My review of Fabledom
I’ve talked about Fabledom before and I rarely talk about the same game twice, even if to compare Early Access with the final version. I had saved Fabledom in my schedule because if they made it more challenging there was the potential for it to be one of my favorite city-builders. It’s a clearly better game now, but it still has the same problems, they’re just less noticeable.
Now there is information aplenty about all the games on the market. No matter how many games come out during the year, someone will talk or write about them, but in the past it wasn’t like that, we bought many of the games based on the title and three printscreens that were on the back cover. If we were in the 1990s, Fabledom would be an irresistible game as it is one of the most beautiful games of the genre, appearing like a beautiful watercolor on our computer screen.
Just as it was no longer the case in Early Access, Fabledom is not just a pretty face, but continues to leave a little to be desired in the options it provides to the player, and in the management of dead times, when it seems like we have nothing to do beyond waiting for the next romantic interaction, or population milestone, and even this is subjective because the way the game is presented to us we don’t understand what the endgame will be like until we get there, and our interactions before that matter a lot to the way we play it afterwords.
This time management and interaction opportunities was one of the chapters in which Fabledom improved the most. There are now more buildings that in turn offer us more opportunities for interaction and new ways to solve problems, something that occupies us more time and practically guides us by hand until there is no longer any new structure to place on the playing field, but even with this Fabledom is not an endless game.
Fabledom is divided into chapters, but the action that triggers them is not visible, they simply activate automatically when we reach certain millestones that we are not previously aware of. This is not important during most of the game as we are excited about progressing, making our village grow, making it huge, but after that point we are left only with the diplomatic and romantic interactions, something we don’t even see taking place.
Perhaps if I had known in advance that the game would stagnate, I would have gone to war with one of the other Kingdoms, just to entertain myself, but as friendship between Kingdoms was beneficial for commercial exchanges, I always tried to foster friendship between everyone, like a big and happy family living in peace and harmony, something that, although not wrong, may not have been the most dynamic option for the future.
With this I have to say that there was an effort to ensure that the game did not become just a tycoon. There are random events that happen, ways to use our army in addition to diplomatic missions, we can be attacked by dragons, and be forced to defend ourselves, the possibility of courting someone until they become our King or Queen or even playing with our relationships with other monarchs, the latter being the funniest and most dynamic because of the military aspect of the game.
We can also try to make a beautiful Kingdom, not only in story mode, but also in sandbox mode where resources are not an issue. Building options are very limited, but when properly placed they allow for beautiful Kingdoms. I’ve seen pictures of many of those, but I don’t have the creativity to do these things, I’m just one of those practical ones who put the houses where they fit and move on.
Now, since its launch a year ago, Fabledom has grown in many aspects but has not changed its concept, and strangely enough, that pleases me a lot. I continue to think of strategies to test in my Kingdom while I work, but I feel like I don’t have much more to do in about 10 hours on the save, and that’s the essential difference to other games of the genre, its finiteness.
Fabledom knows where it is good and what it is best able to offer to the player. Fabledom is exciting at the beginning, grabbing us with its aesthetics, soundtrack and speed, in such a way that it disguises its limitations practically until the end of the game, but in an increasingly fast-consuming world, it is these games that win the race for a spotlight, since they keep us trapped until the end, and they let us go without leaving us with regret for not having seen everything. Fabledom isn’t the best city-builder I’ve ever played, but I really like it.
