In the games shop nearby I saw Baldur’s Gate 1 & 2 with both their expansion packs for around ?20, and I remembered Geoff and afew others on these forums going on about how great it was. I didn’t buy it, because (a) I didn’t have the money on me, and couldn’t be bothered going home, getting some and going back and (b) recently I have spent around ?200 on games (?80 GBA, ?20 Phantasy Star Collection, which I also bought because of praise from these forums - and it was awsome, ?30 on Fire Emblem - also awsome, ?30 on FF tactics advance - pretty good, but nowhere near the standard of my other 2 GBA games, and ?40 on Fable - that I haven’t had a chance to play yet :’( ) and I’m not sure how much money I actually have left. So what do you think, should I hold on to my money, or am I being an idiot and I should run out and buy them right now?
Cling to your money and wait for some of the XBox titles coming up.
Thats’ what i did.Last week I was going to uy Soul Calibur 2 but I decided to wait for Fable which I will hopefully buy tomorrow.
Don’t forget Halo 2 is coming up too…
I’ve never played the Baldurs Gate games, so I can’t help you there, although I’ve heard that they’re excellent titles.
If I were you I’d wait until you finish at least some of the other games that you bought before purchasing any more otherwise you’ll end up in a situation (like me) where you’ve got a bunch of uncompleted games that you’ll never get around to finishing because more keep coming out. I’ve heard that the Baldur’s Gate games are quite life-consuming too.
Oh yes, and Fire Emblem is indeed an excellent game.
Uh, Gehn, not to bust your bubble or anything, but SC2 is a much better game than Fable.
That depends really.Different genres.It’s funny : everyone came to adhore Fable before it was released.Now many hate it.
I now ask : is it that bad?
…as opposed to …
Is it that good?
The PC Baldur’s Gate games (and their expansions) seem rather dated now when compared to the likes of Neverwinter Nights, but BioWare hasn’t bettered the gameplay of Baldur’s Gate 2 yet, not even in Knights of the Old Republic. If you’ve never played the original Baldur’s Gate then I suggest you skip it and play the sequel straight away because the combat and party interaction was significantly improved (even if thieves aren’t true to their P&P counterparts).
Interplay made a lot of stupid mistakes (like cancelling Baldur’s Gate 3 for the PC 6 months into its development), but publishing the Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance games for the leading consoles (which are, for the want of a more apt description, Diablo clones) wasn’t one of them, so I recommend buying them too (although they have no story ties to the PC games with the exception of a certain Drow elf who always returns no matter how many times you kill him).
I give Baldur’s Gate all the credit for resurrecting the PC RPG genre, Diablo and Final Fantasy 7 notwithstanding.
How important is the story of Baldur’s Gate 1 when linked to Baldur’s Gate 2? Can the second one be played without missing anything from the first game?
[quote=“GehnTheBerserker”]That depends really.Different genres.It’s funny : everyone came to adhore Fable before it was released.Now many hate it.
I now ask : is it that bad?
…as opposed to …
Is it that good?[/quote]
I haven’t played Fable yet (it’s coming out here on Friday), but if you’ve played Soul Calibur 1 then the sequel is just more of same, but more polished and a few additional characters. It’s one of the best fighting games that I’ve played, but I wouldn’t say it was worth paying full price for unless you haven’t played SC1.
Fable is supposed to be quite an innovative game, and even if it doesn’t fulfil your expections it sounds like it’d still be a fun action RPG with some original features.
Yeah plus it’s an XBox exclusive and one of the most mediatic games ever.
I haven’t played Soul Calibur 1 btw.Oh and Geoff is the Baldur’s Gate story a real plot or is it like Neverwinter Nights…it’s a non-linear plot right?
soul calibur 2 and fable were both pretty bad games, though i think i liked fable more.
save your money for otogi 2 which comes out in like 2 weeks 
I actually was dissappointed to notice that nothing changes much in Otogi 2.The glide feature is still the same and the combos still seem limited… 
The thing about Fable is that it’s REALLY REALLY short. The main quest takes about 10 hours to get through taking your time, and you’ll be able to squeeze at most around 30 hours out of it total. What’s there is decent (though not great), but there’s just hardly any of it. Probably the coolest thing about Fable is the character evolution/morphing system, but once you get sick of looking at your character and have played through the game a few times, there’s just nothing else there. It’s a shortish action/adventure game with cool character customization and a bunch of other gimmicks that don’t really work.
I’ve gotten about a billion times more fun out of playing SC2 with my friends than I ever will out of Fable, but I’m not exactly a conoisseur of fighting games, so maybe that’s why I like it.
Anyway, don’t get your hopes up too much for Fable. Rent before you buy. It makes me appreciate the hell out of Morrowind, that’s for sure.
EDIT: By the way, if you want a shortish action/adventure game that blows the socks off of Fable, go buy Beyond Good and Evil (something you may already have done).
i’m not really a conoisseur either, but i thought they made a mildly graphically updated soul calibur 1 with horribly broken and unbalanced characters, poor stage design (too small), and weaponmaster mode was excruciatingly annoying rather than refreshing and fun the way mission mode was.
multiplayer usually saves those kinds of games (as long as you don’t let anyone abuse spawn or necrid or ivy).
i think it’s definitely a rent before (if) you (ever) buy.
Personally I thought that Fable was much more funner than most of the games I have been playing recently. It kinda reminded me back when I was much younger and playing the game because it was purely fun and not caring that it had this and it had that.
Who cares if tha game is short? I can beat some RPG’s under 20 hours, games like Ecco, Sonic under the hour *NOT including the dreaded Machine Levels in Ecco). And I am always replaying them, even sometimes, years after their release.
I didn’t bitch and complain when I finished Panzer Dragoon Saga in about 10-12 hours, because it was simply the experience of it that I enjoyed most, compared to the almost 50 hours of Final Fantasy 7, which I DO admit was a good experince as well, it was just too long.
Everyone has their own thoughts, despite the fact that it may not have been what some people were hoping for. It was something that I really did enjoy. ^^
I don’t actually mind short games so long as they’re entertaining and fun (such as the Panzer Dragoon games). They’re often more enjoyable experiences than butter-over-too-much-bread type games, that lack variety and spread the game out with numerous random battles, etc. Ten hours does seem too short for an RPG, but I shall reserve judgement until I’ve played the game.
Knowing my sluggish pace through RPGs, it will take 20 hours or more to finish the game, and if I’m entertained that whole time then it would be money well spent. We’ll see, I guess.
The thing about Fable is that it really really really is NOT an RPG. You could call it an Action RPG, or you could call it an action/adventure with RPG elements, but RPG it ain’t.
I think the thing that has a lot of people angry about Fable’s length is the fact that the developers (and, sadly, some reviewers) flat out lied about it. Up until AFTER the game was released here in the U.S., the official FAQ (which was updated on the day of release) stated that it would take at the very least 30 hours to play through the main quest if you knew EXACTLY what to do and went as fast as possible. The fact is, it wouldn’t take more than three or four hours to do that. It took me around 10 hours to go through for my first time taking my time, compared with around 20 for PDS and Vagrant Story (two other relatively short but much much better games).
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate Fable, I actually enjoyed it quite a bit, I’m just a little miffed that I blew $50 on such a short, unspectacular game. Part of it is probably that I broke my own rule of never buying games so soon after release, got burned a little, and now feel kinda stupid.
I understand how you feel about it, after so much hype it did not live to what you expect it to be.
Which is why after some of my gaming experiences, I dont follow the hype or try to drain for every single infomation on a game. I take it as it comes.
Like Halo 2 for example, I know some people who are eagerly waiting for every single piece of information for it and the new pictures. I am sorry to say that I haven’t been paying much attention to it, I know a few things like the brutes, and seen a few cool pictures.
Buts thats about it really.
I will just wait for it to come out and (with most of my games) if it doesn’t live to what I expect, just trade it in for something else.
Maybe I am too casual about this?
Any one who’s casual about Halo 2 is too casual about it!
Don’t worry, hundreds of thousands of other suckers have also fallen into the same trap >:)
I’ve already paid for my copy of Fable, so I guess it’s too late for me if the game is as disappointing as you say. But yes, the developers did start off with quite an ambious goal, removing a lot of the features that could have been interesting, so I can see why a lot of people are disappointed.
I have a question for Fable-owners: I didn’t really get into Morrowind, but I’ve been thoroughly enjoying KOTOR. How likely is it that I will like Fable?
I own KOTOR but have yet to play it.
One day.