3.5/5 ★ – jared_c's review of Fable Anniversary.

I had never played any of the Fable games prior to this, so this is my first foray into the series. Fable Anniversary is a remastered version of the original Fable from the original Xbox, including the post launch DLC. Given it's a remaster of an early launch title from the first xbox you should definitely set some expectations when going through this adventure. The updated graphics in this package still look pretty good even 10 years after this edition released, and I did not encounter a single bug through the entire game (which sadly is rarely the case anymore). Fable has you starting off as a small child, whose village gets attacked and you are seemingly the only survivor from your family when someone quickly arrives to help you and quickly teleport you away. You start off your journey then training and slowly learning more skills as your character visibly grows up, eventually turning into an adult. Bits of your family's history/legacy are slowly revealed throughout and as typical, things were not what you were led to believe. What makes this game stand out a bit (especially from others at the time) is the morality system, where actions you take or even missions you accept can make your character become more heroic/good or evil. As you gain more favor in either direction, NPCs will interact with you differently, skills or missions may open up or lock out depending on your morality score. I had only played through this once, going for a good character so I'm not sure exactly how different things would sway in the other direction unfortunately. Combat in the game is pretty basic. There are a variety of bows you can use for long range and different melee weapons that all feel maybe slightly different from each other, as well as magic abilities you can use to aid in battles. This is where sometimes it would get frustrating as a product of its time, as if you are facing multiple enemies you can get stun locked to the point of being completely unable to do anything until you die and have to try again. Luckily, I think this only happened once or twice but definitely got really frustrating at other times. Not realizing this edition came with the DLC, I rolled credits for the main quest surprisingly quick. For as much hype as I heard about this game, I was expecting the journey to last a little bit longer. With the DLC included, I completed the game in about 23.5 hours, including a lot of post game achievement cleanup. If you can find this game on sale and looking for a fun little time capsule, this would be worth your time!