You shouldn't use the word 'I' and 'me' In reviews as much too. It's about the overall game experience, not your personal game experience.
DISREGARD THIS SIGNATURE
Actually, according to this site's 'about reviews' page first-person address is perfectly acceptable. Incidentally, when is a review ever not about the reviewer's personal experience? The whole point of a review is that it's an opinion piece, not a presentation of objective fact.
The games can actually be fun as long as you play it as a hack and slash.
I have to use the phrase "YMMV" because I found Fable anything BUT simple. The economy, the expressions, the combat with it's flourishes and different charges of Will. The story... well, I have low standards for story.
"This wiki is stereotyped and trite. In other words, dull and uninteresting. We are about showing off how snide and sarcastic we can be.
I found myself agreeing with the reviewer entirely. During my play-through of Fable 2, I got the impression that the game was treating me like someone 10 years younger. What makes this odd is that I have never had that experience before, even when playing games that are clearly meant for kids.
Fable was also extremely easy (I never come close to dying even once) and lack-lustre in terms of its fantasy setting. The monsters and locations are generic. You fight goblins in the mines, pirates at the cove etc. I was half expecting to bump into skeleton warriors in dungeons. There are also no boss monsters, save for some giant troll which you kill a half dozen times over.
Book me today! I also review weddings, funerals and bar mitzvahs.
I'm pretty sure there were plenty of bosses in Fable, at least in the first game.
Sorry, I meant Fable II. Haven't played the first.
Book me today! I also review weddings, funerals and bar mitzvahs.
I meant Fable II myself, haven't played the first game at all.
As for dying, it's only frustrating to go back to a menu and start over every time.
"This wiki is stereotyped and trite. In other words, dull and uninteresting. We are about showing off how snide and sarcastic we can be.
Meh, I've only played Fable I.
I used a gamebreaking strategy that made the entire game incredibly easy (Put all your points into mana and get mana shield, use mana potions in place of food, and you'll never get stunned, meaning your xp multiplier will go through the roof), so I don't even remember what happens if you die there.
Since there's no passive mana shield in Fable II, they obviously removed it. But better or worse fighting; Fable II, atleast, should be enjoyed in the sense of what you can do to NP Cs: Buy their houses, marry them, dance on Bowerstone Bridge without any clothes, extort, play lute or just kill.
If there's one thing I agree with the reviwer, it's the lack of enemies in and bosses in general unless boss-like creatures that get demoted to mooks later on are counted.
"This wiki is stereotyped and trite. In other words, dull and uninteresting. We are about showing off how snide and sarcastic we can be.
My personal gripe with the Fable series is just how much hype there was in the leadup to the first game and how literally none of it was delivered upon. I subscribed to Electronic Gaming Monthly for many years, and I got to see this little drama unfold right before my eyes every month. "The most in-depth morality system possible!" Yeah, you can be good or you can be evil! They played up how many choices you can make and how many paths there are to take, but in the finished game not only are there only two real paths, they're essentially indistinguishable apart from the way your character's appearance changes. What was promised to be a revolutionary experience was... it wasn't even anything.
Wrestler, bodybuilder. No hopes, no dreams.Leave a Comment:
Lowest Common Denominator
I'm going to be perfectly honest, I really don't see what people love so much about this series. They're always sickeningly overhyped and never ever ever live up to the promises the devs make about them. Half the features they're supposed to have don't get included and the ones that do make it in are usually in a severely cut-down form. But all that is a fairly minor problem when compared to my main issue with the series.
You see, every game in the series is quite obviously designed to adhere to the 'Keep It Simple, Stupid' principle, and in this case that's short for 'Keep It Insultingly Simple Because We Think Our Customers Are Stupid'. Everything is 'streamlined' and 'simplified' to a massive degree that only gets worse as the series progresses, which is a very good way to hide the fact that just about every system in the game is about as deep as a sidewalk rain puddle. The whole ensemble comes off as rather condescending, like the developers think I wouldn't be able to handle something as mind-numbingly complex as a video game without substantial assistance.
In summary, the game feels less like an epic fantasy tale and more like a children's picture book - which, given the title, is oddly fitting, I suppose. Even that would be acceptable if it were fun, and parts of it are in short bursts, but much of the game isn't just heavily simplified, it's boring, which is the worst possible thing a game can be. If you want to have enough money to do much of anything, you have to wade through tons of painfully dull side missions, including literal work in the second and third ones, which is exactly as entertaining as 'work' is in real life. Once you've worked enough to earn money to actually play the game and get into the meat of it, you're thrust into the main story, which is painfully lame in the first two games. The third game, at least, improves on this aspect substantially, adding some nice moral complexity that actually made me think about a decision for the first time in the series.
This series can be fun, and I'm sure some people enjoy them, but overall they just feel like they're marketed to the lowest common denominator. I like my games to be just a bit deeper than these. Personally, I'd skip the first two outright, although the third is at least worth renting.