Bard's Tale IV - Review Roundup

[you]

I'm in the castle sewers with patch 2 and got a 'fatal error' standing around; but anyway the last couple of areas have been very disappointing both regards to combat balance and items. I found something like 9 chests (some very well hidden) that contain not much more than 80 gold coins; no items. I've found a few items but most of it is junk. While I don't expect every chest to contain grand items i'm not even finding stuff equivalent to what I found around level 10. With regards to combat it isn't that I've become overpowered; many of the enemy groups are simply underpower even for much lower level.
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Anyway i'm not sure if you are past the castle but I'm hopeful i'm near the end. I felt the game started out really well but from the isle forward it seems pretty unfinished in many many ways.

 

[Kordanor]

Still running around in the castle atm after having an actual crash in the sewers.

And yeah, I fully agree on the loot as well as the difficulty.

It's only loot from everywhere. Chest with 80 coins, or enemies who have 3 stacks of 99 and some bones, woohoo.
And while I'd say that I am overpowered and I find it hard to understand how you cannot be overpowered at that point, the balancing of the enemies is pretty bad in addition to that at that point of the game. After you killed some groups of 8 anemies which are supposed to be strong showing as orange, you basically fight several groups of only 1/2 or 2/3 of that power. Especially with a game which is not reaction based and purely tactical, also meaning that if you win once you are likely to reproduce it easily, these fight are just horrible balanced. You simply cannot have problems with them if you won the previous fight.
Furthermore combat becomes much more frequent since about mid game.