Fable: The Lost Chapters

Fable: The Lost Chapters is an rpg - an extended version of Fable - released in 2005 for Mac, PC... and Xbox, which is why I was slightly uncertain will I like it.

I don't generally enjoy games that have been developed for consoles, mainly or concurrently with the PC version, as they, in my experience, tend to have mechanics, which involve clicking mouse constantly for attack combos or the like. And that's not particularly rewarding to me. I don't look for such feature in the computer games I play. However, Fable's genre persuaded me to playing it. (As a side note, I'm surprised Witcher wasn't developed for Xbox first. I really disliked its melee mechanic.)

Quite soon I found Fable also had another annoying thing common for console games - clumsy tree menus for inventory, character stats etc. I guess it's ok if you don't know of any better. However, you do seem to get used to it after you have done the menu traveling for a while.

Fable's gameplay was exactly as I expected: very consoly.

The hotkey for parry I had to rebind because I didn't like the default key (whatever it was). Later on I found parrying to be completely useless anyway; everytime I tried to parry, the enemy's attack got through just fine and knocked me prone or back at least. The parry key wasn't totally useless, though, as pressing it and moving made the character somersault - a nice way getting behind your enemies.

And my, was I bemused after I found enemies' parrying to be perfectly invulnerable to my melee attacks. Unless, of course, I used a flourish move, which comes available as you get normal hits through. So you have to hope your enemy drops its defenses or you manage to get behind it. Getting hits through also gives you damage increasing combat multiplier that starts decaying right away, pushing you to keep attacking. You also drop to the previous safe multiplier level (5, 10, etc) if you are damaged. And how easy that is. Or rather...

Well, I guess I did it all slightly wrong when deciding I would only increase my strength stats, and not even look at the spells. I also passed on ranged combat, which I found to be very tedious.

This all lead the game to be unneccessary difficult at times, and nigh unbeatable when I got the final boss before The Lost Chapters content. I had to reload, and luckily I had a bunch of experience to spend on spells. I picked multistrike and physical shield, and increased my accuracy stat. And the boss became suddenly much easier.

Furthermore, my focus on melee combat caused me to have 20k+ unspendable physical experience at the end of game as I had capped each Strength stat. So, don't do it like me, and spread your experience. Pick those spells, they are very powerful.

Part of the character's experience is gained through gathering glowing green balls of light enemies drop when they die. Really? Why is this even needed. In my opinion, there's nothing to be gained from having to run once more over the corpses. You also have the ability to make the balls come to you (if they're close enough). By default, the key for this is the same as activating your spell selection for the mouse keys. Thus, when I tried to suck in those experience orbs in the middle of combat, I always activated the lightning spell that is learned in the very beginning. I quickly bound it to another key.

What surprised me, in Fable: The Lost Chapters, was how good the game looked and how light its engine ran. But this might have been partly as I came into this game after Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. VtMB's Source engine seemed so heavy and it had quite long loading times. Okay, Fable's areas are usually smaller and have less stuff but still, I greatly appreciated the smoothness and playability.

Fable's soundtrack was a very nice piece of work as well, aiding to create an immersive atmosphere throughout the game. Which is, by the way, maybe just a bit short. But I didn't really mind about that. I also missed a whole bunch of stuff - couldn't be arsed to find out how to get through many of those Demon Doors, for instance.

Overall, Fable: The Lost Chapters was an enjoyable experience. It has its flaws but for a casual console gaming, I think it's top notch.

...if you don't mind not being able to play a female (Why is this anyway? There is no voice acting done by your character.) and missing the option to dual wield. But apart from that; a great package.