Fable III (Xbox 360)

(Apologies if i've included any spoilers.)
Now completed the game (well, killed the bad guy and now running my land) so thought it would be worth giving my tuppence worth.
Overall this was a fun game to play. The humour is a nice touch, and some of the locations are nicely rendered. However, and maybe as a result of all that 'niceness', as the game went on i did begin to notice that the framerate would drop as if i was entering some kind of slow-motion. The introduction of the system for changing equipment/clothes etc is a chore. This was supposed to improve the supposedly tedious previous menu system but unfortunately the new and improved system means it takes longer to make any changes. The emotion wheel has been dispensed with and replaced by fixed options which occasionally change but don't really improve things (what ever you do only affects the one person you have chosen to interact with, and not the crowd that is watching). Moving from location to location has a disjointed feel to it, making the land feel like its a series of almost random areas with no symmetry. And as for the TV ads, (and maybe due to the way i played it out) this was hardly a 'revolution', there was no sense of it being a climatic conflict with your brother with opposing armies (just a few troops here and there in some of the latter missions).
Overall this is either 'Fable: The Sims Years' or an RPG-Lite. Probably aimed directly at the casual gamer. If you felt Fable 2 was a disappointment after the original Fable, then you may not be impressed with this.
The things which made the first Fable so memorable are being eroded. Shame, as a lot of people loved that game.

I've actually never felt compelled to write a review before, but was so gutted by the gaming experience provided by Fable 3 I felt I should sort of warn other Fable 2 fans. It just seems like a load of unnecessary changes have been made that made the experience worse, some necessary changes haven't been made, and the whole thing takes a fraction of the time Fable 2 did (which, in a funny way, turns out to be a blessing).

The small stuff first - NPC interactions have been broken. The expression wheel has gone and you can no longer choose your action. The fact that it seems to default to 'dance' means that to make friends with anyone (male or female) you have to perform a Patrick Swayze lift on them. Not very kingly. Also, you now have to enter an 'interact' screen with your dog - why?

Combat, always a bit of a weak point, is now worse. Magic powers are too powerful and your melee attacks are virtually useless.

SPOILER ALERT: Once you become King the choices you are able to make are stupid, simplistic and mean that you can either have a beautiful but poor kingdom with everyone dead, or a ruined but rich kingdom with everyone still alive. Once you know this you can of course spend ages in the early stages amassing a personal fortune and donating it to your kingdom, but to me this seems like a workaround for a broken system than a valid gameplay tactic. Also, the second 'half' of the game when you're King only lasts an hour or so, then the final battle sneaks up on you and gives you no opportunity to sort out your finances. END SPOILERS.

I spent weeks and months of my life playing and replaying Fable 2, but after 3 days I doubt I'll ever have Fable 3 in my console again. I never even bothered to get married, have/adopt kids etc as I couldn't see any point. I never felt connected to the game, characters, my dog, Albion... and why have an RPG sequel that's so much shorter than its predecessor? What a shame.

Having been a huge fan of both Fable I and Fable II and having played both games multiple times, I must admit to being hugely disappointed with Fable III. The only good thing I have to say is that the graphics were very good, albeit spoiled by multiple bugs. It seems that all that was good and enjoyable about the first two games has either been omitted or altered for the worse. It feels as if a lot of the control the player had in the earlier games has been taken out of this game. I found the game raced to an early conclusion, was far too short, lacked side quest/games and has none of the replayability that I found so appealing in the earlier offerings. All in all I would say don't waste your money, if you want to play it then hire it as you can play it in a couple of days.