ect. You just fail the mission and have to retry. That really limits the game but it also limits the story and to be honest, the story is decent but far from an epic RPG.

The graphics in the game are a very mixed bag. Character models look nice, a number of people look the same. Your character will age during the game, which I must admit is cool. There are problems though. At the age of 50, one who does what you do in the game would not have such a nasty wrinkly body. It's almost obscene. Scars will mark your body so no one character will always look the same. It's nice but it isn't in-depth enough. Why can't I change my hair color? That would seem to be a very easy one to do. Other wise graphics are fine in the model department. There is another problem though. I constantly ran into glitches where the entire ground vanished for short periods of time. It just all turned into a brown blob and then seconds later it popped back into the correct look. There is no reason for that to happen.

The sound in the game is alright. Voice acting is good, nothing special mind you but good enough. I found some of the voices for the NPC's to be rather weak. Music is decent. Don't really remember it but oh well. Sound effects are decent. Zaps from lighting attacks, squeals from fairies, moans during sex ect. Rather basic all around. No songs stuck out either where I just went "wow that is a nice song".

The control in the game is a tiny bit of a problem. Now, moving around is easy and is fighting. One normal attack button, a charged attack and a block. You can speak, fart and all kinds of things. The problem is that it requires sub menu after submenu to set up and then you need to switch and sometimes you won't have the right one ect. Another problem is that items can be placed on the same buttons as emotions so it can be a bit bothersome at times when you hit the wrong one. I found magic to be very easy to use and I liked the tiered thing so I could switch through different setups. My biggest problem is a major one. The game doesn't like you to switch targets. I find it overly difficult to switch off of one enemy and try to lock onto the one that is knocked out on the ground begging for a swift and easy death. It's just that targeting should be easier since it's such a simple thing to do and many other games do it well.

Fable offers a fun and interesting way of playing. I'm going to try and hit every aspect of what the game has to offer but I may miss a few. I'll start with fighting because that is the biggest thing I think...

Fable offers a 3rd person hack and slash feel. Early in the game you just need to slash away but later on enemies like to block. This requires the slash, slash, power attack combo because you need to power up that third attack by landing 2 hits and not getting hit yourself. It's very simple and the only time I had a problem was with the demon like characters that block all the time and then it threw in a time limit... You can switch between a sword and bow. Easy to switch and the bow is useful on fairies and a few other things. I did find that the game lacked a variety of enemies. Besides a sword you can attack with a stick, sledgehammer, ax ect. You get the idea and the more you level up the faster you can swing the heavier weapons. Magic is nice as well and levels up also. I found though that inflame at level 4 made the game easy as cake...

Now, let's talk about leveling up. There are 4 exp areas. General exp is the green stuff you get from defeating enemies. This is the most common and is great because it works for the three areas. Red exp is gained by attack with your sword or whatever but not your bow. The next is kind of like speed exp. It's yellow and you get it from using the bow. The next is blue exp and it's for magic and you get it for using magic. You pull off combos by fighting and that gets you more exp. it's easy enough. So, now you get different areas. Strength, Defense, HP, MP, speed, stealth, spells ect. You can level them up as much as you want. They range from 4-7 levels I think. Spells have 4 while stats have 7 or 8. I really can't remember. Raises these levels buff up your character in the respective areas of his body.

Now, the game is full of quests. Think of them as reward medals on your map. Gold are main quests. You must complete those to advance the story. Silver are current quests that you have started but are side quests and can only be started at certain times. The third is bronze. These can be started anytime and are just there for extra stuff. Think of the guild as a hub. It has the teleporter for the gates you have opened. Otherwise you need to explore the land. It's very simple but it's also easy to get lost in the game due to branching paths so you need to learn where certain places are. I found the quests kind of boring. Escort these people, save this person ect.

Now, the game has a good amount of other things to mess with as your character grows up. You can get married. This is done by flirting, giving gifts and then a ring. You'll also need a house for this. You can buy them, kind of decorate them, rent them, sale them ect. You can also get hair cuts, tattoos, and beards ect. You can steal, kill ect. The game has a meter of goodness and badness. More good deeds you do the more good you are and vise versa. It's very simple. The game keeps track of a lot of stats ect.

The problem with the game is its length. Even if this is the expanded version, it took me 10 hours to beat the story and I was married, had most of my stats maxed ect. Heck, I even had 8 or so side quests done as well. The game just doesn't have a lot to offer. It's almost like they spent too much time trying to make it more real and then realized the game needed to be out by X date and that time was against them so they just finished instead of doing the final fleshing out parts.

Fable is a fine game. It's worth a rental but I must say that I do want to finish maxing out my good character and then later down the road make an evil character and get the other ending. So it does hold a bit of replay value to it but the game does have its flaws. Cheap fighting in the later half, weak last boss, short story, no real story difference between good and bad ect. It's a rushed game but what can we do? Give it a rent at least but it is a decent enough game. A fine addition to my own collection and since its only $20 now it seems almost worth that price.

Story - 5/10
Graphics - 7/10
Sound - 7/10
Control - 7/10
Game Play - 8/10
Replay Value - 7/10

Final Score - 7/10

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 02/08/06