A mixed bag - strides forward in some areas and retreats in others.
Let's get the bad out of the way first then. Bugs! This is a game riddled with immediate bugs that range from the mildly irritating to the utterly gamebreaking. There is a lot of slowdown and framerate drop for a start, often your character will be wading through treacle as you traverse the world of Albion. Often you will experience NPCs talk over each other or speech audio lag so much that characters are concluding their monologues long after you left them and moved on to something else. You will at some point realise that your butler Jasper, who had hitherto furnished you with all manner of useful info and added a lot of colour to proceedings, has stopped conversing with you altogether. More seriously, many people have reported a bug where your player will fall through the world indefinitely and the game autosaves - and since Lionhead have seen fit to only make one rolling save slot available to use - this means that your entire game will be lost and irretrievable.
The actual gameplay itself has been altered in many areas, not all for the better. Your dog, the faithful companion of the previous two titles, is reduced to a wandering treasure detector (and the treasure itself is a prosaic collection of dull disappointments), doesn't get injured or hungry, has no emotions and you can't make him do tricks. You can pet or scald him but, as with many other things in the game, there is no real purpose or affect of doing either. Your dog will also often either run annoyingly close to you or, when you need to interact with him (to train him), he will keep running off and require you to chase him in order to finally start the interaction. Similarly, finding digspots can take an age as your pooch wanders aimlessly about before showing you where it is.
Interactions with the characters who populate the world have also changed. You can no longer choose an expression and giving one requires no element of precision to perform properly. Now you are simply presented with a random choice such as handshake, dance or hug, and you either tap a button or hold it down, depending on how much influence you want the expression to have on the recipient. There are rude and vindictive actions to choose from too but you never will choose these as, again, there is no point in doing so - no real benefit in selecting whether to be nasty or nice. And that really is a huge underlying problem with the game - where the previous Fables gave you an open road and left it for the player to choose how to proceed down it - here the premise is already established and is one where you play the noble younger sibling, fighting the injustices of your elder brother's corrupt rule. You are simply the good guy and, as a result, your choices will be largely pre-determined.
Another area of change for the worse is the combat system. Your character has a choice of three actions, melee weapon, ranged weapon or magic; each one activated by one button (the longer you hold down the button, the more powerful the strike). This is similar to the intuitive and fun fighting style of Fable 2 only that you have no health bar and the use of magic (which is now through magic gauntlets) does not require any finite resource, so there is essentially no risk and little strategy to your pugilism. Potions have been reduced to just three - health, time slow and summon demons, and you also carry one food resource that you can consume for health in a similar way to a health potion. The removal of slow time and summoning from your magic spells and making them a result of potions is a very good idea and makes magic use less cumbersome, but aside from that, the experience of combat in the game is fun yet unrewarding - as there is no risk of you ever dying (or of your dog being injured).
Similarly, I found questing to be mildly entertaining and amusing at times, but it often lacks any depth, risk or sense of achievement. A lot of your quests in the game will be in order to improve your standing with the people of Albion by couriering - these are (like so much in the game) very shallow indeed, you don't have any connection to what you are supposed to be delivering or finding, you simply collect quest from A, travel to B, return to A - repeat ad nauseum.
So, there you are. The challenge of being righteous, the lure of evil, the close relationship to your dog and the citizens of Albion, the immersion of combat and quests - these have all been removed from the game. And you could add that customisation is below par too. There are a few outfits available but only a very limited number of weapons. Your weapons do alter in power and provide bonuses depending on what you do and how you act in the game but it all seems a little sparse.
On the plus side, the graphics and lighting all look beautiful and the voice acting is superb - featuring an all-star cast including Zoe Wanamaker, Bernard Hill, John Cleese, Stephen Fry, Ben Kingsley, Michael Fassbender, and Simon Pegg.
There is humour and character in the world. The gargoyle hunting of Fable 2 has been replaced by a troupe of horrid little gnomes who will hurl very funny insults at you until you track them down and dispose of the little critters.
The entire map, travel and menu systems have been completely overhauled and all for the better. You now have a base of operations called the Sanctuary from where you can access everything from gifts, your weapons and outfits, statistics, trophies or even see how much gold you have accrued, piled high in your treasury. This really is an inspired addition and makes each element a simplicity to manage, it has also enabled Lionhead to do away with myriad fiddly menus that you usually find in RPG type games.
The new map is a particular highlight and takes the form of a huge map-table which allows you to peruse the entire world and zoom into each area to manage properties, view quests and fast travel between zones. This is a fantastic idea but, once again, the lack of a mini-map makes it difficult to roam the world from zone to zone and know where you are or what direction you are going in. At the very least, the main map-table should tell you where in a zone your character is, not just which zone you are in.
One addition that is not so welcome is the insidious introduction of online elements into the game. For example, one of the rooms in the Sanctuary is devoted to your character's online presence and Jasper the butler will constantly make you aware that you can purchase downloadable content using xbox live. Most cynically of all, one of the Demon Doors in the game (of which there are only six in this iteration) is only opened by introducing an online player into your game. That, frankly, is shamefully exploitative.
Advancement through the game centres around earning Guild Seals, which can be collected via interactions, quest completions and storyline progression.
Once you are ready, you enter the Road to Rule, a path which unlocks incrementally as you gain experience and followers to your cause; here you are able to spend your Guild Seals to open chests with a variety of magic, upgrades, expressions and skills inside them. It is a nice system and is well implemented but is very linear and, again does nothing to promote the making of moral choices.
At the end of this road you become king and ruler of Albion and you are then held accountable for the promises that you made on your way to claiming the throne. I am not that far into the game yet but I have already heard from others that this secondary phase of the game revolves more around having enough income in the game to afford to always be the good guy - there is, once again, very little in the way of true ethical decisions to be made.
Possessing gold will never be a problem for most players in this game, as buying property and businesses and undertaking the three new professions in the game (which are implemented well and are fun to play - although are susceptible to progress-wrecking lag) will have your wallet bulging in no time at all.
For all the negative observations in this review, I have had a lot of fun in Albion so far. I am enjoying the game, although the bugs and the total shallowness of it all is starting to grate on me a little and I am only at the stage of going to Aurora.
It feels to me as if the developers have really tried to take on board the criticisms of Fable 2 and to streamline everything for the player's convenience and ease, whilst maintaining a polished and impressive title. Unfortunately, they have strayed from all of the core aspects that made Fable such a compelling game, essentially, they seem to have ripped the heart out of it. When I first got my hands on Fable 3 I thought it was a great return to form for the franchise and that Gamespot's review was unfairly harsh, but now I have more experience with it, the flaws really are starting to show beneath the highly-varnished veneer.
Fable is a special IP and Albion remains an enthralling place to spend a little of your time, but sadly, this latest offering lacks any depth under the surface and is more like Fable-lite.