The Bard's Tale - Review @ RPG Codex

Some of the humor worked for me, but a lot of it struck a sour note. What I wanted (and this is not to say that what they intended to create was this) was Galaxy Quest for CRPGs -- a game that made fun of the cliches of the genre but ultimately did so in a gentle fashion and pulled us into a revisited version of them with love. What I got was a game that existed solely to insult other games -- and if you're gonna do that, you darn well better be above reproach yourself.

I'm not even saying that as a game designer. I'm saying it as somebody who plays games. If you're going to insult the normal games I play as a hobby, you better be a ton better than those normal games.

The Bard's Tale wasn't.

For me it was like a comedy act that despite a great opening, flopped badly enough that you go to the restroom and don't think twice about how long you are gone. It is sad they missed a great chance here.

I still think that their send up of 'The Chosen One' was very well done; especially when the first one is killed mid-speech!!

The Chosen One - was okay-ish, yet i thought the most authentic "tavern singing" sound i've ever heard within a game was "Beer Beer Beer".

http://www.thebardstale.com/music.htm

Corwin
"'The Chosen One"
Hehe, yeah and it was kinda of creepy too, all the vairously mutilated identical twins, euuuww!
Its so quirky and weird I kept asking myself wth, they did seem to pull me back and forth, ok she's bad, no ok she's good, ok shes just naughty.
Ok these guys are just to wierd, "I better just kill them before they initiate me into their freaky family.

Thanks for the link Wulf; I didn't realise they had made them all available!!

ME: I think (the new) Bard's Tale was everything it advertised itself to be. And this was very unfortunate.



RPer: If you look back at some of the interviews and advertisements, there were definitely some comments made about how the Bard wouldn't care about the any of the common setups and pitfalls of the genre. Check this early promotional advertisement - that's a pretty clear statement of where the game was meant to be going but never does.

I stand corrected. I missed that ad. I guess its been long enough out that I forgot about the potential the game had planned for and I just saw the reviews. This was the game that automatically converted items to coin didn't it? And they somehow that this was better?

--

No worries about Fable and that hype machine. No one but the Boston Police could have missed that.

Lucky Day
"This was the game that automatically converted items to coin didn't it? And they somehow that this was better?"

Right, they did have a sort of sound premise "Trying to eleminate the inventories constantly becoming full and interupting gameflow by requiring trips to a merchant" but as you point out it didn't really turn out that great.