Bard's Tale IV - Released

Someone with a very high end video card said the performance is "acceptable". One person responded to his post, saying he is a troll though.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/566090/discussions/0/1741094390485042074/

Finally got the key (support reacted after I wrote an e-mail).

Gee, the fact that you might need a higher end computer to run this bloody game doesn't sit well with me at all. Ahhh well, I'll just have to hope that by the time I get around to playing it, some of the bugs and performance issues will have been addressed.

Performance is fine with a 1070 and 1440p. Since that is what I have i can't comment on how well it runs if you turn graphics down and use a 1060.

Arkadia7 said:

Someone with a very high end video card said the performance is "acceptable". One person responded to his post, saying he is a troll though.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/566090/discussions/0/1741094390485042074/

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joxer said:

Finally got the key (support reacted after I wrote an e-mail).

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Was it a polite email, or did you go full-Joxer?

LOL it was business, not pleasure. Quoting:

Subject: No key received
Body:
Just saying.
My inbox is empty.

JoxerTM

Okay, I'm not intending to play this quite yet, but I thought I'd give it a quick spin to check the performance.
Fairly ordinary PC: i5-4570, 12GB RAM, 1050 GTX, 1680x1050 (max for my old monitor, better monitor reserved for work PC )

At Ultra everything and Temporal AA (which were the defaults it started with):
22-28 FPS. Noticeable movement blurs when it hiccups occasionally

At High everything and FXAA (what it gave me when I hit the auto-detect button, aside from me manually changing the AA):
28-35 FPS. Graphics look decidedly dated, with blurred crappy textures.
If this is "high", I don't want to see anything lower. (Well, okay, I will for science's sake...)
I don't have an amazing machine, but I can run some pretty recent games at pretty enough settings, so this is a surprise.

Okay, the muddy textures are obviously a bug.
There is no difference in texture quality between Low, Medium, and High for me. Basically anything below Ultra sets it to Low textures. *sigh*

Reviews are up to 46% on steam. 3.5 on GOG.

So far I haven't read any negative reviews that don't either complain about optimization or not being faithful to the originals, but many point out that the character building is very shallow which is something that I've been saying for awhile.

Trying to buy it but once again my debit card is giving me issues. Will check it out tomorrow, hopefully when the 1080ti arrives at the same time to give it the full treatment.

Could definitely have used some more time.

-The grid movement option is still greyed out
-the short animation sequence of the main menu is still looped in a way, that the whole screen turns back for a half second between each repetition
-Language setting in the game is not saved, have to set it back to english from german every time
-it still keeps starting in my wrong screen (my vertical second screen) where I need to move it from
-translation of new stuff (since beta) and references to skill into German is not finished
-after two hours I got a blue screen. My guess: my gtx 1070 which I set to 40% fan speed max, overheated.
-you actually need to use a digital code wheel to use some extra riddles and in order to use that thing you need to print it, and cut it out with a knife? seriously?
I put it together in gimp now and it should work that way. Still a pita.

Everything about the gameplay itself is actually fine so far...but it should have received more polishing....

I found that reducing shadows and AA, while keeping everything else to Ultra, gave me the best FPS balance. Often in the 40s, which is good enough for me (esp. given that combat is TB). Once you get into the dungeon parts things improve in looks as well. The beginning area doesn't give the best first impression. One thing I definitely don't like: the savepoint system.
Anyway, despite this I'm now looking forward to getting into it properly, once I finish Starcrawlers.

I tried that StarCrawlers game to see what i thought about this genre in this day and age, i guess this is somewhat similar, combat/movement. I felt really disconnected to the world i must say, like some big vehicle that can't get up-close and personal with anything. Just an overall really cheap feeling, that it was something belonging in the past.

Total skip for me (which is good, too many games to buy and play )

vurt said:

I tried that StarCrawlers game to see what i thought about this genre in this day and age, i guess this is somewhat similar, combat/movement. I felt really disconnected to the world i must say, like some big vehicle that can't get up-close and personal with anything. Just an overall really cheap feeling, that it was something belonging in the past.

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Well, there's probably a higher chance you'll like Bard's Tale IV. Full freedom movement (like Wizardry 8) and the TB combat looks snazzier. But yeah, if blobbers ain't your thing then fair enough.

StarCrawlers has "full" movement too, but it's still not moving like a character in TES or something, its more like controlling a vehicle. I doubt you'll be able to stray of a specific path and just climb up a mountain or dive into a lake, or jump up on a rock to see what's in the distance etc.

vurt said:

StarCrawlers has "full" movement too

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No, it has grid-locked, step-wise, TB movement. You take single steps in a grid. The creatures outside of combat take their step-wise move after you've taken a step. Physical traps/barriers are the exception in that they stay in real-time and require timing, but even then you have to move in a step-wise fashion.

BT IV is like Wizardry 8 in that you have full freedom of movement outside of combat, not locked to a grid.

It does have free mouse-look, if that's what you're referring to.
But yes, you can't stray off the path, as you describe.

Downloading now, not sure I will get much time with it this week ... hopeful for a quick patch cycle

So, the usual inXile release: poor optimization at launch, lots of bugs, unpolished. Why does that sound so familiar?!
So, most likely we will see a tons of patches for at least two years. Guess that is when i am going to buy it.

I consider myself an Inxile fanboy since I've really enjoyed all their recent offerings, but to have such poor optimisation at launch does sound worrysome. I hope they get their shit together fast so they don't experience another burn like with T:ToN, it's doubtful if the company will survive that?

I was considering playing this straight away and putting PoE2 on hold for a while, but I guess I'll wait a bit…

Yeah, I'm going to wait for a patch or two.

While I didn't play very long, I wandered around town a good bit. I like all the music around town. The game looked great to me, and I had no problems when actually in the game. Strangely, I saw all the problems whenever I was in a menu of some sort. I was on a GTX 1080 and playing on Ultra in 4k, and then I turned a couple other things up. Basically, I cranked it.

I saw some slow-loading textures, but that was during character creation. I saw Kordanor's badly edited video loop somewhere around the main menu. I tried to make a Trow caster, but the different portraits wouldn't load for that combination. By the way, why do all the dwarves look like Pinhead? I then took a peek at the rest of character creation, and that's where I got frustrated and quit.

Now, I'm not normally a blobber guy, but it seems to me character creation is -- or should be -- rather important to the genre. I recall that being the case with Wizardry 8. Character development looked weak as hell. It looked slightly worse than Skyrim.

As I quit, I was having real trouble imagining creating a character there that I could give a frog's fat arse about. Walking around town was nice, though. Maybe atmosphere will carry me through, but it sure would help if I didn't have to play some dev's on-rails "archetype."