Fable III / YMMV - TV Tropes

Complacent Gaming Syndrome: A common criticism of the gameplay is that magic is just plain better than every other option, doing ridiculous amounts of damage, often in an area of effect, while requiring little timing or strategy beyond hammering the button.
Complete Monster: The monstrous Crawler is an agent of the Corrupter that seeks to destroy both Aurora and Albion. First seen using its powers to mentally force the Hero of Brightwall's mentor Walter into submission, the Crawler forces him to relive his most painful memories, slowly driving him mad before attempting the same on the Hero. Revealed to have led an attack on Aurora, the Crawler is responsible for a massacre within the nation and intends to do the same to Albion. Launching its assault, the Crawler possesses Walter and forces him to fight the Hero while its minions attack the country, potentially killing millions.
Demonic Spiders: Goddamned BALVERINES. They ambush you in packs, are insanely fast, have very deadly chain attacks, and once you've reached a certain point in the main story, they start showing up everywhere.
Disappointing Last Level: The build-up to the Crawler invasion takes an enormous amount of time and money if you want to do it the good way, but the invasion level itself is extremely short and culminates with an easy boss fight.
Ensemble Dark Horse: She only appeared in one trailer and the opening, but the Rebellious Chicken captured the hearts of all who knew her. Rest in peace, noble chicken - you shall be avenged.
Game-Breaker:
- Vortex + Fireball/Shock. Even the Wheel of Misfortune challenge becomes an absolute joke, as most enemies can't even touch you and die instantly upon being bashed into nearby obstacles or each other, allowing you to jack up the multiplier incredibly quickly and keep it going almost indefinitely. Especially hilarious if you max out the score on your first try, as after the final round, Reaver will still occasionally make a condescending comment about the max score only being able to be reached once someone with no life comes along^note.
- One of the game's main conflicts is deciding whether or not to be a Well-Intentioned Extremist. Either be The Good King, and let the apocalypse occur, or be an Evil Overlord who's kingdom survives. Take a ton of time to become a filthy rich real estate tycoon, and, as it is with the rest of the series at this point, you obtain more cash than you could ever spend. Thus, cancelling the apocalypse even if you don't make the eviler choices.
Gameplay Derailment: An infamous case with the money system later in the game. Being the ruler of Albion is supposed to be about balancing your choices between stabilizing/bettering the land at the cost of money that makes it harder to defend the land later, or focusing on gathering wealth to fund an army at the cost of making morally dubious choices that make things worse. However, this is all undermined by how easy it is to get money, since it is really easy to own so much property that you can have a huge income that counters the loss gained from making choices. In other words, instead of weighing what is right and needed for the people and to stop a greater threat, you can freely pick the morally good options without issue because you have so much income flowing in.
Goddamned Bats: Some enemies are not particularly strong, but they can deal a lot of damage before dying.
- Grenadiers are not stronger than other bandits, but they can do a lot of damage with their explosives, especially if they are accompanied by a leader Mercenary, and the player must focus on this.
- Robot Dogs, they can be killed with a couple of bullets, especially the hero has a good weapon, but when they die they explode, and they tend to be a greater threat when they accompany other robots.
- Hollow Men are not particularly strong, and in a direct fight an average Hollow is usually weaker than a mercenary, but unlike mercenaries who usually come in small groups, Hollow Men usually come in very large groups that can overwhelm the player if they manage to surround him. , and it is even worse if there are warrior hollowmen who can use shock, or the leaders who summon more hollows.
Good Bad Bugs: When the Hero has sex, it doesn't stop other NPCs from playing their standard interaction dialogue if they wander in the room. Having your child demand a toy or your wife coo "Oooooh, nice doggie!" during sex is absolutely hilarious. Although, your son screeching "I want to come, too!" shortly after your wife's first moan during the blackout can be... somewhat disturbing.
Hilarious in Hindsight: Elliot and Logan were portrayed by Nicholas Hoult and Michael Fassbender respectively. A year later, they depicted the heroic Beast and villainous Magneto respectively in X-Men: First Class.
Iron Woobie: Supremely. The game really gives Walter hell.
Moment of Awesome: Technically speaking, Jonathan Ross gets killed by Balverines while Stephen Fry smugly ignores his cries for help.
Moral Event Horizon: The player can cross it by ruling Albion like a tyrant, then taking the money he/she gained over the year for said deeds and hoarding it as personal wealth, leaving Albion completely exposed to the Crawler attack.
Player Punch: Walter.... "tell me how to be a hero"...
Porting Disaster: The PC port was tied to the much-maligned Games for Windows Live service, even if you bought it from Steam while it was available there. This means the DLC is broken and the saves from before the delisting will be more likely to be corrupted.
The Scrappy: Hobson. He's a money-hungry Jerkass who never stops complaining about you spending money for good causes even if you have triple the amount of gold required to save every civilian in Albion.
Scrappy Mechanic:
- The Sanctuary. In lieu of a more typical pause menu, this complicated the process of changing your equipment by making you walk around a room and flick through several pages of the same type of item to find the one you want, or sweep a cursor over a map to fast-travel. In the previous game, both were accomplished by selecting from a handy list of categorized equipment or destinations and just hitting the action button.
- The property maintenance mechanic. Every home you buy now has a condition and it will slowly lower to 0%, at which point you will no longer receive any rent from that property. It's not so bad at first, but (at least for the Xbox 360 version) every property must be repaired individually, which can become incredibly tedious the more and more properties you buy. The since-delisted PC version tried to rectify this with a "repair all" button.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Fable III's streamlining of quite a few of its predecessor's features caught a noticeable degree of flak. Of particular mention is combat system, which wasn't exactly complex to begin with. Nonetheless, the changes come across as now making so simple that it doesn't feel enjoyable after a certain point.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Once the Hero becomes king/queen, there is very little interaction or character development (either for themselves or the supporting characters). Sparing Logan makes very little difference to the dialogue, with no unique scenes despite him being a deposed and despised king working with the new monarch. Page takes no action against you except complain and refuse to help, if you turn into a tyrant. Walter shows little sign of corruption or PTSD as the Crawler's arrival draws nearer. Reaver has little input outside of suggesting evil/pragmatic choices in judgement scenes, despite being a Hero and having connections to Shadow/Logan/Sparrow. Nothing much happens with Sabine or Kalin regardless of your rulings on their people. Outside of one sidequest, Elliot/Elise have no role in the story and no other 'main' characters are marriable.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Despite being one of the selling points, there isn't really much to do once you become king. You make a few decisions every day, but you only play around four days of an entire year after you become king.
What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: It's hard not to read the writers' political biases into some of the less cartoony choices offered to the PC as ruler of Albion, especially when the game assigns "Good" and "Evil" values to those decisions. Examples: Saving the environment is "good," despoiling it to fuel economic development is "evil." Legalizing alcohol is "good," instituting prohibition is "evil." Bailing out Albion's banks with government money is "good," letting them go bankrupt is "evil."
The Woobie: Professor Faraday. Imprisoned by Logan for refusing to turn his machines into war weapons and forced to see his life's work changed into something he never wanted.

YMMV / Fable III

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