Your Daily Dose of Fable Reviews

Just four Fable reviews to report about today, with a broad range of very negative to extremely positive. The first is at GameCritics with the lowest score of 4/10:

For a game as ambitious and so long in production as this one to be so clearly unbalanced is more than a little troubling. Its problems are so obvious and myriad that it almost feels as if it had never been play tested at all. It’s nice to see designers attempting to reshape genres and revitalize gaming. The vast majority of experiments are failures though, and it’s just too bad that no one realized just how big a failure this one was so it could have been killed, or at least fixed before being released to the public.

The second is at Gamers.com with no overall score:

Overall, Fable is well worth your time, although you might want to consider renting over buying. The interesting aspects such as buying houses, marriage, and trading with merchants will keep you entertained. However, with four years of development, it boggles the mind to think that the developers couldn’t come up with a more involving story, better character development and length. Still, Fable should be enough to satisfy RPG fans until KOTOR2 and Jade Empire release later this year and in 2005 respectively.

The third is at FileFront with an overall score of 4/5:

Fable is definitely a game that any self-respecting Xbox owner should at least play through once. In fact, if Fable had a bit more weapons and armor, another five-six hours of gameplay added to it, and a far better central plot, then the game would be one of the finest achievements to ever grace the gaming industry. As it stands now, though, it’s just a great game complete with experiences that will stick with you as clearly as that first game you ever played all those years ago it’s just not quite a perfect game.

And the fourth is at Gamer’s Hell with an overall score of 9.1/10:

It’s been a long time coming and now that it’s here I must say I’m impressed in many ways. Fable is a funny and exciting game, with pretty graphics and extremely well done audio. The only downside is that it only takes between 7 and 10 hours to finish, depending on how many sub quests you do. You can add a couple of hours if you plan on marrying, messing around with villagers, and so on. Playing through the game a second time as the polar opposite of your first character can be fun, just to see how the in-game people react, but personally I didn’t feel too motivated to do it, considering how the story had already unfolded in its entirety. Star Wars: Knights of The Old Republic was better in this way, but I’m sure many will want to give both good guy’ and ‘˜bad guy’ a shot.

Due to its short length and somewhat limited replay value it’d be easy to recommend this as a rental, but in all honesty it’s a game you’ll want in your collection just for the sake of owning it.

Fable was once said to be something along the lines of the best RPG ever, but because of the overly simplified console mechanics it’s (merely) a very good one.