Bard's Tale IV - Released

The long wait is over - Bard's Tale IV has been released today on Steam and GOG:

Bard's Tale IV

Over one hundred years later, the terrible events of Skara Brae’s violent destruction are nearly forgotten. Hidden in the shadows, an evil has waited patiently. Until now. Fanatics are gathering control, the famous Adventurer’s Guild has been outlawed and its members persecuted, and you must rise up in defiance to become the hero that the realm needs. Featuring 40+ hours of gameplay, 350 speaking parts, and over 100 pieces of incredible music.

Create the Hero You Want To Be
Play as Bard, Fighter, Practitioner, and Rogue. Each archetype features 60-70 skills and collectively they unlock 21 unique classes. Build an array of characters to make each playthrough a unique experience.

Craft your Party, Your Way
Develop, progress, and grow a party of adventurers as you see fit. Start your party with a single character. Recruit or create new heroes to bolster your ranks. Level up and customize their skills and gear. Summon creatures into battle to fight for you! Build a party that suits your unique play style!

An Adventure Around Every Corner
Traverse a beautiful world filled with wonder and powered by Unreal Engine 4. Explore towns full of quest givers, fight your way through dark and deadly dungeons, and navigate beautiful rolling hills, dense forests, and icy wastes.

Outsmart Evil
Battle your enemies in dynamic, intuitive turn-based tactical combat that rewards clever thinking. Combine spells and skills for increased effects greater than the sum of their parts. Use superior strategies, thoughtful positioning, and deadly combos to bring down your foes!

Unlock the Secrets of the Past
Unravel challenging mysteries. If your enemies don’t get you, the devious riddles, demanding puzzles, and dangerous traps which await just might. For those bold enough to seek them out, hidden rewards await your discovery.

Recover Powerful Artifacts
The sense of discovery and mystery doesn’t stop with the environment. Recover ancient Elven weapons imbued with mystical powers and containing secrets which you’ll need to uncover by carefully examining them. Doing so will gain you deadly advantages in the battles that lie ahead.

More information.

Ouch, 21% on steam right now! Mostly complaints about bugs.

Didn't the game have an open beta? How did it manage to get released in this state? Oh, well… gotta wait a few weeks it seems.

On the other hand, some reviews do actually have problems with the game itself, not just bugs:

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/…mended/566090/

Ouch.

It's funny early reviews never mentioned this.

Where's the truth in gaming journalism nowadays?

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
It's funny early reviews never mentioned this.

Where's the truth in gaming journalism nowadays?

https://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=40455

Originally Posted by crpgnut
https://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=40455

Not me I just post links to others articles & videos.

ACG gave it a positive review

Originally Posted by TheSHEEEP
Didn't the game have an open beta? How did it manage to get released in this state? Oh, well… gotta wait a few weeks it seems.

On the other hand, some reviews do actually have problems with the game itself, not just bugs:

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/…mended/566090/
Ouch.

I like reason #10 as it was the only Bards Tale game I played. It's also why I was interested in a new modern game of the series over playing the remastered games.

And this is one of the major gripes people have:

Anyone remember the 2004 reimplementation of Bards Tale? Yes, that atrocity of a game that basically had a Bard run through Dungeons in Diablo Style, using immature potty humour? That very same kind of humour is now part of Bards Tale, and the Backers hate it.While Bards Tale never was a super serious game, it still had at times a very dark background, and this new game is littered with immature jokes and stuff like that all over the place.

It's looking pretty ugly. Beyond the numerous complaints about bugs I've also seen stuff like the game using a limited save point system and a lack of options in character creation.

I kind of figured initial reviews would be bad. It's a game that takes a beloved game that people grew up with and completely rewrites it. Every game that's ever done that has gotten some pretty horrible initial Steam reviews, no matter how good or bad it is. This is one of the few cases where I trust professional reviews much more than Steam ones.

I'm probably still going to pick it up, I've got a day off tomorrow and I'm willing to take the chance. If it turns out to actually be bad I can at least warn people away.

I still didn't get the key.

Yea, there aren't many reviews right now. Just checked. If going by the written reviews the score would be a lot higher than 20%, because there are plenty of positive reviews compared to the negative ones. At any rate, it is not an 80-20 negative ratio!

Also, some people will hate the game no matter what, if its a remake and it changes "X" or changes "Y", or isn't exactly the way the old game was in terms of systems or whatnot. That is a pretty silly way to review a game, in my humble opinion, and doesn't help others who want to know if its a good game or not. So, a deep delve into the negative reviews may also be useful, to see if they are based on solid criticisms.

And lastly, another thing to consider - there seems to be a lot of hate or antagonism directed towards Brian Fargo and his company from certain quarters…(*cough* rpg codex) Not sure why, but I noticed it a long time ago when reading their forum. So, some of those negative scores and/or reviews could be "trolling" or doing negative purposes not based on the game but based on prior ill will.

Having said all that, I don't want to come off as a total inXile fanboy either, so if there are indeed a ton of bugs in the game, it might be best to wait until they issue patches to fix the major ones before buying it.

Just finished downloading, I think I'm going to wait a little while, to see if the game is going to get patched, I think it might need it judging by the negatives on steam.

Well I haven't gotten too far but no lock up or bugs yet. Also it doens't take several hours before you can select a custom character if you want - it only takes about 10 or 15 minutes. Not sure how he derived 0 replay value either (referring to that review linked above).

I was reading some of the steam forum discussions of this game. Some people are questioning the negative reviews.

But one thread talks about how the game has "save points".

https://steamcommunity.com/app/56609…4390484476486/

And there are some folk who responded who absolutely hate these types of save systems, (I'm one of them). This is one issue that I agree with those who generally say that it should always be "save at will" in rpgs. That said, others are saying the original game was like this, and for this style of old school rpg, that this is how it should be, and basically - you should "git good". So, just presenting both sides.

Updated- you can save at any time by quitting to main menu, according to a later comment in the above mentioned steam thread.

To clarify - I don't own this game, nor do I plan to get it. I'm not a fan of what they call "blobber" type games like this - it just isn't my thing. So take my comments with that in mind. (obviously I do like inXile as a company though, so this is mainly why this interests me)

Somebody needs to explain to me why you would bring back a classic franchise and then then create a game for your fan base that requires need a killer PC to play it. Sounds like a huge disconnect. It's unfortunate. Can we get some more Wizardry or Might & Magic now?

Holy bejeezus, I better get on with finishing Starcrawlers so I can play this while it's current.

Don't like the sound of "performance issues". Hope it runs at reasonable settings on my vanilla 1050

(I got the GOG version via Kickstarter; hopefully they patch that with the same alacrity they do the Steam version)

Looks to me like they made a bit of an error in the way they pitched the graphics. They've used Unreal in a way that's quite demanding, and in some scenes looks good, but didn't have the artistic resources to create a AAA quality world. The result is something that runs like it's pushing the envelope, but really doesn't look like it. That tends to annoy people.

I'm interested in reading performance reports from you. For comparison's sake, my current PC is: GTX 760 4GB VRAM, 8GB RAM and i7-3770K, no SSDs, monitor 1080p.

Yeah, it isn't a beefy machine by any means. I bought some computer parts but then I stopped. Better start to buy the other needed parts

Well my PC is pretty rubbish: AMD FX-6300, GTX 750 ti 2GB VRAM, 8 GB RAM, HDD but the game runs better than i expected (especially after reading some of steam reviews). I play it on my native res 1920x1080 on low-medium settings. Havent noticed any major bugs, though I only played for about 2 hours. Not a huge blobber fan but the game is pretty good so far.