Experience:
I have played, 1,433.4 hrs of this game, I have customized, made my own homebrew fable craft campaigns, I have added over 800+ custom characters, more than 100 Scenes/battle maps, bought most of the packs (heist one came later and lost inspiration to continue engaging with this game)and used the monthly subscription. I invested many hours using this app because I enjoyed the simple systems and vtt. Many of my friends and I have made some memories here thx to our own creative input. With all that being said, I would only recommend playing this game if you plan to introduce people to simple Roleplay VTT, but as a long term platform it won't work. I will be putting the good & bad of this game.
I stopped playing a couple months ago so lmk if any issue I have has gotten fixed, but performance has stayed the same from what I tried just before making this review.
🎲 Gameplay 6.5/10
Gameplay is simple. In combat you can drag your token to move, use an opening ability, and/or use an ability. Nothing crazy but it's always fun to see these animations as you do an attack on an enemy. However, certain restrictions like not being able to attack then move, seem unnecessarily holding back options in combat. Levels are cool, but limited and there is lack of control for players & Dms! I can recall 2 times where I accidently lvl up a player and I couldn’t lvl down so I lvl up the whole party. It was annoying. Sometimes the game would be stuck and a player wouldn’t be able to do a move they wanted and it ruin combo they were going for, elementalist for example could burn then use combustion to do an aoe, instead the game wouldn't let them use it and ruined their chance to play what they wanted. But I will go more into that in the next section. I wish DMS could affect combat by being able to manually remove/add effects. RP is based on the player like anything else so nothing to rate there, sessions made by fable are short which is good and bad. I feel that the price and things you receive for the adventure packs are not worth honestly. Again play for free try it but honestly unless you get into it. My homebrew campaigns were longer and fixed that issue for my friends.
⚡ Performance/Bugs 1/10
If there’s anything I actually despised about this game was how many bugs there were… is what I would say, if it wasn't for the fact that I myself loaded the game once more today and the glitches I’ve experienced for a year are not fixed. I have mentioned multiple times, went and texted on dms with staff, which side note, are responsive and try to help. However with each version of the game instead of getting less bugs I feel one bug was traded for another, There is times here the immersion of the RP are at an all time high and when trying to switch to the tokens to introduce a character I had to wait 21-33 seconds for screen to load, then I would switch the scene then back to tokens and have to wait another 30 seconds. Sorry but like bro wdym I have to wait like I’m playing a ps2 game switching scenes. No it’s not right and to this day the issue is still active a year later. At most I had to do my own troubleshooting that involved deleting data (characters, maps, etc) Clearing cache about everything you can think of with files/steam. Still after all that I could only reduce the issue by 13 seconds, this is after multiple updates as well. It feels like Dio is stopping time when I try to get characters. There were issues where the game would literally crash out of nowhere for no good reason. Then we would try to get back into the game, but it asked to sign in once more, and every time it would give an error code. It wasn’t an update because this would happen to half the party and the rest would still be able to play, like what. So many things I could talk about but you can see them yourself in their discord bug reports. It was so bad we started making the term “it’s fabling” for any game that would lag or crash. Like I understand it was early access but I paid over $100 in purchases for adventures and characters plus months of subscription and I was getting bugs after bugs. My commitment to this game and seeing potential plus our character being in fable is what kept us going. I had to while dming, time the amount of time it would take to bring a token in and out because of the 30 sec delay, so it didn’t ruin the immersion for my players. Like it’s so bad and no solution to this date after a year is insane. After it was brought up more than enough times. If this bug had been from the beginning of our campaigns I would’ve straight up stopped playing this game. Again this is but one offender there are more glitches that make this seem like it’s running on half a potato. I believe this issue is with memory, but I didn’t go past any limits and the subscriptions says unlimited custom maps and characters, so performance not working for that is not an excuse. And that’s me guessing the issue might be something else. Genuinely idk how I played this sometimes. *FYI it’s not performance from the device, I have handled BG3, GTA 5, MINECRAFT w over 400 mods, etc. I think my computer can handle it*
🌍 Presentation 8/10
The art of this game is very well done, I appreciate it not being AI and the animated versions are really good bg. I use my own images for my homebrew campaigns, but because of how good the art is I use the battlemaps and scenes from the game! I based a whole 3 shot campaign of the tree scene at the mushroom region lol.The final fight was held there using the animated battle map, It was a good campaign. The UI is easy to understand and the tutorial helps with basics as well. Nothing more to say but good job on the style and presentation lol!
⭐ Experience as a long time Dm/Player 5/10
With many issues and many awesome play sessions I would say the experience of playing the game is right down the middle, which can basically sum up this game. It’s ok. Nothing crazy but nothing too bad (!!!BESIDES THE BUGS OFC THOSE WERE TERRIBLE IF I HAVEN’T MADE IT CLEAR!!!). I feel conflicted because I feel it helped me see RP/VTT in a new light and get more into other VTT. I was already a D&D player, but it was refreshing to see an easy way to host campaigns of my own without having to factor a whole lot. I made my own homebrew rules and abilities for our fablecraft sessions, although I wish the game had more configurations. Instead abilities for enemies are locked to themselves; you can’t create a custom homebrew character with abilities from different characters, instead if you want more unique custom characters you need to buy the brawler pack or other adventures to get more things to play with. Locked behind a paywall which fine I understand but I’m already paying monthly subscription and packs. Not having the ability still to make my own from scratch homebrew characters is wild. Being a player is fine. I feel it’s fun and dependent on the dm plus it’s way easier.
+= Overall: 5.1/10
Final thoughts: I believe if you want a simple game to host campaigns in or introduce friends to the world of VTT then this a nice start, but far from a masterpiece let alone a good product to use long term. Purchases are not worth it in the end(don’t waste your money), customizations/configurations are very limited, there are many bugs that can ruin the experience out right and make you not want to play, the art is great, and the ui is very friendly. A VTT to try but leaves much to be desired. I will also include here some of my friends' ratings on the game.
Friend #1:
Gameplay: 6/10 Performance: 4/10 Presentation: 5/10 Experience as a long time Dm/Player 5/10 Overall: 5.0/10
Friend #2
Gameplay 7/10 Performance 6/10 Presentation 7/10 Experience as a long time Dm/Player ?/10
Overall: 7.0/10
