Fable is just a truncated action adventure title which is barely average and remains largely bereft of any roleplaying elements. Nothing it sets out to do is actually revolutionary. The take on good and evil is a gimmick that Knights of the Old Republic actually managed to handle better by providing more solid moral choices and consequences, the customization options aren't much better than what was seen in games like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and the ability to influence NPCs isn't particularly novel when compared to the likes of The Sims. Credit where credit is due, this may very well be one of the first role-playing games that attempts to combine all of these features - but that doesn't make it necessarily a good one, specially when all of these elements fail to succeed at actually improving role-playing. All it does is drown out players with choices that are ultimately irrelevant to the character's development or only help muddle it. "For every choice, a consequence" may be a nice tagline, but here it simpy isn't true to any serious or well designed degree.
In fact, by adding more things to do in the world of Albion, The Lost Chapters actually makes the lack of balance more glaring. Whereas Fable's short length didn't allow many characters to invest in nearly all of the Attributes by simply playing through the main story arc, the expanded version includes quests which reward lots of experience and locations with even more powerful items. By the end of three playthroughs in Fable, all of my characters were incredibly similar because I had an ample amount of experience to spread across nearly all the Attribute sub-categories that even if I started focusing on different Attributes at the beginning of each game to create different archetypes, I'd still have a large amount of experience that would spill into the other sub-categories. And unless I went out of my way to gimp characters they'd all pretty much have the same powerful equipment open to them. The game's weaknesses become more apparent and the less stellar aspects are that much more pronounced, while most extra content ranges from boring to really questionable. I'm not sure how Pimp Hats, customizing tattoos and a brothel really improve my gaming experience, nor why I should try getting the Hero to crossdress to work as a prostitute.
All in all, there's not much I can recommend in Fable. Even forgetting it falls short of nearly all promises made there's not much here that stands on its own. The combat is easy to get into but doesn't provide much of a challenge, there's barely anything to explore due to the gameworld's limitations, and the quests are often just an unrelated set of challenges that range from the pointless to the unavoidable. Lionhead tried to do many things, that's great - but that's also pretty much where it ends. I'd rather have a game with traditional gameplay that works and is fun than a game that shoots into all directions and fails to deliver anything worth playing. The novelty wears off a couple of hours into the game and never quite manages to surprise or entice you after that. At times it can be a barely decent action adventure game but it never becomes a good or even fun roleplaying game, and that's all that matters.
