Fable

Combat

When you aren’t flirting with girls or drinking beers until you puke, you are usually exploring the world of Albion and fighting enemies. You have basically three different attacks to use- melee, bow and arrow, and magic. Melee attacks are as simple as pulling out a weapon – axes, swords, maces, hammers – and hitting the X button. Using your bow is just as easy and all you have to do is pull out your bow and hold the X button to pull the arrow back and get ready to fire. Magic, or will as it is called in the game, is used by holding the right trigger and then pressing a button that you have assigned to a certain spell. The combat in the game is basic, but it works. It feels a lot like the Legend of Zelda series from Nintendo, and that is always a good thing. You just pound through enemy after enemy until you each the end of an area. Nothing special, but it gets the job done and is actually really fun.

Leveling Up

The way your character levels up is partially controlled by how fight. You build up experience points that you can spend however you want, but the points are split into four areas. General points can be used on anything, but Skill, Will, and Strength points can only be used on their own individual stats. You earn these special points when you use melee, bow, or will attacks. This way, you can build up one area of your character to make a super strong fighter or mage, or you can choose to just have a well rounded character. The choice is completely up to you.

Graphics and Sound

Graphically, Fable is gorgeous looking and the presentation is top notch. Characters are well animated and very detailed. The environments you explore also look really great and are filled with soft ambient lighting that is just great to look at and adds a dreamlike feel to the game. Special effects for spells are nice looking as well. The sound is just as good as the graphics and completes a wonderful visual and aural package. The music in particular is simply outstanding and the orchestral score fits the action perfectly. The voice actors are all British, and some character have very thick and therefore hilarious accents, but the voice work sounds clear and is very good overall.

Bottom Line

I do have one complaint about the game. Nothing too serious, but the experience could have been better. The problem is that the game has to load every time you enter a new area. The load times are short, but this still completely kills the flow of the game. Because of all of the loading, the game world feels rather small and cramped. This totally ruins the epic feel of the game.

Overall, Fable is a well put together action RPG that introduces enough new and interesting ideas that the more straightforward combat can be forgiven. Interacting with the townspeople is flat out fun and getting different reactions depending on your good/evil alignment and other things is great. The fact that your character can look totally different from your friends’ is also a really cool idea that was well implemented. Like all of the truly great ones, Fable is a memorable game with a lot of fantastic moments that will stick with you long after you have finished the game. You can play through the game once during a weekend rental, but there is so much to see and do and so many different ways of doing it that you’ll want to play it over and over again. I highly recommend Fable for a purchase.