Fable III

For all the game has got going for it, which is still a lot, Fable III is unable to transcend the sum of its parts and we're left to lament what could have been.

In terms of quest interaction, there's simply not a great deal going on. Fable III largely gets away with it through sheer charm, and the infectious sense of fun in its detail. [Christmas 2010, p.80]

The gameplay throughout has taken a back seat to the titles aspirations, and since a good deal of those aspirations do not quite pan out an outright purchase cannot be recommended. Fans of the previous titles will want to give it a Saturday's rental, however, if for no other reason than try to bed-down a peasant girl and possibly contract something nasty (no joke).

All of the areas where the game truly excels are exactly what we expect from the series - and from Lionhead as a studio - while its great leaps forward mostly fall flat and upset the balance of the whole. [Christmas 2010, p.90]

The Fable franchise has always been ambitious, promising big things and often failing to deliver. Unfortunately, Fable III suffers from the same plight, serving up a mediocre experience that's difficult to get excited over.

If the Albion lives its revolution in Fable III, that's certainly not the case for the Fable saga, which gets here an episode pleasant to go, but too close from its predecessor, at least in terms of its first and biggest part.

The main goal in this action RPG is to gather companions and then manage a kingdom. Lionhead has obviously wanted to simplify everything from Fable II, but the result is unnecessarily cumbersome and a lot of depth has been phased out in favor of ideas that does not feel particularly interesting. There is still a vibrant and atmospheric game world, and I had fun during the play through, but this could have been so much better with the right focus.

All the heroics of harder games without any of the fuss, and set in a place you've made your own.

Flaws in design and execution are even more obvious with this new game and, as usual, Lionhead fails to live up to the expectations.

The game plays like it should, and takes players across a variety of well-designed levels smattered with interesting characters and cheeky British humor. But a triumph for Albion it is not.

An aggravatingly poor sequel that insists on changing things that didn't need changing and refusing to fix those that did.

Too bad money is so ridiculously easy to accrue that Fable III's silly shift into a morality tale about the burden of the crown falls flat.

It's just the rough trimming around the edges, the ways that those grand elements could have been better realized and better conveyed to the player, that make this as frustrating a game as it is lovable.

Very disappointing. Lacking the sense of adventure of the previous games and making the most simple of elements more awkward and overdrawn, Fable III feels like a step back for the franchise. It's a shame because its narrative goals are truly outstanding and there's still a lot of simplistic roleplaying fun to be had. These positives are outweighed, however, by a downsized sense of scale, cumbersome attempts at innovation, and a total neglect when it comes to fixing some important problems.