Fable III is about the quest to become King. Most games go on a rags to riches based storyline. In this particular story, you begin as the Prince and strive to become the King. This seems relatively believable, but also seems to downplay the importance and significance of your actions.
Let's look into how this game fairs.
One knock I had for Fable II which carries over to Fable III is loading screens, and relatively choppy graphics. With games available like GTA IV and Red Dead Redemption I find it quite absurd that your character has to walk through a variety of map regions with load screen and sometimes in the middle of running your character will freeze in mid-air. Unacceptable.
If the story is written properly, and the rest of the gameplay is phenomenal, these items can be overlooked in favor of an overall positive experience.
There are no real improvements from Fable II to III in the department of combat. Fighting is the same, except casting magical spells isn't as varied in Fable III. In lieu of 10+ spells available, there are now only 6, which can be combined depending on which magical gauntlet you are wearing. Meh. The choice to move away from the best spells in Fable & Fable II (Slow-Time & Assassin Rush) was a poor choice. Slow-Time is available as a potion, but so what. Fable II's system was a good one for casting magical spells. The tiered casting type. Although it appears the same graphically in III, it's not. Level 1 versus 2 of a given spell just increases the power - in Fable II you could customize each tiered spell, so you could cast fire and or slow time whenever you wanted.
The story is engaging as you are striving to become the King. Spoiler Alert - you are the Prince, and you don't know you're a Hero. Your brother is the tyrant King, and the Hero from Fable II was your father. You are charged with taking control of the kingdom and restoring order, peace, and balance. Becoming the King is engaging - it falls apart shortly thereafter. And after the game is completed, there is little to keep interest (why would some guy say to the King, "you look like you could handle a gun - interested in killing a game buddy of mine?", and for that matter, why would said King do it?).
To become King you need to gain followers, and increase your power and strength. This is fun. In the process, you make promises such as promising to give people control of their land, assist in their protection, re-establishing former academies, and essentially promising not to be like your brother. The minute you become King you are informed (spoiler alert, but still, who cares) that there is impending doom that will come to Albion exactly one year to the day.
Over the next year you will make rulings on the kingdom and will need to attempt to amass serious wealth for the kingdom in order to fund an army and defenses necessary to minimize casualties. Either you are a bad dude, and you enact policies like increasing mandatory child labor and forcing people to pay for each of their children (China-style), or are a good dude and waste the kingdom's money which doesn't start out at a whole lot. Essentially, you pay money to be benevolent, and acquire money to be an asshole.
I attempted to tread water on this aspect. I ruled in favor of some absurd policies, and in favor of some promises. I don't know what would have happened if I let the kingdom go to ruin. I had about 4,000,000 in the bank at the time of the invasion, and projected casualties were about 2,000,000, as compared to the 6,900,000 casualties with 400,000 in the bank when you become king. If its possible to beat the game and kill 7M+ citizens, I say roll the dice.
The way I went about things, and would recommend others to think about doing things, was by purchasing all merchant shops. Houses are a waste of time. Eventually they fall into disrepair, you need to fix them, and you don't even get much money from them. Step 1, choose one job to build up to the highest level (choose one, whichever you feel you are best at, or feel is most fun) this way you can get more money to purchase more properties. Step 2, increase the rest to the "Highest" setting. Step 3, transfer your personal funds to the Kingdom treasury to fund the campaign. I figured these actions were cancelling one another out - once you don't have a war to fund, and have absurd cash, then lower the rent. [I wish you could universally increase or decrease the rent - I don't know why you would want one property to be "Low" rent and others to be "Normal" or "High". Set it universally]
One item that was talked about when the game first came out was the "heavy" menu screens from Fable I & II, and how they were abolished in favor of the Sanctuary Room. I would rather a menu screen any day of the week. The fact is that the entire game is heavy. I downloaded Fable II to my hard drive, it was still heavy. With III I said "Fuck it".
One other item to quickly state is regarding the graphics. The opening cinematic looks great when you first see it, but the difference between the cinematics and in-game graphics is significant. Another item that remains clumsy is the human interaction. At least your character has a voice now, but still, why do I have to hold the A button for the just the amount of time to give a proper hand shake (pound) with some random stranger. Stupid. "Can we haggle for the price of this hat? Yes? Let's dance. . . Was that good? Oh good. Let's do it again, I want to get as much of a discount, but this time I'll make a hero's pose for you." When you write it out like this, it's just as stupid as when you are playing the game.
The original Fable had great replayability - I wanted to finish the game to be good, and I wanted to finish it to be evil to see how things were different. I have no interest in touching this game ever again. Fortunately I bought it on Amazon for a ridiculous discount (because the game sucks) on AMEX points, and I'm ready to flip this shit on eBay for almost the same amount I paid for it.
That's another little note - for those of you that like to play video games, don't buy the new games. Wait a minute, buy them used on eBay, or buy them cheap somewhere else (cheap for a new game I'd say is anything less that $35). Reselling used games on eBay gets you between $15 & $25 on average. So let's say you buy a game on Amazon for $30, play it for 1 month, sell the game on eBay for $20, with $2.99 shipping (I hate people that put $4.00 for shipping video games, it doesn't cost that much you fucks), you're essentially renting the game for a month for $10. Not sure what a Gamefly subscription is, but if you only do this a few times a year, it's not a terrible way to go. FYI, I bought a used PS3 and a used Metal Gear Solid 4 on eBay, played them for a month, and sold them on eBay and took about a total $8 loss. $8 to rent a PS3 and video game for a month? I'll take it, especially since if I didn't resell the products I'd have been out about $340 or so. Boom. Also, what's great about "Used" video games on eBay is that you buy them used, and they're still used when you sell them. You're likely going to sell in the same range that you purchased it at. Eeb-a-deeb, that's all folks.
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