"Fable Anniversary" Utterly Forgettable

 

    You know we've gone too far as a society when game publishers are so desperate to make a safe and easy buck that they're deciding to reboot this game series. I'm sorry but there's no other way to put it, this game stinks. It's like hilariously mediocre, and the best part is? there's no redeeming qualities. It's all just bland, run of the mill, open-world RPG slop. I'm sorry I know people love this, and developers put their heart and soul into making this game, but there is nothing about this game that stands out, and I can't fathom why they made two more sequels to this game. It has to be nostalgia, there's no other way. I am legitimately baffled that The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion released 2 years after this game, because it makes it feel like it's 20 years ahead. Let's talk about it.

    The combat in this game is so awful. It's so simple, it's so basic, it's so easy, yet somehow it still sucks. Not only is it hilariously easy to become over leveled in this game, the combat system makes no sense. Archery is a pain in the ass, especially for a game that is for some reason inexplicably designed for controller in mind. The auto-aim is bad, and the tutorial never even tells you there's a much easier way to zoom in with your bow. Though frankly you'll hardly ever need to use it, as it was the least used way of fighting between melee, archery and will for me. And that's because, say it with me "THE COMBAT SYSTEM IN THIS GAME SUCKS AND MAKES NO SENSE."

    For context, when fighting in melee, you have a block, a dodge and an attack button, The only issue is, the block button is unbreakable for some reason, and you need to land a couple of hits before you can land "block breaker" hits. You might say to yourself, "well that sounds pretty reasonable doesn't it," except for one small issue. It is hilariously easy to stunlock in this game, where you get to someone's backside and you just spam the attack button and you literally can't even do anything about it. The enemies can do this to you sometimes as well by the way, and they don't even need to be facing your back, so you'll just lose a quarter of your health because you can't even block fast enough while they hit you.

    Don't even get me started on the fact that the combat system seems very tailored towards fighting singular enemies, and it's kind of fun when you face bosses, except that's only about 5% of your actual fights. Every other fight is hordes of enemies, who you can beat so easily with one simple spell: Enflame. I wish I was kidding but this AOE spell is kind of essential unless you want to spend way too much time fighting enemies. You just spam it until you run out of will, then you drink another will potion, rinse and repeat. The best part is, you can spam drink potions as much as you want anyways, that's what I did the entire playthrough. And you might say to yourself "wow that sounds boring, maybe I'll want to use other spells." You won't. It's such a pain in the ass to scroll through spells, because you can only have quick access to three at a time, and when you press a controller trigger to bring up the list of all the spells, it takes up like 15% of your screen and it's translucent so it's super annoying. So you just end up spamming the one spell that you know works and is easy.

    Don't worry though, you can avoid combat in this game quite easily, like in the final fight where you're supposed to be fighting through hordes of infinitely generating monsters to get to the big bad villain, Jack of Blades. Which by the way you can get through pretty much by spamming attack and spamming potions, it doesn't feel particularly rewarding or gratifying in any way. It doesn't help that the story doesn't flesh him out at all. He's come back, but I have no idea from what, how or why. There are side characters you literally cannot bear to care about, and half of them (like Maze), you forget about the entire time until they show up near the end to be like "look at me I'm doing something important for the plot." 

    Which brings me to what is supposed to be unique about this game. You can marry everyone in this game, except you need to have an empty house to do that. You can be as evil as you want in this game, except it's very easy to change your alignment simply by donating gold or sacrificing infinite NPC's. You can rent out houses to people, except it's annoying to collect the gold, and you won't need to because the economy in this game isn't properly done so it's hilariously easy to exploit. Oh also you can play as an evil character, and pick up "evil quest cards," from a location called the "Guild of Heroes." It makes no sense. The guildmaster is just like "once you graduate from hero academy you can become a good guy or a bad guy, but we'll always be there to support you." Like what? I'm world famous and I can sacrifice a dozen people to some evil god for a cool bow and everyone still loves and trusts me? There's absolutely no consequences for being good or evil in this game.

Final Score: 40/100

    Fable is definitely one of those games that feels fine while you play it, but you start to realize how annoying it is once you drop it and leave it alone for a while. You feel no motivation to complete it. The DLC is complete rubbish and extremely boring, and I just have no idea how someone would love this game other than nostalgia. Entering the Fable subreddit I'm legitimately baffled that people enjoyed this game. By the way did you know the magic system in this game is supposed to be the "most complex" in the series? People love hating on Skyrim's magic and it is like 10 times better than the magic system in this game. It's mediocre and probably closer to a 50 if you didn't try and 100% most things in this game, but I really wanted to see why people loved this series. 

    By the way I didn't mention this but by far the hardest part of the game are the terrible minigames. Whether it be the fight club against the Knotglade chief where for some reason you need 50+ hits against him (assuming you maxed out your strength stat), while he only needs to hit you twice for some reason is absurd, especially because like I love yelling out THIS COMBAT SYSTEM SUCKS AND IS BROKEN. Or the golf minigame which I have to bring up is utterly half baked, and stupidly hard. I had to spend like 150 attempts one of the times because you can't even see your "ball" half of the time, there's no barriers, and you have to use your controller which has awful sensitivity when it comes to power so you end up killing yourself like 70% of the time. A genuinely unpleasant game.