This thing got on my nerves from the word go. The missions are uniformly dull, hackfests hampered by a poor control method. But my biggest bugbear is the implementation of the "you choose your own path and make key moral decisions" concept. Moral decisions my foot. These decisions are NOT REMOTELY INTERESTING. This aspect of the game feels like it was designed by a fourteen year-old boy with no concept of what hard ethical decisions are. Here are some moral dilemmas I would be happy to label as "interesting":

1. You have the opportunity to steal something that is actually of little worth to its owner, but is currently extremely useful to you. There seems to be no serious chance of being caught; the only person who will know is you. Do you do it?
2. Someone is being treated as a scapegoat in a town, in your opinion unfairly. If you step in to help, it seems likely that the townsfolk will resent your interference, your prestige will suffer in this area and life will be that bit harder. Will you help?
3. A situation arises in which your rival in a competition has been penalised due to an judgement you know to be erroneous. Do you bring the error to the judges' attention, risking your own success in the contest?
4. You discover that a character who is a loyal friend has committed a crime. Do you turn them in or help them avoid punishment?

Here are some "moral decisions" they have in Fable:
1. Should you punch random strangers?
2. A single bully is picking on a bum. Will you join in?
3. Will you shoot an arrow at your archery instructor?
4. Will you run around people's houses stealing loot?

And, weirdly, there are several instances where things that SHOULD be interesting moral decisions are presented as stark black and white issues. Running to tell a woman that her husband is having an affair is a clearly moral act, apparently, even after the guy pleaded with you not to tell. When some kid is harrassing a younger kid, the moral solution is apparently to
walk up to him and deck him without warning. These elements of the first level set the tone for the rest of the game.

In fact, there is a disturbing absolutist streak throughout the game. No shades of grey. All characters are either good or bad. Punching and killing bad characters is always a good thing to do, and vice versa. (Hitting allied characters accidentally in group combat raises your evil meter, ingeniously.) There's even one section in which you gain brownie points for going round killing sparrows because they're messing up someone's roof. Most of the solutions in this game come out of a scabbard or a quiver. All of that would be fine in a conventional fighting game. And really that's all this is. The "choose your own path" thing is hogwash. It's not even an interesting failure as a product. It's a game whose back of the box pretensions are in no way borne out by the game design.

Good, Evil, Neutral
Long Range, Melee, Caster, combinations (lots of combos)

Ive done all the quests, bought all the homes, cheated, killed my wife, slept with the Lady Grey, and done it so many times it never gets old.

I am picking up the lost chapters version for Xbox as soon as its on Amazon.ca because 33% more content is worth the 30 bucks for this classic game. Cant wait for Fable 2 for Xbox360