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First and foremost, let me tell you that I went into reviewing Fable: The Lost Chapters expecting a masterpiece. I had played Fable for the XBOX briefly, enjoying every moment I could pry the controller from my friend’s hands. I wanted desperately to purchase it myself, yet I held out for the announced PC expanded version. Was it worth the wait in my opinion? Yes and no. No because the additions in the normal course of the game improved the enjoyment very little. Yes because the addition of the Northern Wastes after the completion of the original storyline did add a few desperately needed hours to the gameplay.

Without a doubt, Fable and Fable: The Lost Chapters are both visually stunning. The textual details and the ambient lighting of the environments when added to the exaggerated NPC expressions give the feeling of playing within a soft, yet dark fantasy realm unlike any other I’ve played yet. The only complaints I had with the environments were the lack of interactivity and the small, closed feel to the landscape making most of the game feel like a dungeon crawl set outside. Allowing for rolling plains or grasslands in a few areas would have alleviated this problem nicely. The amount of detail put into the main character, some of the support characters, and the environment really brings these aspects to life. The modifications based on age, wounds taken in battle, and alignment were very pleasing in a world of games where characters remain the same throughout years or even decades of life. Unfortunately only the Hero changes physically. This caused some interesting moments when, during my second time through the game, my character was in his late 70’s and rescued his mother who appeared to be in her 40’s-50’s.

While chock full of British accents, I found the audio in Fable: The Lost Chapters to be as wonderful as the graphics. Wonderfully selected orchestral scores enhance without overshadowing the gameplay. The sound effects, while not as pronounced as I would expect in an adventure RPG of this caliber, were wonderfully and tastefully done. Without a doubt my favorite aspect of the sound in Fable: The Lost Chapters was the voice acting. While not enough voices were recorded for the everyday townsfolk in my opinion, the variance in the lines of speech had me laughing out loud occasionally from beginning to end of the game. The only major drawback of the audio is the lack of speech from the Hero. During the course of the entire story, the Hero only speaks a few words and these are simply verbal portions of the expressions increasingly accessible throughout the game.

The storyline for Fable: The Lost Chapters is a tad basic and fairly unoriginal considering the excellent gameplay, graphics, and sound. The main character grows up in a small village which gets attacked by raiders one fairly quiet day. The raiders burn down the village and as a raider is about to strike down the main character, a bright flash occurs behind the attacker, who falls to the ground dead. A great Hero stands behind the raider and offers to take the young Hero to the Hero’s Guild where he will learn everything needed to seek vengeance for the destruction of his village, the death of his father, and the disappearance of his mother and sister. Giant wasps, Goblin-like Hobbes, Bandits, lycanthropic Balvarines, and even other Heroes must be slain in the course of the ultimate quest of vengeance for the injustice done to our Hero. After the main quest has been accomplished, a call is raised. The greatest Hero in the land must travel to the Northern Wastes to combat a great evil which has arisen there. While the added major quest does tie into the storyline somewhat, the leap from one quest to the other seems as though it were simply pinned on to the end like a donkey’s tail. While the added quests, items, areas to explore, and length of gameplay were helpful in the overall enjoyment of the game, I feel more effort could have been put into incorporating a little more foreshadowing in the course of the original main quest.

The quests available in Fable: The Lost Chapters are mostly your basic fantasy-style quests. Save traders from brigands, destroy marauding Hobbes to save a farm, save your sister from a raider captain, and keep the ultimate evildoer from doing the ultimate evil. There were a few quests that gave you choices in the process of the quest to do good or evil… but either way if you failed on a quest you did not live with your disgrace, you were simply jettisoned back to the beginning of the quest in order to attempt it again. My favorite is when you have to save a chief’s youngest son from brigands. The chief’s eldest son offers to pay you to bring the child back to him instead so he can remove his father’s favorite from succession. Unfortunately those kinds of quests were few and far between. There were side “quests” that were not officially quests. These included getting married, collecting silver keys for opening special chests, and opening all the demon doors which open when a certain prerequisite is accomplished such as being ultimately evil or marrying a woman of rank. While these side “quests” are diverting for a time, they do not add much length to the overall gameplay.

The combat system, despite its console roots, is exceptionally easy to use. The only drawback I found through the entire game is the use of the shift button for both gathering experience spheres and for changing the basic attack into a magical spell. Too often in the midst of battle I would attempt to collect experience only to unwittingly cast a spell rather than swing my weapon. While this rarely caused any major problems (since nearly every spell is quite useful in battle), it was frustrating to waste the mana, especially during the beginning of the game. The selection of spells, while not huge enough to warrant having a strictly magic-based Hero, was large enough and powerful enough to make sure that at least a few magical spells were learned to enhance one’s fighting ability. The weapons and armour in Fable: The Lost Chapters were excellent in both frequency and design although I felt certain weapons too powerful for the area they were available in. There was definitely a balance issue inherent in the combat system of Fable: The Lost Chapters. A weapon available approximately a half to three quarters of the way through the game has more offensive power than the Sword of Aeons which supposedly has power beyond imagining. Beyond this, some of the magic in the game is extremely overpowered. With the press of a few buttons and a second or two the Hero can slow time to keep the opponent from defending from attacks, multiply his damage with a multiple hit spell, and berserk to bring up his base damage delivering enough damage in one swing to destroy all but the few most powerful opponents.

The unique-feeling world, the many choices to be made, and the relative ease of the combat system adds up to a top notch game despite its flaws. If a sequel were made possibly about the Hero’s mother (nudging Lionhead Studios and Microsoft Game Studios) I would definitely purchase the game immediately hoping some if not all of the flaws were rectified. Overall I felt Fable: The Lost Chapters well worth my time since I hadn’t been able to complete Fable originally. I would recommend anyone interested in Action RPGs give Fable: The Lost Chapters a chance to win your heart. It is well worth the asking price with the added content of the expansion.