Is the Fable series worth playing?

[Rivmusique]

Play The Lost Chapters. Decent 'open world' brawler, though it is easy to destroy everything. Combo chaining can be fun, archery minigame is fun, some of the demon door challenges are decent and there is a brothel in the middle of the dark forest. I liked the soundtrack too, and some of the art. Boasting before missions for no armor/no damage taken for extra gold/xp/reputation(?) makes things interesting, made roll spam cool way before Witcher 2.

 

[Onholyservicebound]

Never played Fable 2 but some seem to think that, as far as gameplay goes, it's the best of the bunch.

I would agree with that, although I don't find the story very good it has some decent characters, better weapon and spell selection than 3, not as clunky as 1, npc minigame is best in this game, as is the landlord.

LC is still probably better, if only because

Spoiler

you get to murder all the heroes and get your combat multiplier even higher.

 

[Metro]

Not really. First one was... okay... but it gets repetitive fast, the story is generic, and it's not particularly challenging. If you like God of War type hack-n-slashes then have at it.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

The first Fable is a fairly decent lighthearted action-RPG. It has some charm and interesting world simulation elements few other games do. On the other hand its combat and enemy diversity are kinda poor, it has really clunky menus/inventory/etc., and its world is very limited and linear, with little to no real exploration other than a few side paths. I enjoyed it at the time but I don't know if it's aged so well.

Fable 3 is better in some ways, mostly in offering a more wide-open world with more fun exploration. I also enjoyed several of the side-quests and the game still has much of the Fable charm intact. But, the game mechanics have been dramatically simplified to the point where calling it an RPG is extremely questionable, there's basically no challenge at all, and it has one of the most infuriating menus ever. Heck, it's even a pretty lengthy game compared to the first one, probably 30-40 hours to do everything.

Never played Fable 2 but some seem to think that, as far as gameplay goes, it's the best of the bunch. Overall though I have no strong love for the series, it's not bad at what it does, but what it does may not appeal to you if you want something deeper or more serious.

Fable 2 is predictably a middleground between the two. Not much challenge (though I focused on Skill which meant most moles were popped by my rifle before they got close), a world that is not quite open but has some pretty wide areas, lite RPG elements, takes a good time to finish.

I played as an incredibly tall and buff butch lesbian with flaming red long hair, juggalo make up and B&W striped pirate/gypsy clothes. Rifle / Blunderbuss in one hand, gigantic maul on the other. I seduced a jewelry merchant girl by gifting her flowers and chocolate, and obviously farting repeatedly in her face. She married me and proceeded to spend her days bitching about our furniture being too cheap despite the fact I owned half the businesses in town, including the furniture stores. One of our kids was a black boy, the other was a blonde girl who apparently avoided me most of the time, possibly because I was the worst mother ever but who knows for sure. You'd think they were adopted, but after our violent S&M sex sessions (judging by the text and sound effects, the screen unfortunately blacks out during the act) the room would be filled with curious townsfolk attracted by the noise, so much that sometimes I had trouble getting out of bed because of the crowd, so maybe the wife was getting some on the side while I was out adventuring. Kinky bitch gets off on sniffing my farts, after all. Must have been the village bicycle. (edit: remembered I was a vegetarian because I wanted to be muscular and not fat, so maybe my farts had a pleasant herbal scent. The curious villagers still probably all got a turn once I was out of the house, though)

11/10 GOTY all years would play again

 

[Bubbles]

They're all really bad. If you want something like that without wasting any more money, just get some Skyrim mods.

 

[Sunsetspawn]

Fable 2 is complete, utter, monumental dogshit to a degree so heinous that I couldn't be assed to try the third, but I have it on good authority that the third is even worse.

Fable 1 (The Lost Chapters) is a cute little dopey action RPG with a Danny Elfmanesque sountrack (Elfman wrote the main theme and the rest of the music is based on that main theme and written to sound like Elfman) and an art style reminiscent of Trina Schart Hyman's work. The dark, fairy tale atmosphere is engrossing but you could be easily turned off by the shallow gameplay. Since I'm an atmospherefag this game say well with me.

 

[Ninjerk]

Fable 1 (The Lost Chapters) is a cute little dopey action RPG with a Danny Elfmanesque sountrack (Elfman wrote the main theme and the rest of the music is based on that main theme and written to sound like Elfman) and an art style reminiscent of Trina Schart Hyman's work. The dark, fairy tale atmosphere is engrossing but you could be easily turned off by the shallow gameplay. Since I'm an atmospherefag this game say well with me.

This is a pretty good appraisal of Fable 1. Also worth noting that this was the game Peter Molyneux claimed was going to be the greatest video game ever made while it was still in development. It's a good exercise in why he's full of shit.

 

[Astral Rag]

So Fable Anniversary appeared on Steam:

http://steamcommunity.com/app/288470/reviews/?browsefilter=toprated

only 32€ + 2 day 1 DLC




Those FXAA infested blurry visuals:

 

[Eddard Stark]

Anniversary my ass. It's not even a real visual upgrade to the original. New textures are a bit better but it's not HD quality in a PC kind of sense. What's worse is that it fucks up the visuals with retarded post-processing effects (see the blurry image above, also plenty of bloom) and at the same time completely changes the tone. Whereas the original had vibrant albeit a bit oversaturated colours which suited the game well enough, this "remastering" makes everything look bland and dull. And if that wasn't enough, they completely screwed up the PC-version. I mean how retarded you ought to be not to include mouse support in the menu and inventory? To navigate the inventory you need to use Insert, Home, Delete, End buttons and the menu requires pressing A and B. I shit you not.

And the icing on the cake: a Liontardhead dev commenting on the lack of mouse support in the menus said the following on the Steam forums:

We would have loved to add mouse support to the menu but we reached a point in the project where it was either going to be modding support or adding features such as mouse support in the menus. We chose modding.​

P.S. Btw "modding" allows you to play with the art assets but you can't change or add anything gameplay-related or any real content

 

[Jools]

Fable 1 is sorta worth playing, yes. If you can borrow or get your hands on an old release of TLC, it's got asome ok moments. It's a very easy game, a simplistic RPG (or action game with a few stats), an alright plot and a few interesting features.

Fable 2 and 3 just don't make sense, the focus is majorly shifted on the "have wife, buy house, manage properties" aspect of the game, the plot is a mishmash of attempted SHOCKING!!!! plot twists, the visual design is full-out-pansy.

Also they smoothed out the (not so few) rough edges that F1TLC had, but that didn't really make it any worse than its other flaws did.

 

[Nyast]

Fable 1 is barely okay, might be worth your time if you can get it for cheap and have nothing else to play. Story is okay-ish, not too original but we've seen worse. World design is relatively linear, but some places have an interesting "enchanted" mood. Combat is easily the worst part, it's one of those games where you basically cannot die no matter what you do, it's a joke. If you don't consider it a full-fledged RPG, but more like an adventure/RPG hybrid, you might like it. You can play it cooperatively, which is definitely a plus given how few RPGs can be played cooperatively nowadays, even though its implementation does kind of suck.

Fable 2 and 3 are significantly worse.

 

[TheGreatOne]

EDIT: Seriously, one of the major innovations of the fable series is that it enabled you to communicate with people by farting. That's all you need to know about late Molyneux games.

Though at this point, Molenalkdsrfsl;dajsdneux probably considers stealing ideas from better developers as innovation. Wasn't the big selling point of the Fable series that you could play - *gasp* - a bad guy?

 

[Deleted member 7219]

The Fable games are awful.

If you want an action RPG there are far better choices out there from the likes of Bioware and Bethesda. I'd even rate Oblivion above the Fable games.

 

[Astral Rag]

Who needs exotic features like mouse control when menus are this intuitive.

We would have loved to add mouse support to the menu but we reached a point in the project where it was either going to be modding support or adding features such as mouse support in the menus. We chose modding.

The "Modding DLC" is very limited, it allows users to change textures and animations and that's about it. Modders probably won't be able to mod in proper mouse support.

 

[Xi]

 

[Bleed the Man]

I've only played the second Fable, so I can't talk about the others.

The first five hours of the game where fairly entertaining. Nothing fancy, but fun enough. After those five hours, the game has showed everything it has to offer, the rest of the game is based entirely on the repetition of the concepts shown thus far without expanding them. It shows mechanics that can be fun and engaging, and then the game does nothing to develop this mechanics in any way through the entire game. It's like a shooter made entirely by the first mission.

So based on my experience with the second one, I wouldn't recommend it. It's just plain boring.

 

[kris]

Fable 1 is not an open world game.

 

[taxalot]

The Fable series are decent games if you like no-brain stuff. I enjoyed going through the trilogy, but I'm known to enjoy Popamole once in a while. I would not recommend it for KKK points, but I'm fairly sure a fair number of us secretly played and enjoyed it.

Like Mass Effect.

 

[pippin]

I've only played the first one.
It's interesting that they wanted to make elements like your haircut, clothes and other aesthetical suff to be "reactive", as bad boy looks will make people think you're bad. Farts and flirts also make the world seem to be a little bit more alive than the usual "hullo, i am a boring peasant who does peasant-like things" from other rpgs. Other than that, it's your run of the mill action rpg with boring quests in boring medieval fantasy britain. They even named the world "Albion" ffs. I do believe Molyneux's marketing hijinks influenced how people generally perceive the whole series, though.

 

[Zombra]

I only played Fable 2. The gameplay was fun enough to keep me playing to the end, but damn it wasn't without its flaws. I think it was short. By the time I got to the end I was glad it was over. I enjoyed the fact that I could visibly become a fat, meat-eating asshole. Amassing half a dozen wives was fun too. I don't remember it that well. Wouldn't recommend unless you're desperate.

 

[CyberP]

As title say.

Not expecting much, is it worth if looking for a relaxing, no brainer open-world rpg?

Plant an acorn, watch it grow into a tree, some pretty innovative gameplay... your in for a treat OP.

This. I don't recommend it.

I wouldn't mind planting trees if it was a little feature in a good game mind you. I don't consider Fable to be good.

 

[MicoSelva]

What this thread manages to do is separate PCers ('I only played Fable 1') and XBOX360ers ('I only played Fable 2'), not counting the few people who played all games in the series (and liked them).

I only played Fable 1 (TLC), it was ok overall, although I had to force myself to finish it, because it got boring in the second half.

Anyway, Here is RPG Codex Fable review, which should be a rich enough source of information to satisfy everyone still seeking information about the game.

 

[polo]

I really liked the first one even tho it was a buggy mess. Replayed it some years later and it was 'meh' mixed with "omfg how can they ship this shit full of bugs?"

 

[CyberP]

The Fable games are awful.

If you want an action RPG there are far better choices out there from the likes of Bioware and Bethesda. I'd even rate Oblivion above the Fable games.

Oh for fucj's sake. You shit on Fable and then recmmend a Bioware ARPG? Play more games bro.

 

[Genma:TheDestroyer]

And the icing on the cake: a Liontardhead dev commenting on the lack of mouse support in the menus said the following on the Steam forums:

We would have loved to add mouse support to the menu but we reached a point in the project where it was either going to be modding support or adding features such as mouse support in the menus. We chose modding.​

P.S. Btw "modding" allows you to play with the art assets but you can't change or add anything gameplay-related or any real content

"Adding mod support" my ass. That was what people were able to do when the Lost Chapters first came out, I remember pictures of players having messed with their character to sorta look like Darth Maul. There was a big fuss at the time because they realized everything else was hardcoded. All Lionhead did was probably flip a switch so someone wouldn't have to dig through the game's files with this release.

They got lazy and released a half-assed game.