I remember playing Fable II and thinking it was a decent enough game and then being absolutely blown away by the ending.  I've been playing Fable III pretty much constantly for the past week and I've been loving.

Yes, there's no difficulty balance what-so-ever, the horrible real estate interface, the glowing trail barely works, the dog can be a pain in the ass, the game has pretty awful framerate throughout, and it's filled to the brim with fetch quests (and the same ones over and over again at that!) but I've really enjoyed it.  I've enjoyed it so much I'm actually going to try to get 1000/1000 on it and I'm even pretty close.  I've found nearly all the keys, books, and gnomes, and I'm about to start working on the flowers.  I'm also working on the co-op achievements with a friend so I should be able to get it.

Anyways, I decided to finally just beat the game tonight since my vacation is over and I must say, I'm underwhelmed by the ending.

SPOILERS AHEAD

First off, I do think how they handled ruling the nation was neat and even though I had about 5 times the money I needed, the ominous countdown and treasury balance load screens were a great touch.   I loved all that and probably would had loved it a lot more if I wasn't making 150k every five minutes.

So I'm sitting pretty at 121 days left until the darkness arrives so I decide to get started on the decisions because I still had 121 days to get things done.  I make my decisions and then suddenly it's the day of the attack.  What the Hell?

I went from 121 days left to 1 and I still hadn't opened all my chests and there was nothing I could do about it.  So I start fighting the shadows and working my way through Bowerstone and then I see a fork.  The gold trail told me to go right but I wanted to explore to the left.  I walk that way and then it gives me the option to go back to my previous save before I entered the throne room.

The fuck?

So instead of just saying 2 days before the attack and letting me control when to start that, they force me to start the quest, waste a good half hour, and then give me the option to back out and finish things up?  That's ridiculous.

So I leave and do everything I feel like doing.  I go back to the throne room when I'm ready and yup, I have to sit through the cut scenes and make the decisions again and then do the same fights again.  It totally ruined everything up to that and even ruined the rest of the area because I was already frustrated by that point.

So I'm fighting the shadows and I eventually get to the part where Walter is possessed.  I have no idea this is the final fight, I just assume it's something on the way.  So I fight him (and it's an extremely boring fight) and then all of a sudden it's over.

I loved Fable II's ending because it was so different, it was completely against the norm and it was awesome.  I just experienced Fable III's ending and I was bored by it.  It didn't do any of the cool things Fable II did, it was just a standard video game ending and it was a poorly done one at that.  It spent a lot of time building up the tension to that invasion and then it just fell completely flat on its face.

I disliked the ending because I made plenty of good decisions and I was sitting at -1,000,000 gold. I planned on getting it all back by my properties, but before I knew it, 53 days turned into the day of the attack. I was a little frusterated to say the least. Everyone died except some of my housekeepers and my family.

edit: but don't get me wrong, Fable III was da bomb. Definetely the best in the series IMO.  If you told me back in 2010 that I would like the next fable more than the next fallout I would tell you to stfu.

Wait, what?  You got down to 53 days?  I went straight from 121 to 1.

Well something like that. I was caught off guard regardless.

Yeah, it's pretty shitty they catch you off guard like that.  If the attack was supposed to come at some unknown time, that would be fine...but we know when the attack comes so it shouldn't come as that big of a surprise.

Or if they really wanted it to be that abrupt, then don't give us that way out right before the last fight.  I think that was actually the worst part because you just waste so much time and then they decide to give you the chance to finish everything.

I never saw that way out, lol. I was too preoccupied lighting baddies up with my bitchin' level 5 mage powers. It isn't just the way to make the game insanely easy, but it is also distractingly beautiful to see the explosions and such.

I kind of want to restart the game, maybe I'll do that this week. Go evil perhaps.