Not an official second review, but Shockwave was kind enough to post up his own review on the boards.
Cant wait til the 15th!
Cant wait til the 15th!
Since Horus gave his very detailed review, I'm not going to post one going over the same information, but I will go through and give the game my score after having completed the game.
Here goes:
Gameplay 9.5
From start to finish, Fable is a game that anyone can pick up and get very deep within without any problem. The real-time combat is superb, and the designers did a fantastic job of organizing the many sub menus that will give players full control over their heros items and actions throughout the game. Fable is a great leap forward in RPG design, being that bulky and cumbersome menus are no longer detrimental to the gameplay, making the game feel a lot more like an action title without losing any of its RPG elements. The idea of choosing between playing as a good or evil character was hyped up to have much more of an impact on the story and the gameplay than it actually does. Most of the decisions between the good and evil path will have to do with how the people around you react to your presence. The underlying story remains the same regardless of what you decide to do. The end of the game does have alternate endings depending on your path, but the road getting there is still basically the same. The story itself is detailed and interesting enough to keep players pushing forward, wanting to uncover the secrets to the mysteries of Fable, but its nothing groundbreaking. Fable is however, a tad on the easy side, and a lot of the boss type characters and battles are easy to figure out once you get an idea of their pattern of attack. Difficulty levels would have been nice.
Graphics 9.8
The thing about Fable is that the more you play, the more spectacular the weaponary effects, magic effects and surroundings become. The lighting effects of the game are amazing, and this is most well noticed at night when the hero is using his lantern. Fable is easily the best looking RPG there has been on a console system to date. There are a great number of environments that include a full range of weather effects that do a great job of varying up surroundings. Each of the character types in the game are quite interesting, and the various towns look unique and detailed. Fable exceeds as a great recreation of a living, breathing world to explore. Every so often, the framrate does drop when there are a larger number of characters on screen.
Audio 9.4
Theatrical and epic, the soundtrack of Fable is a great complement to its gameplay and style. Heroic ballads and dark melodies strike at the right moments to set the tone of the action as the story of the hero unfolds. Each character has a defined voice that fits their persona and the quality of the voice acting is very high with very little to criticize. The random chatter of townspeople and other NPCs that the hero will encounter is great, and helps keep the feel of a living world in tact.
Longevity 9.2
This is going to be a hard one to grade, mainly because it will differ from player to player depending on their style and the amount of time they devote to non-story related actions. I beat the games boss, essentially beating the game having completed 30 quests; 20 core quests and 10 optional side quests. There were probably just as many more side quests that could have been completed, and some depended on how good or evil the hero had decided to be. In other words, if a player wanted to be evil, there were a few evil specific quests that could be taken. On the other hand, players wanting to stick to the good path would have avoiding completing any evil tasks. I didnt spend too much time becoming involved with trade or real estate, so players that spent more time working themselves in with the trade system could easily spent much more playing overall. Players will have the option of taking over stores and running them, controlling trade routes as well as owning homes that can be rented out indefinitely. The way I played, I completed the game in 16 hours and 21 minutes. I would say the average gameplay time would be somewhere between 15-25 hours depending on how much each player wants to invest in core and non-story related actions. While Fable is an amazing RPG, and theres no doubt about it, I do think its fair to say we all expected much more in the way of gameplay time, and by that I mean the core quests. Sure players can spent countless hours trading and collecting rent and marrying any number of wives, but when you get right down to it, there should have been many more core missions that surrounded a much deeper storyline.
Next-Gen 9.6
I will say that Fable is a must have if you own an Xbox, regardless of what type of games you enjoy most. Fable is the Xboxs Zelda, and yes it is just as good. I quickly became addicted to the game, mainly because of its brilliance in design, play and style. It is however apparent that one reason the game took so long to develop is that a lot of the initial ideas and grand scale complexities of the heros interactions may have hit a few technical roadblocks, causing the game to have been scaled down a bit. Fable will easily set a new standard from which future RPGs will base their designs upon, but it looks like we will have to wait until a possible Fable 2 to get our hands on what all the hype surrounding the 4 years of Fables development lead us to expect. That said, Fable is still quite easily one of the best Xbox games to have been released, and one of the games that will continue to define the evolution of the console.
Overall 9.5
What is neat, is that even after you defeat the final boss, you can still play the game. So you could go back and set up trade routes, take part in buying and renting more homes and such to continue playing the game as your hero grows older. This is a nice touch that doesn't make the game so "final" once you reach the end of the core story. However, the core of the game is a bit too short based on what we had all hoped and expected after its long development.
My best advice would be, read the full reviews, pay more attention to the actual text of the articles rather than the final scores. Scores are just a number and different people would place a different score on the same elements of a game. Read the content and come up with a score for yourself.
But bottom line, regardless of what anyone says the score of the game is, get it. It's more than worth it, and one of the best games I have played on the Xbox, or any other system in my lifetime.
