Fable 1 & 2 were great games that helped the RPG base on Xbox & Xbox 360 grow. It's unfortunate to see that the quality and care that was invested into those two games didn't translate into the third installment of the franchise. So what's different and what works and doesn't work?
Graphics/Polish
Fable 2 was a rather well put together game with great locals and wonderful environments to explore. Fable 3 has similar locations but these ones don't have the same shimmer and gleam that the previous version boasted. Textures seem muddy and the lighting seems fadded and brown at times. I can't help but feel that someone in the studio was having to much fun trying out different lighting filters when developing the game. It doesn't stop there, shadows feel weaker and less frequent and you'll get quite a bit of object pop-in in this version of the game. The graphics are solid for a game made in 2010 but they're far from an example of what mid Xbox 360 games could accomplish.
Features/Gameplay
Fable 3 sheds much of it's interface and concepts for a simpler form of gameplay. In doing so the game loses much of what made the franchise famous and popular. Rather then having a health bar you'll fumble about combat wondering just how many hits you can truly take. Experience is almost entirely gone in this version of the game. You earn guild seals which work similarly but you unlock skills in a bland "road to rule" enviornment which flatly allows you to upgrade the three schools of combat and some other options like expressions. Removing the game's interface has made it so that accomplishing goals that the interface normally handled became a series of tedious rooms and locations that you need to run through. Changing your wepons for instance means that you'll have to 'pause' to enter the sanctuary then run your way into the armory and cycle through the various weapons you have. In an attempt to regain some semblence of interface they use the d-pad to quickly allow you to jump from one room to another and though it is helpful the system itself feels alien and cumbersome especially on the "road to rule".
Your Kingdom
[Spoiler Alert] As the game progresses you will find that you become the King/Queen of Albion. In it's own this is a fun and exciting thing to be in an RPG. Your actions will change the world in a dramatic way and people will react to your choices. However the fun of being the monarch is short lived because after gaining the crown you find out that you have very little time to prepare for a vicious invasion. This brings up a choice. Play evil and save lots of money destroying the land and exploiting the people in the process or spend money to make people happy and keep your land clean and pure. In the end you'll need slightly more than six million gold to save everyone in your kingdom. Even with nearly all the shops owned by you and the highest level in a job skill you'll still be hard pressed to earn enough money and be a good ruler to save even half your nation's population. Grinding out the gold yourself would take hours upon hours of work and a casual player trying to be a 'good' character will likely end the game with a tiny kingdom (in regards to population not land).
Lastly and one of my largest qualms with the story of the game is the ultimate enemy. Very little information is given to you about who or what the shadowy entity is. In the end you have to be satisfied with a great "darkness" or "living shadow" and that's about all you'll get from the story.
In the end...
Fable 3 is a good game. It's not a great game and it certainly isn't what Fable 2 was. If you're a fan of the Fable series it's worth picking up and the same goes for RPG fans who don't have anything going on at the moment. As RPG's goes this one is bare bones and it could clearly use some polish.