It’s time to return to the extremely English realm of Albion and once again take up the role of the, very literal, hero. Your job: To sort out the miserable state the realm has most recently found itself in. Firstly by journeying across the country side and recruiting dissidents and mercenaries and leading the overthrow of the current king, your own brother, Logan. It’s revolution baby!

Right from the games beginning things are a little different in the world of Fable, this isn't the familiar introduction from the last two games. You begin the game as a young, but definitely grown up, man or woman, and are quickly thrown into the games plot. No adorable childhood quests or development moral choices; Lionhead has excised that entire section from this Fable game. It might seem like sacrilege taking away those early Fable moments of struggling but carefree childhood, but it's a good design choice and lets you get into the meat of the game a lot quicker.

Either man or woman, you'll get your fair share of heroic poses and badass execution moves of a thousand monsters, bandits and ghouls

You are the second child of the deceased king of Albion, who for the purposes of the plot was actually your character from the last game, and you’re older brother Logan has turned out to be one of those unpopular kings who’s quite fond of indiscriminately chopping of heads. As an added bonus he’s not quite fond of having his head chopping fetish pointed out to him and when you stand up to him in the games opening moments you find yourself faced with an impossible choice. Shortly thereafter you’re faithful man at arms Sir Walter Beck (Lord of the Rings Sir Bernard Hill) and your butler (none other than John Cleese) decide it might be prudent to get you of the castle so you can remain unbeheaded and educate you as to your fathers heroic ways. Then you need to unite the various elements of Albion and kick your brother off the throne.

Your time as a monarch is unfairly cut short, but worse of is your pictured childhood friend, who may end up just plain old cut short

From there game moves into standard Fable mode, quests, locations, hidden collectibles, weird jobs, morality defining choices. It’s a familiar, albeit tweaked formula. Then in the third act the game takes on an a wholly new element, you actually get to be the king and do all those kingly things kings do like make laws, stand in judgement, claim a hokey divine right to rule and appear on lots of collectable dinner ware. Of course this being Fable you can judge on someone’s execution while wearing a chicken suit (in fact there’s an achievement for doing just that).

Also being Fable you can dress as a ragged old soldier or a foppish noble when you kill zombies

For most of the game Fable 3 comes across as a much more polished version of its prequel. Most of the changes are, oddly for an RPG, down to reducing the  options. The first major change you will likely encounter is the interaction mechanic; rather than pulling up a big wheel of all your options to dance, fart, lute play and so on, you’ll usually have only an option to provide a positive or negative interaction. At first this seems like a simpler way of currying favour with the locals, but interactions can only be done on an individual basis, as opposed to Fable 2's option to make an entire village square fall in love with you with a banging lute solo and some Russian dancing. In other words, just getting a group of villagers on your side can take bloody ages. Oddly the interactions are not gender specific so you'll find your self snuggling and ballroom dancing with men and women, both straight and gay, with the game choosing your random interaction. Specific characters in the game have a third or fourth option, such as beggar having the option to give money, or a villager who loves you giving you the option to propose. As you’re trying to recruit people to your revolution you’ll usually be performing lots of positive gestures over the course of the game.

Aw, look at the widdle short zombie, I'm going to shoot his ghoulish face of first

The second most noticeable change to Fable is the menu and inventory system. In Fable 2 there was the slow, awkward and hideously ugly inventory lists where it could take you over five minutes to find that new pair of boots you just picked up and put them on. In Fable 3 when you press start you are immediately transported to your sanctuary; an extra dimensional base of operations maintained by your butler Jasper (voiced by, let me say again, John freaking Clease!). The sanctuary is dominated by a model map which you can use to view quests and quick travel around the world and, unlike the Fable 2 map, is actually incredibly useful. The map can also be used for buying and managing properties and relocating your family if you have one. Four doors running from the main chamber house your weapons, clothes, treasure and achievements with a magic portal to jump to other players games. Now in execution the sanctuary isn’t perfect, Jasper can get quite repetitive, especially when trying to get you to buy items off Xbox Live, and the fact you need to go into the Sanctuary just to see your quest list feels cumbersome; but overall, as an inventory system, the sanctuary is the most epic addition to a role playing game ever. It sounds like it may become tiresome transporting yourself to a location and having to walk around rooms to see your gear, but the transition is instantaneous and in the twenty odd hours I played Fable 3 the novelty never wore off.

One of the kicker things for fans of the series is that locations from the previous Fable games regularly appear, disguised in various levels of decay and ruin

While Fable 3 looks a lot sharper than Fable 2, losing a lot of the eye straining motion blur that plagued it before, it still chugs noticeably and has some considerable frame rate issues, especially in combat. The voice cast is hands down the best voice cast in game history, in addition to the aforementioned John Cleese and Bernard Hill, and the return of Stephen Fry as the dapper villain Reaver, we've got Ben Kingsley, SImon Pegg, Michael Fassbender, Sean Pertwee, Naomie Harris. I mean, we're talking about some serious talent here, from Oscar winners to cult film icons. I can't think of another game made before now with such a stellar cast.

The combat is still pretty awkward and cumbersome, marginally smoother than Fable 2, but still with a single button for melee, shooting and magic. Your magical powers have had the biggest alteration, rather than choosing a spell, you select a gauntlet and need to return to the sanctuary to change spells and later in the game select a second gauntlet to weave two spells together. Weaving spells creates some rather overpowered effects that make you practically unbeatable later in the game, able to bat away the toughest opponents with a single charged attack.

Simon Pegg voices splendid rascal and professional soldier Ben Finn

One feature that has taken a turn for the superb is the cooperative multiplayer. Rather than the poxy henchman system of Fable 2 with its broken camera system; you can now enter someone else’s campaign as your own character, costume, weapons and all. You can also get married, make babies and form a business partnership to share you’re incomes with players over Live. These additions give coop play in Fable 3 huge legs and you’ll find yourself playing online with someone else whenever the opportunity arises just because it’s a lot of fun. Local coop is also available, but take note that the achievements are disabled when playing on the same Xbox.

"Stand back my love, I'll protect you", "seriously Barry, how many times, I'm just playing a chick to get the achievements"

For most of the game Fable 3 seems more like a polished, streamlined version of Fable 2. But assuming the royal duties in the third act after leading the revolution changes the game. Not to get too spoilery, but something very bad is going to happen within a year of you becoming king and keeping all your promises may result in a lot of Albion’s citizens being killed. It initially sounds exciting, but the way it works is disappointingly simple. Over the (very fast tracked) year, you are given several moral decision moments, the wrinkle being that choosing the good option over the evil one, drains your castle treasury and less money in the treasury equals more dead Albionians. Of course it’s possible to have your cake and eat it too, especially if, like me, you discovered in Fable 2 the key to wealth was a vast property empire and have been buying businesses since your first quest in Fable 3. It’s far too easy to make all the good choices as a king and then transfer all your vast personal cash into the castle treasury. It really pulls the teeth out of all the tough moral decisions and heavy burden of being a king that Lionhead sold to us as the draw of this new Fable title.

King of the welsh sounding gypsies and fan of dynamite, Sabine, expertly voiced by Ben Kingsley

Outside of making those decisions as king and getting to live in the big house, being the king feels quite hollow. You don’t get a contingent of armed guards to follow you around, you still need to walk every where and when I led a contingent of palace maids to my bed chamber for a royal rumble they all yammered about wanting to get married first. Outside of the aforementioned decision making you’re not involved in any other political activities or ceremony and moving the women you married into the palace with you doesn’t make them a queen. It’s almost a little depressing to see all your kids (by the time I was king I'd married eight women and had nine kids) running around the castle in their tatty peasant clothes while you’re wearing a crown and a cape made of baby seal skin and dodo feathers. I was particularly annoyed when one of my kingly quests had me fighting Balvarine’s all on my own. So where’s all these bloody soldiers people keep talking about? Apparently defending Albion’s only monarch isn’t their job. Equally mood breaking is the minor quests local citizens give you to be their friend, they demand you run around the place delivering items or picking up messages for them, even when you're king. Where's the grovelling?

Fable 3 teaches you that no matter how big a problem, even an invasion by an unplaceable evil force, it can be solved by throwing enough money at it

As you can see it’s not long before you realise that the royal portions of the game only serve to concentrate the moral decision part of the Fable experience, which in previous games was spread out over the story. In Fable 3 you make all your real decisions in the last two hours of gameplay. Likewise your hero personality, highlighted by an angelic appearance complete with glowing wings, or a devilish appearance with bat wings, is only visible in the final battle. Basically the royal mode is a short focused finale to the game the defines your character and plays more like an extended final quest than actually being a king. Personally I'd prefer the inevitable Fable 4 returns to the gradual development of the character from previous Fable games.

I came here to kick ass and chew something that has not yet been invented in this industrial revolution era setting, so I guess I'm just going to kick ass

The infamous Fable reputation of promising a lot and not quite delivering remains intact for Fable 3. But don’t judge it too harshly, despite it’s ambitions exceeding its grasp Fable 3 provides a game experience that feels equal parts unique and familiar. The games trademark Monty Python inspired weird humour is in full force, but the games plot is more than capable of stepping up the serious drama and excitement levels when it needs to. A journey to the new continent of Aurora provides one of the best quests you've likely ever played in any RPG game and thats just one of many memorable moments in Fable 3. Fable’s crowning achievement was always providing an RPG experience that felt more like occupying a role in a Grimm Brothers fairy tale rather than the overly didactic number crunching of so many other RPG games. In this regard Fable 3 succeeds admirably, crafting a memorable fantasy experience filled with character and emotion.