anyone playing this yet?

graphics and game play are still as good as the first two

Excellent game.

im doing it sans strategy guide (first fable i have done that) and i gotta admit, i love blowing the wolves up

With the glowing trails and silver key / gnome check list, you don't need a strategy guide. I recommend doing all possible side quests before ever doing a main quest objective. There are only so many side quests at a time and they open up so many extra areas.

I'm not sure if this is better than Fable 2 yet. Some stuff is too simplified - no health bar, really? Can you even die?

Having played both, I do think it's better. Especially after a certain point (which I cannot mention for fear of spoilers).

One thing I will say - it's very hard to be "good".

First one was good but I found the second one super boring. Combat turned into this routine button mash that wasn't worth pursuing.

I believe Lionhead really missed an opprotunity to advance the franchise with Fable 3. Personally, I found the King decisions to be rather boring. Instead, I feel they should have taken the game into a "Driftwood" direction. The whole concept of the zone was great:

1. You needed to finance a means to get to the zone.
2. You needed to clear out the enemy infestations.
3. You needed to complete additional quests to bring all the bells and whistles to the town.

Why couldn't all zones be like this? Also, it seemed like a great opprotunity to advance the property / income system. Instead of purchasing houses and businesses and receiving rent and profits, just like in Fable 2 and 3, you could invest in entire towns and by investing money in the town and completing quests to benefit the town you could earn tax money - the nicer the town is, the more residents will want to live there, the more money you would earn in taxes.

This is such a poorly made, awful piece of boring shit. I LOVE the first fable. The sequel, like zeb said, is just a pedestrian turd of a shadow of the first game, filled with inexcusable flaws abound. Bugs all over the place, lame combat, graphics that aren't anywhere near as good as people seem to think, etc. The third game though? Fuck. What a smelly shaft this thing is. The whole thing plays like a very early demo mixed with a baja fresh shart. If I start listing it's insurmountable flaws, this will become a tl,dr post in like 8 seconds.

The ONLY redeeming factors here? All audio. The British humor and voice acting are top notch. Great, GREAT cast. The other thing I enjoy is the music, but it's he SAME FUCKING MUSIC from the first two games. Literally. So really, it barely counts as a "plus" here. It would actually be like if Quentin tarantino just used the pulp fiction soundtrack for every film he ever made since then.

There's no way in hell I'm giving fable 4 a chance. i say this with a heavy heart. Albion was a great place once. Once.