Bard's Tale IV - Review @ RPG Codex

RPG Codex Review: The Bard's Tale IV

The first Bard's Tale, released in 1985, was a graphical wonder for the time. While Wizardry was still doing wire-frame dungeons, Bard's Tale brought in a first-person view where buildings had shape, walls had cracks and characters colorful animated portraits. There was even music!

In a sense, this is perhaps where Bard's Tale IV is most faithful to the series' roots: it's an attempt at elevating the production values of the genre, this time making a mass market AAA dungeon-crawler, with a budget of several million dollars. Sure, Legend of Grimrock I & II look great and certainly this game wouldn't exist without them, but they still have that indie-ish feel, especially in their commitment to old-school sensibilities.

Because make no mistake, Bard's Tale IV isn't an old-school RPG.

It's interesting to read old Kickstarter updates, when InXIle was promising a branching story, a world that would react to your party's races, all classes from the original series, exploring other realms, hundreds of monsters like dragons and anthropophagie, etc. Absolutely nothing of that is present here. You won't find the monsters that they showed on the videos, and the much-promised grid-based movement mode is still greyed out in the menu, scheduled for a future update. I wouldn't even call this a "true" dungeon-crawler, given the linear level design, but we'll get to that later.

For the purpose of this review, I'll ignore those previous promises (we already have a forum emote specifically for those) and just focus on what the currently released game promises - a modern take on dungeon crawlers, with gorgeous graphics, tons of puzzles and a Hearthstone-inspired combat.

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Finale

When it works, Bard's Tale IV is a satisfying glimpse of what a AAA dungeon-crawler can be. There were moments of pure joy, exploring beautiful vistas, solving interesting puzzles and finding an unique enemy behind a secret door. I'd say I had about 10 hours of good moments in total, mostly in the first half of the game, when the combat and itemization still make sense, and in a few well-made areas or puzzles later on.

But I spent almost 30 hours playing it, and the other 20 hours where extremely repetitive and dull. This is not a good ratio, and it is all due to pointless filler content, that exacerbates every single underlying flaw the game has. I had to force myself to finish it in order to write this review, because the final hours are nothing more then doing mechanical puzzles and fighting cultists over and over. The final puzzle is literally a set of four gear puzzles that must be solved to unlock a larger gear puzzle.

And that's a shame. Even if Bard's Tale IV has nothing to do with old-school dungeon crawlers, it could still be a fun new take on the genre, a kind of "Portal RPG". However, while it was certainly hurt by a rushed release and a terrible starting area, what really dooms it is this recurrent hubris some developers have of always making the longest RPG possible at the expense of anything else, of valuing marketing selling points more than the player's time. Portal 2 is the most famous and highest rated puzzle game of all time, lasting about 8 hours long. Its mechanics are undoubtedly fun, but I doubt many people would even finish the game if they added a tons of dull low-effort filler content to make it 30-40 hours long.

The Bard's Tale IV can't be saved by an enhanced edition or re-balancing patch, because the biggest problem isn't its systems. It needs an abridged version.

Originally Posted by forgottenlor
I'm playing it now and its a good enough game for what it is, but the author is spot on with many of his criticisms. The game is incredibly ambitious in many of the wrong ways. When the kickstarter started, one backer hoped the game would do for Bard's Tale what Legend of Grimrock did for Dungeon Keeper. That was a seven man team who made a low budget but modern dungeon crawler keeping many old school mechanics. Bard's Tale is actually a pretty fun puzzle game/Dungeon crawler hybrid, but I am amazed how one can try to sell backers on a retro game and then make a game in what I would consider a completely new genre. Also investing so much money on things I'd consider pretty periphery for the game like voice acting when the writing isn't even that good, means ending up with a game that cost 4-5 times as much as the backers gave, so you need a bunch of other people to buy the game to break even. But the problem there is that there are some very old school mechanics in the game like the save system, which doesn't exactly invite a broader audience. Again, I think its a decent game, but to me it seems like a terrible business model, when the alternative would have been to make a much lower budget game that most backers actually wanted and then be happy with any additional profit. I fear for InXile this will be even more financially disasterous than Torment.

Originally Posted by Dasale
I always believed it would be a sell failure because of the sub genre.

But how it compares with M&M X? I enjoyed quite much MMX and almost finished a third full play. Players are something, myself is another. :-) But read comments answering the question could help decide buy it soon or later.

Originally Posted by Vindicator

Speaking of Legend of Grimrock… Any word on what that team has been up to?

Originally Posted by Ron Obvious
They are working on this game http://druidstone-game.com/

Originally Posted by Caidh
I thought BT4 was fun - not great - but fun. Not nearly as good as MMX though - but I'm biased. I adored MMX and Might and Magic was always my favorite series.

Originally Posted by Ron Obvious
They are working on this game http://druidstone-game.com/

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
Thanks I didn't know they were the developer of that game.

Just checked it's a few of the team members with a different studio.

Spoiler – Team Roster

The game is being developed by a small, self-funded independent team. By staying 100% independent the team retains full creative control on the project and can even choose to take unconventional approaches to game design if they so wish.

Petri Häkkinen has been programming since the 80s and making games as a hobbyist and as a professional for 25 years. Petri is in charge of programming, game design and writing the story for Druidstone. He is an avid tabletop gamer since he started running D&D for his friends in his childhood. Petri is best known as the designer & programmer of Legend of Grimrock games.

Juho Salila is the art director of the team. Juho’s skill are highly varied as he is the master of traditional and digital techniques ranging from oilpainting and scale modeling to digital sculpting and texturing. Juho’s work can be seen throughout Grimrock games as he was in charge of the graphics and designed and modeled most of the creatures and environmental assets in those games. Juho’s tasks are varied as he models all the creatures and environments of Druidstone and is also designing sound effects and helping Petri to develop the story of Druidstone.

Jyri Leppänen is an animator extraordinaire. His efficiency and work ethics are second to none and he is single-handedly responsible for all the animations of the creatures you will meet in Druidstone. Previously Jyri created creature animations for Legend of Grimrock 2.

Jussi Sammaltupa is a seasoned programmer with a passion for writing beautiful code. He writes the code for Druidstone together with Petri.

Scoring Helsinki is a group of composers based in Helsinki, Finland. You can hear their music in the biggest Hollywood movie trailers as well as in games. They will be composing the soundtrack and producing sound effects for Druidstone.

Janne Sundqvist is a professional writer who as a drama consultant helps flesh out the world of Druidstone and bring its NPCs to life.

Antti Tiihonen, the man behind the ambient soundtracks and sound effects of Grimrock, is creating sound effects for Druidstone.

Originally Posted by Archangel
Because LoG2 was a bust and sold terribly, I think they had to close the original studio.

Originally Posted by Archangel
Because LoG2 was a bust and sold terribly, I think they had to close the original studio.

Originally Posted by Dasale
I always believed it would be a sell failure because of the sub genre.

But how it compares with M&M X? I enjoyed quite much MMX and almost finished a third full play. Players are something, myself is another. :-) But read comments answering the question could help decide buy it soon or later.

Originally Posted by Carnifex
That would be a hard choice for me, picking either Bard's Tale Four or Might and Magic ten. I prefer to enjoy them both equally, although since the Might and Magic game is on Ubijunk, I doubt I'll ever replay it.