The Bard's Tale - Review @ RPG Codex

Some of the humor worked for me, but a lot of it struck a sour note. What I wanted (and this is not to say that what they intended to create was this) was Galaxy Quest for CRPGs — a game that made fun of the cliches of the genre but ultimately did so in a gentle fashion and pulled us into a revisited version of them with love. What I got was a game that existed solely to insult other games — and if you're gonna do that, you darn well better be above reproach yourself.

I'm not even saying that as a game designer. I'm saying it as somebody who plays games. If you're going to insult the normal games I play as a hobby, you better be a ton better than those normal games.

The Bard's Tale wasn't.