Interplay - The Bard's Tale

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SasqWatch
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Kieron Gillen replays The Bard's Tale (the 1985 one) and scribes up his thoughts at RPS.
It’s an odd experience. After a worryingly short period of time, Skara Brae gets beneath my fingertips. I had most of the city memorised, and the muscle memory is still there. Soon I’m running from the guild to the central temples to the magical recharge-shop to the Review Board with barely a glance at the screen. Stepping into the Catacombs (The Mad God’s Name is “Tarjan”, twenty-years out of date Spoiler fans) I effortlessly locate the room featuring 9 Wights which I used as an early grinding run, relying on my bard blowing his area-effect Fire Horn before they tore us to pieces, for about 1500XP a pop. How can I remember all this when I don’t remember the name of any 95% of my classmates? But since it’s a fledgling prototype of the modern RPG, there’s little which hasn’t been seen in more advanced games. While an interesting historical exercise, it fails on the ultimate test: which is “Is there a reason to play it now”?
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This was fun to read. Bards Tale was my first CRPG, and one of the first games I played for any amount of time. That was back in my Amiga days. The greatest mapping experience though was the fairy tale adventure. I had a HUGE map of the land, altough I never got close to finishing that game (just like Bards Tale - those games were hard!).
 
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I never played it. I think I need to!
 
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I played Bards Tale 2 for 3 month - mapping, fighting and solving teleporter puzzles for hours - a great experience.
One of the best features of Bards Tale: Charming monsters into your own party - Father Kringle rules.
 
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Somone is doing a bards tale remake with the devil whiskey engine. Its the only project I know that tries to remake all three of them. I never played bards tale but they are all so dated that Id rather play remake than the originals.
 
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There's a new NWN1 mod for Bard's Tale. I've downloaded it, but not played it yet. Perhaps in a Team Corwin outing later this year. :)
 
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BT2 was my first crpg. So many graph pages with maps, notes and clues. And it all fell apart when it turned out I'd missed a password in Dargoth's Tower and was far too pissed of to scour the area again looking for it. Had most of the other wand pieces already too :(
 
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