Bard's Tale IV - Review Roundup

Originally Posted by you
You know they bloody well are not developing an MMO so why do you keep yapping that crap.

Well never thought I would agree with Joxer, but he's right.

Fargo decided to go Co-op for Wasteland 3, and he has another game he said might be last that will be an online sandbox RPG. He wants to revolutionize emergent game-paly.

Link - https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/201…-here-to-stay/

Originally Posted by Zloth
Talos Principle: The RPG! I might have to push this a little higher up the wish list.

Not saying it's bad. It's just probably not what players were expecting and therefore I can understand if they give bad reviews.

Well co-op in wasteland 3 is hardly a mmo. After I don't see coop with 2 to 4 players as massive but maybe those who never play a game with someone might consider having another player as massive.
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The sandbox game I don't know.

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
Well never thought I would agree with Joxer, but he's right.

Fargo decided to go Co-op for Wasteland 3, and he has another game he said might be last that will be an online sandbox RPG. He wants to revolutionize emergent game-paly.

Link - https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/201…-here-to-stay/

Originally Posted by Zloth
Insulting your customers? And this from the senior editor??

Talos Principle: The RPG! I might have to push this a little higher up the wish list.

Yeah, I read the quote too and thought wow. But then I read the whole review, and its not as extreme as I thought. This is an old gamer who had some experience with the original and he just thinks all aspects of the game except the puzzles and combat are crappy and even those he thinks have elements which limit their enjoyment. He hates the save system, thinks the story telling and characters are awful, thinks the character building is uninteresting, the visuals are unimpressive, and the world is bland. So the review, whether one agrees with it or not is not as bad as that one statement suggests.

Originally Posted by you
Well co-op in wasteland 3 is hardly a mmo. After I don't see coop with 2 to 4 players as massive but maybe those who never play a game with someone might consider having another player as massive.
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The sandbox game I don't know.

Never called Wasteland 3 an MMO just said Fargo started with Co-Op.

His next step is an MMO sandbox RPG that will be online only.

Fargo is particularly keen to introduce “emergent gameplay” of the type that Divinity: Original Sin 2 used so effectively. Players could mess around with different elements to create fun interactions, like killing an enemy and electrifying their pooling blood so that it zaps anyone stood close, or throwing a poison flask at an undead ally to heal them while damaging any nearby enemies.

We’ll see more of that in CRPGs from now on, Fargo predicts, both because it makes for better games and because it’s inherently more attractive for streamers, who are gaining more and more influence over what the public play. “It’s more viral in nature, you’re more likely to get a friend to play,” he says.

Fargo believes that CRPGs will increasingly feature multiplayer – something the Original Sin games again pioneered – and Wasteland 3 will be the first in the series with a co-op campaign. “Every metric [suggests it will get] more and more difficult to do a single player game. You’ll see more multiplayer [in CRPGs], but the trick is for us to not give up the depth.”

His desire for multiplayer action and more emergent gameplay will culminate in a “secret project” to be unveiled later this year, he tells me, which will combine inXile’s love for storytelling with the freedom of a multiplayer sandbox game such as DayZ or Rust. Those games often simulate the breakdown of a post-apocalyptic society perfectly, but have stories that are often just: “Here’s a rock, go,” he says.

“I’ve been completely fascinated by the emergent gameplay that comes from open-world systems, but yet we love storytelling, and so we want to explore how we might be able to merge those worlds,” he explains.

I blame low sales for most crowdfunded RPGs except for Larian's Co-op RPG's.

Originally Posted by TheRealFluent
Intelligence governs spell damage, but magic is considered physical damage in the game, other than Mental, I think. INT definitely increases Mental damage, but Fire damage is physical. Maybe they thought Physical damage would be like setting someone on fire, while Mental damage is more "real" magic. Could be wrong on that one, though. And I hope I don't steamroll battles now, but I will turn it on to Hard and see if that makes a difference.

I use Intelligence all the time with my Practitioner for good damage. She can deal much more than my physical output. And some Intelligence with the Bard so she can drink more is good for my group, as is having my main Practitioner (bladecaster build, so more Strength-based) for when he needs to hit a few Arcane Barrage attacks to kill an enemy he can't reach or just for extra damage. Many ways to skin the cat in this game.

Lol, this reminds me like someone could go on and about how important intelligence and stuff is for wizards in Baldurs Gate 1 and how he can improves his damage, blah blah blah, while you take out your archers, kite with tank and decimate every enemy in few seconds while waiting for his wizard to cast and land one spell.

Originally Posted by Zogar Sag
Lol, this reminds me like someone could go on and about how important intelligence and stuff is for wizards in Baldurs Gate 1 and how he can improves his damage, blah blah blah, while you take out your archers, kite with tank and decimate every enemy in few seconds while waiting for his wizard to cast and land one spell.

Well diversity and creating your own playstyle is fun. I could roll 6 Fighters and just go Strength all the way, but that would be boring to me. I'm sure there's way to min/max the systems but I enjoy discovering my own path through. In Kingmaker magic is very useful, and in my BT4 playthrough it was, too. My Practitioner and Bard were key members and were making the game easier through the Intelligence stat, not Strength. I didn't even have my Bard equipped with a weapon.

Well, while my Bard has a weapon, I don't even use her for anything in the majority of fights.

And yeah…int would increase the dmg of Arcane Barrage. But as the explosion is strength based, no big use to that.

I have a video showing how I use it. She can do 80 or 90 damage in a turn, which is more than any of my Strength characters. I have her decked out in Meditate skills, Bard gives extra magic points and she can chain Arcane Barrage with high INT for 10+ damage each strike, recovering magic points with Soul Leech. Most I've done is like 110 damage with 6 or 7 magic points. At this point in the game it's my best attack, especially against armored foes.

I am only doing like 5 or 6 dmg with that spell, but it's still my main mage spell anyways as I heavily use it for the explosions, which have strength based damage.
Meaning I cast the spell on enemies in the middle and then hit them with melee, which makes the debuff explode and gives everyone (up to 6 enemies) about 15 damage each. With the help of items on one of my mages it also reduces the armor by 18.
Meaning that the target character loses 36 armor, takes 10 mental damage + 30 physical dmg on 6 characters, for 2 mana points, and it's likely that one of them crits, which is another spell.

Originally Posted by Kordanor
I am only doing like 5 or 6 dmg with that spell, but it's still my main mage spell anyways as I heavily use it for the explosions, which have strength based damage.
Meaning I cast the spell on enemies in the middle and then hit them with melee, which makes the debuff explode and gives everyone (up to 6 enemies) about 15 damage each. With the help of items on one of my mages it also reduces the armor by 18.
Meaning that the target character loses 36 armor, takes 10 mental damage + 30 physical dmg on 6 characters, for 2 mana points, and it's likely that one of them crits, which is another spell.

That's…very strong. But a lot of times I'll take out any armored foe in one round with Arcane Barrage and not have to rend their armor. To each their own but your way does sound very powerful.

Originally Posted by TheRealFluent
That's…very strong. But a lot of times I'll take out any armored foe in one round with Arcane Barrage and not have to rend their armor. To each their own but your way does sound very powerful.

I'm at a point where most of the times there is no second round. Bard uses the song that gives all enemies extra damage when hit, some taunting by fighters to line them up, move practitioner so that the flame spell costs only one mana, torch. That one removes any armour and probably kills off one or two. And I still have 5 opportunity points to kill off the rest, 6 since the Trow Rogue will kill at least one. Round two seldom happens, round 3 never does.

Originally Posted by TomRon
I'm at a point where most of the times there is no second round. Bard uses the song that gives all enemies extra damage when hit, some taunting by fighters to line them up, move practitioner so that the flame spell costs only one mana, torch. That one removes any armour and probably kills off one or two. And I still have 5 opportunity points to kill off the rest, 6 since the Trow Rogue will kill at least one. Round two seldom happens, round 3 never does.

Yep, similar here.
Though the flame spell is a great idea. I am not sure if that applies (it does for opportunity) but you might be able to combine this with the red boots even, which allow you to move twice for free. Ofc you cannot wear both boots on the same character, but the opportunity cost reduction you also get when your character is being moved. So you might get that -1 mana for 0 opportunity. Or ofc you use an attack which just moves your characters around as a side effect of which there are also a couple. So you'd have 6 times rend and lots of explosions for just 1 mana.

However…there are options which are even more cheesy…

Originally Posted by Kordanor
Yep, similar here.
Though the flame spell is a great idea. I am not sure if that applies (it does for opportunity) but you might be able to combine this with the red boots even, which allow you to move twice for free. Ofc you cannot wear both boots on the same character, but the opportunity cost reduction you also get when your character is being moved. So you might get that -1 mana for 0 opportunity. Or ofc you use an attack which just moves your characters around as a side effect of which there are also a couple. So you'd have 6 times rend and lots of explosions for just 1 mana.

However…there are options which are even more cheesy…

Yeah, I did use the red boots like that earlier in the game, now I tend to use one opporunity for the warbanner instead since then I can move several characters around without further cost.

I still like how we all approached things in different ways. Just wish Hard makes it more challenging when I go back to it. Or maybe they can patch in a harder mode even, that would be sweet.

As a high level backer, I'm not touching this until it's patched completely; nor until the Legacy Mode is available after that so that the game actually somewhat resembles a proper Bard's Tale experience. Hopefully the physical rewards will have gone out to backers by that time as well.

All of this should have been done before it was released, when beta testers gave the feedback. InXile haven't really done themselves any favors with the way it has been generally handled and received.

While waiting for Patches I'm playing other games instead … However, I'm not sure whether I want to download 26 GB … Apparingly this game is meant to be made for townspeaople with high-speed internet … In more rural areas, things are so much different …

Eurogamer's reviewer recommends it, but not to everyone:
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2…zzlers-delight

If there's such thing as a B-movie game, The Bard's Tale 4: Barrows Deep is it. I don't mean it detrimentally, because although it's scruffy, it has bags of charisma, and by not trying to please everybody it revels in being different. And being different in a world of so many spectacular role-playing games means everything. If you don't like puzzles, I hope I've made it clear you should probably avoid The Bard's Tale 4, but if you do - if you take pleasure in a mental stretch - then there's an awful lot here for you.

The puzzles are really fun, though. They helped to extend the life of the game and made me think while playing, which I see as huge positives. I'd guess that around thirty percent of my total playtime was spent trying to figure out or resolve the multiple puzzles.

I am near the end now and basically had my most frustrating experience in the last hour.

First I ran through some traps, and got minor damage. However this damage dont stof when you are out of the traps, not immediately anyways. Seems like some check whether or not you still stand in traps is incorrect. While this dmg is minor, even 1 point of damage is a lot if your party screams that they are hit 30 times after you left the trap (and it's annoying).
Well, the damage went away after a point.
A bit later I engaged into a combat and…for the fight I was ported under the floor.
While I had another combat already where I haven't been able to see my enemy, this worked in this instance. But after I won the combat, which was extremely easy again, I was stuck under the level. And as everything was incredibly easy, I didn't bother to use the stones for saving…meaning I had to repeat the whole shit with the traps.

Just this time I wanted to be clever. After I solved the majority of trap-crap I wanted to zone out of the level to 1. save and 2. "load" the game so that the trap damage hopefully goes away.
Well…that kind of didn't work. Game got stuck in loading screen and then crashed.

And today…I have to repeat the whole crap a third time…yay….