Customer Rating:  
Summary: Good game, details need refining
Comment: This was my first fantasy/role-playing game, and I bought it after watching a friend play the new version for xbox 360.
In general, I was very impressed...gameplay is really smooth and intuitive, and the missions are well-designed. There are truly an amazing number of way in which your character can interact with the world: trading for profit, becoming a thief, marrying various women, becoming a landlord, etc.
I have several minor complaints. 1) There are too few official side-missions. It's tough to gain the experience and money necessary to buy the upgrades you want. 2) Total game time is fairly short, even if you do all the side missions and spend some time in the world. We're talking about 10-15 days of game time, which amounted to maybe 15-20 hours(?) of playing time. And once you finish the game, you can't return to the world for more interactions. 3) It's tough to rack up time in the game, which can be necessary for collecting rent from your property, letting grudges with the townspeople heal, etc.
All said, I really like this game, and would not hesitate to buy it again. It has excellent re-play value. I'm playing it through the second time now, making sure to take my time playing the missions, to make sure that I get all I can out of the amazing world they have designed.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Maybe Fable II is the Fable I was promised.....
Comment: Since its not fair to give a review on hype and promises alone, I'm going to give you the review first and then list the promises that were made which is why I gave fable such a low rating.
Sound: The game has wonderful sound to it with the npc voices and even the fighting music and traveling a music. Its not the greatest but it did deliver when and where it was needed.
Graphics: I am not one to base rpg's on graphics, I can do well with sprites and old school NES and SNES graphics. To me graphics are not what make an rpg an rpg, its all about the story and character development. Graphics are eyecandy when making an rpg. With that said, this game delivers in all areas, your character is wonderfully done (I don't know technical terms with graphics so bare with me), the towns and npc's are amazing and beautiful, the magic and weapon designs are amazing and an treat for the eye. Unfortunately, with the trees and grass and the world looking amazing, you can't run off the beaten path and enjoy it.
Story: I don't give spoilers away and I won't here. I'm sorry to say that the story is lacking in all departments and when it finally starts picking up its the end of the game. I will give them this though, the storyline to the sister in the game-absolutely wonderful, too bad it wasn't the main characters story. Also, the game can be finished and all side-quests done in under 10 hours, I know this because I beat it the day I got it.
Combat System: Two words- Absolutely Amazing, I have played tons of rpg's and by far this one I enjoyed the most. Its actually what kept me playing the game and beating it. I don't think I would've finished the game if the combat sucked. I haven't played the game since its actual release years ago and it just got put up on the shelf and forgotten about.
You do get to have different hairstyles, tatoos, gotees and mustaches as well as physical scars but it gets old after awhile and you start not to care.
With all that being said, it doesn't sound like a bad game and how is it that I give it a bad review. Well I'll explain.....
I'll start off with promises that Peter Molyneux promised for the game and the absolute linear game that I am still mad about.....
Promised:
1. A full world to roam around and explore
2. Aging process
3. Killing kids and kids dressing up like you when you enter towns if you are good.
4. Being able to turn a town into a ghost town
5. Being able to be good during the day and evil during the night
6. Kill a band of thieves for a town and return to the town and they hate you because a more evil band threatens them
7. Plant an acorn and return to see it become a tree
8. Having a wife and kids and the kid will either love you or hate you-if the kid hates you, the kid will try and kill you
9. Body developments depending on wether you use magic or weapons
What did you actually get:
1. A very linear game that doesn't let you go off the beaten path, no exploration required. A side note: My favorite video game magazine ever, Play, reviewed this game and said "It's the most non-linear game I've ever played". I don't think I got the same copy that reviewer got and I still love my Play magazine and that has been one of the few reviews I've disagreed with them on.
2. Okay, my character ages, but what about everyone else-after it said two weeks in the game my character was 80 something which made me older than my mom in the game before.....
3. Killing kids- I guess thats bad in a video game...so you can't. The only town that has kids is protected to where you can't draw your weapon and do anything. Also, I think only one or two kids actually "try" to dress like you but most people didn't notice. I did.
4. Yes, you can wipe out a town full of all the people, however, you'll fight guards for hours until you leave the town and if you return the guards are waiting for you and "guarding" a town with noone in it.
5. Without being able to explore the world you can not be good during the day and bad during the night. There was supposed to be sheep or whatever like that and at night you could go wipe out the flock and if you did enough damage it would force some of the townspeople to leave and turn the town into a ghost town
6. There is only one band of thieves and they are on the "linear" path and when you kill them, no other band moves in to take the place.
7. You can't plant anything
8. You can have a wife and no kids. Also, you can only be with one woman in one town so if you want to have another woman you need to go to a different town. I know it is stupid to try to have 2 wives in the same village but why not try?
9. Try and fight without using a sword and only using magic, its nearly impossible so you end up using a sword and your body starts gettin huge and you end up not using magic that much.
So the game I was looking forward to and the game I actually got were two seperate games. I first heard about Fable, back when it was called Project Ego, almost a year before the realease of the xbox which released 3 years later after the xbox came out.
Thats why this game only gets a very dissapointing 2 out of 5. If you've never heard of the game before, you will very much enjoy it, however, if you're like me you will definately want to skip this one...
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Really Enjoyable, Fun Game.
Comment: This was the first game I played with the Xbox and I really think it lived up to its expectations. I loved being able to play it more than once, making my character either into an evil person or a good person depending on the deeds I did during the course of the game. There are plenty of little side games to play along the way. The graphics were good and the game play was good as well. It is even a fun game to 'watch' someone else play. This game was obviously had developers with a sense of humor and that was helpful in the entertainment factor as well. It is not a 'long' game, but like I mentioned before, you can do all sorts of things with it that take more or less time depending on what you decide to do. Great fun all around.
Customer Rating:
Summary: An awesome game that should not be overlooked despite its flaws.
Comment: Fable is one of those games people love to hate. It was hyped up big time, and it didn't really deliver on all of those promises, so people give it a hard time. If you take the time to actually play Fable, you'll realize its still a very open ended RPG, and one of the best at that.
Visually, the game is one of the best of the PS2/GCN/Xbox generation. In terms of graphics alone its one of the best looking game on the original Xbox. It has high amounts of shine and a surprisingly high amount of textures. Everything is pretty well detailed. While the world isn't as open ended as I had hoped it would be, it still has the long draw distance that you would want it to have had it been more open ended. In other words, its a very impressive game for its time. In terms of artistic design, it fairly unique. Its kind of how you'd want a fairy tale based game to look. I like ti a lot, and it brings you into the game's style very well.
The soundtrack is surprisingly good. Its very light hearted for most of the game, but it gets pretty epic and loud during boss fights. It also switches into a sort of dangerous sounding theme when you're near enemies. Its not the best music I've heard in a game, but it works pretty well and reacts to what's going on in the game world.
Game-play is always the core of the game, if the game-play is broken, the rest of the game might as well be nonexistent. Lucky for us, this game rocks. I know its not as open ended as promised, and there's a couple other minor broken promises, but overall its very cool and fun to play. The thing that stands out most to me is that depending on the way you play, your character becomes good or evil. The more evil you play, the more evil you look, you start to grow horns, become very pale, and you develop a sort of red glow. Likewise, if you play like a saint, you look like one. People also react to you differently depending on how evil or good you look. The ending of the game is also different depending on if you're good or evil. The combat is fun, simple and responsive. Being able to just fly between melee and spells mid-fight is awesome. I consider the combat to be mostly balanced, except that the ranged weapons are kind of useless. The story is fairly predictable, but its not a bad one either. Character customization goes beyond good and evil, you can choose tattoos, hair styles, beards, clothes, weapons, and more. There's a lot of different weapons that you can augment, including secret ones you usually have to do separate quests for. Which brings me to the side quests, there are lots of side quests, and it makes the game last much longer if you do them. There's some awesome game-play to be found here.
Just an overall awesome game if you have an Xbox, Xbox 360, or PC and you give it the chance it deserves. Peter Moleneux may be a little overly ambitious, but the game still turned out great.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Short and Sweet
Comment: Fable
Fable was supposed to be the game in which everything you did affected your story and character. Was it? No, not by any means. It is however, an extremely fun game that anyone can pick up and play. It is an RPG, but the game is very simplistic. Any learning curve that exists is explained during the opening hour of the game.
Graphics- 8/10
Fable has a different type of graphical style to it. It's not supposed to look realistic or cartoony. The lighting is there, but I would not consider it the best. Everything is easily distinguished from one another. Environments are all very well done and nothing feels repetitive.
Story- 9.5/10
This is the best aspect of the game. Despite the game being short, it packs in an incredible story. You start as a young boy who is just trying to do deeds to get his sister a birthday present. Soon, bloodthirsty bandits attack your town of Oakvale. They are looking for you and your family. You have no idea why. They kill all of your family, or at least it seems that way at the time. Luckily, you are saved by a man named Maze and taken to the Hero's Guild. From there you begin training to be a Hero, who can be good or evil. You will grow up and take on new challenges as you go along. You can take multiple ways to get through the game. Sadly, despite whatever way you take, you will end up in the same place at the end of the game.
Sound- 7/10
There isn't much bad you can say about the sound. Everything sounds good. The music is always good, but it can get tedious after a while due to them playing a lot of the same music over and over again. The music will always fit what is going on though. The sounds effects of everything are average to good. The weapon sounds are a little below average. Your foes sounds are pretty good.
Gameplay- 8.5/10
This game really shines in this area of judging. Fable is very fun to play. You will play it many times just to have an evil or good character. I found it to be much more interesting to be evil myself, but you may feel differently. That is one of the great things about this game. You have melee combat, archery, and magic at your disposal. Sadly, there isn't much variety in weapons. They are usually just stronger than your last weapon. Magic on the other hand is very fun to use. There is a fairly large variety of magic spells you can use. Some spells are for hurting your opponents, but some are for helping you. It all depends. Also, body armor/clothing is lacking in this game. There is usually just a dark suit, normal suit, and light suit at each level of clothing. Your appearance plays a role as to how people treat you, but not a big enough role for it to matter how you dress.
Difficulty- 5/10 (Note- This is how much I like the difficulty)
The game is short and easy. The only thing you could have problems with is the final boss and the arena challenge. Everything else is as easy as block/attack/block. The game can be completed in a few hours. The only side quests are Demon Doors, which you have to do a task to open, and they aren't that great anyway.
Overall- 7/10
This isn't the best game in the world, but it is a solid game. It's easy to pick up if you aren't a committed game player. Many hardcore gamers will be let down by the game's simplistic design and lack of options that mean anything. Still, the good story and ability to be good or evil makes this game good and I suggest it to anyone. Just don't expect a Final Fantasy XII type game.
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