RPGWatch Feature - Not a Review of The Bard's Tale IV

Alrik Fassbauer said:

Well, it's not that many puzzles, but everyone's taste is different now.

I don't know whether it is a bug or not I've encountered, so I was putting that game "on hold", but I plan to progress further in the future - silently I'm waiting for more patches, hoping there'll be more.

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Don't know how far you got in the game so far, but puzzles seemed to get more numerous in later dungeons.

Carnifex said:

If you enjoy solving many puzzles, and quite a few of them are rather complex, you should really like this game.

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done, purchased today.

Anyone planning to play this should hold up for the 2.0 overhaul patch. Which adds a new dungeon and re balances the endgame to make it more enjoyable.

Well, I bought this a while ago - but, like with most games these days, I've decided to wait until all DLC/patches are out.

I guess it's sort of an OCD thing, because a lot of the time I can enjoy games even if they have quirks and issues - if the core is good. But I guess I just want the "complete" experience the first time I play something.

I have a feeling I will enjoy it to a certain extent - and I will be going into it with low expectations.

That said, from the few hours I've played - it didn't feel like Bard's Tale much at all.

Which is ok with me, as I'm not the biggest fan of ancient throwbacks. I enjoy them, certainly, but I tend to prefer looking forward.

Ultimately, however, there's no denying that certain established formulas worked well for a reason - and I'm not at all convinced this is a departure that will work in its favor.

I guess Underworld Ascendant did a lot of these indie-opportunist games a big favor by making even the most mediocre attempts at recreating the past look great in comparison.

Wisdom said:

Not finishing a game is almost a requirement for 'professional' reviewers.
The 2017 handbook of professional journalism clearly outlines the following.
You are only supposed to spend 30 minutes in the intro area, make your initial grading and complaints about the entire scope of the game and never play again. Later on, you watch a YT clip of the final credits and *update* your score to reflect any changes.

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The problem is more about incompetency in playing. Reviewers that have to comment a game sub genre they don't enjoy much, or they never played much.

Seeing how much reviewers can whine, I have no doubt they play games, not fully play them before reviewing is a problem but a minor problem in comparison of incompetency.

This thread is full of basic complain about puzzles, for me this evokes, go back play tourism games as Skyrim.

I suppose it's more than that, really too many? So I imagine it's like 50 puzzles in a full play?

At least explain why there's too many puzzles in BT4 and not in Legend of Grimrock.

Carnifex said:

It irks me that the company is wasting money for online components for Wasteland three, but, so long as the online portion is optional, I'll be planning to play it. Wasteland two was pretty darn good!

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+1

It's the classical video games problem, sometimes nobody have much clues on what made sell a game better than those that seem comparable.

They check list of features, and then wonder if some wasn't sell keys. It's definitely been evoked quite often for DOS series that coop was a key for the selling success. But I wonder.

And clearly coop burden some DOS1 gameplay aspect, the two main characters for single player is totally weird if not absurd, and no fun in single player, only a tedious burden. It's not such a big problem because the writing was good only for jokes. But the point is when trying coop in WL3:
- They could waste a lot of money to not sell much more to justify it.
- Most probably they didn't anticipated much more sells from adding coop, so they didn't increased much the budget and then single player features or amount of content will pay the price.
- By adding coop they could screw up a lot the gameplay for single player.
- How many marriage will be broken by WL3 coop?

Dasale said:

This thread is full of basic complain about puzzles, for me this evokes, go back play tourism games as Skyrim.

I suppose it's more than that, really too many? So I imagine it's like 50 puzzles in a full play?

At least explain why there's too many puzzles in BT4 and not in Legend of Grimrock.

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It's probably more than 50, and you spend the majority of your time in it.

It's true that there is a similar situation in Grimrock. However, in Grimrock they are more "integrated" into the Game Design. On the other hand, Grimrock doesn't offer anything else...at all. What is partially there or badly designed in Bards Tale IV does basically not exist in Grimrock, like story, character system, world design...

Kordanor said:

Not sure how you reached that point without a decent party as you have several abilities which are overpowered, including some OP elven weapons.
I played on hard and the final boss did only survive one turn, in which he summoned some thing. I could have made it 0 turns if I timed the first "wave" of the combat better.
https://youtu.be/lRw6gSJe32A?t=3287
(not embedding it by purpose, so no spoilers for anywhoe who doesn't conciously click on it)


Yep, absolutely agree. Though if it was actually as challenging as you describe it, the last 30% would have been fine.

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But how much it's about a party building hole? The second wave looks totally absurd, the enemy seems never do anything.

Combats OP holes can happen, they don't make combats bad. If, no matter the party building, combats are very easy, ok it's not an OP holes problem, more a difficulty adjustment problem.

But just how the guy plays the combat, with thinking, make it look good.

Too low difficulty and OP holes can be fixed, they aren't well representative of combats quality, just of a play experience.

Dasale said:

But how much it's about a party building hole? The second wave looks totally absurd, the enemy seems never do anything.

Combats OP holes can happen, they don't make combats bad. If, no matter the party building, combats are very easy, ok it's not an OP holes problem, more a difficulty adjustment problem.

But just how the guy plays the combat, with thinking, make it look good.

Too low difficulty and OP holes can be fixed, they aren't well representative of combats quality, just of a play experience.

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Yes and no. In order to fix bards tale combat you would need to change quite a bit.
I probably wrote it before, but this wasn't just one hole of something being OP, the system has quite a few things like that. When I talked about it to a colleague of mine, we found out that we both had found own ways which were totally OP.

Ofc you can fix it, but you can say that about all issues in games. Just that sometimes something like the whole character system needs to be redesigned, which realistically will not happen. And even if it is, it will likely first break in another way.

It was actually "fun" to see when I played Skyshines Bedlam and it received just some rather small changes, and the whole combat system completely shifted into another direction. It takes a while to balance things out. And Bards Tales 4 System feels like a first draft here no balancing has happened yet beyond the first few hours of gameplay.

And as we just mentioned Grimrock before: That game isn't better in that regard. Grimrock's Combat is just broken in a very different way.

Kordanor said:

It's probably more than 50, and you spend the majority of your time in it.

It's true that there is a similar situation in Grimrock. However, in Grimrock they are more "integrated" into the Game Design. On the other hand, Grimrock doesn't offer anything else…at all. What is partially there or badly designed in Bards Tale IV does basically not exist in Grimrock, like story, character system, world design…

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Ok integrated puzzles, I agree it's a huge difference.

Otherwise, from your other comments, it seems hint you didn't like much Grimrock, so that's not a good example.

Now ok, I didn't suspected there was so many puzzles constantly, and if there's like 100, it's clearly that.

I don't like puzzles games, even if I like RPG including also puzzles, but yeah most need be integrated puzzles.

Kordanor said:

Yes and no. In order to fix bards tale combat you would need to change quite a bit.
I probably wrote it before, but this wasn't just one hole of something being OP, the system has quite a few things like that. When I talked about it to a colleague of mine, we found out that we both had found own ways which were totally OP.

Ofc you can fix it, but you can say that about all issues in games. Just that sometimes something like the whole character system needs to be redesigned, which realistically will not happen. And even if it is, it will likely first break in another way.

It was actually "fun" to see when I played Skyshines Bedlam and it received just some rather small changes, and the whole combat system completely shifted into another direction. It takes a while to balance things out. And Bards Tales 4 System feels like a first draft here no balancing has happened yet beyond the first few hours of gameplay.

And as we just mentioned Grimrock before: That game isn't better in that regard. Grimrock's Combat is just broken in a very different way.

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Im' not arguing about BT4, not played yet. It would be better that we argue on the topic for a game I played, and that was bad for you because of too easy combats.

It's topic I'm a bit sensitive about, with people ending argue that only a high RNG can make TB combats fun and give them a difficulty.

For me, boredom TB combats is when they are repeated. You play 10 combats, always the same way, quickly without any thinking/attention on micro tactics that is adapt many actions to exact context.

An OP hole can generate such problem, often it's on design, typical is combats used as fillers, and design each to be distinctive tactically isn't possible.

I don't see at all what you mean when you are saying that it's the system the culprit and that fixing OP holes and balancing can't fix a difficulty problem.

A possibility is all combats are the same because the system is awfully badly designed. Really? I won't be argue on BT4 until I play it.

But if you want argue on topic of combats quality broken by a too low difficulty, perhaps you have another example?

Dasale said:

For me, boredom TB combats is when they are repeated. You play 10 combats, always the same way, quickly without any thinking/attention on micro tactics that is adapt many actions to exact context?

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I've always had a very similar problem with Action-RPGs. Too much boredom for me, personally.

It's like that discussion I witnessed in SWTOR today : "Yes, in SWTOR one must disarm traps, too."
"Yes, but not as a skillcheck." (DDO)

I really enjoy turn based games, and I rarely repeat the same formula in every battle. I'm constantly trying other ways to change up the battle, as doing the same thing for each fight would get mind numbing for me. You'll learn a lot doing things differently, often a new way of fighting, other times you will just rule that an exercise in futility.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

I've always had a very similar problem with Action-RPGs. Too much boredom for me, personally.
…

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I understand this point, and more or less agree on it. But in my opinion it's a major difference between turn based and real time.

In real time, reflex, speed, and concentration requirement transform trash combats into something more or less captivating. And then the boredom of repetition comes much later, after many more repetitions, or when it's just too easy and you play the combats without much caution.

In turn based the substitute, working more or less, is RNG. With RNG in trash combats the boredom from repetition comes later than with few RNG. Except that RNG targeting only tactical variations and not difficulty is hard to achieve. And at end when RNG targets difficulty level, the only design is even with a very bad RNG you can beat it, which means it's quite an illusion, and you don't delay much the boredom from repetition of trash combats.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

It's like that discussion I witnessed in SWTOR today : "Yes, in SWTOR one must disarm traps, too."
"Yes, but not as a skillcheck." (DDO)

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In my opinion skills check is a quite difficult design problem in both real time and turn based.

Despite its awful design of last two chapters, I think Pathfinder Kingmaker did it well with RNG. There's ton, you can survive the bad RNG consequences, there are many chains, scamloading is made more difficult, there's not very major consequences. For example I lost one quest because of it, except that I got the important reward from another quest of the same NPC. Another example is a bad chain of RNG pushed me into an extra difficult combats because of the cumulated consequences, but after a lot of raging, even if it was close, I still beat it.

I also enjoyed the no RNG approach of Dragonfall, I found it was an interesting approach, not have dedicated skills for such check, but use the combats building to create non combats skills check.

Carnifex said:

I really enjoy turn based games, and I rarely repeat the same formula in every battle. I'm constantly trying other ways to change up the battle, as doing the same thing for each fight would get mind numbing for me. You'll learn a lot doing things differently, often a new way of fighting, other times you will just rule that an exercise in futility.

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Quite agree with that, be inventive and curious to experiment is important for combats fun. I don't understand players whining on some turn based combats of a game because they exploit again and again the same OP hole, do it once is fun, twice is a boredom.

But in fact I consider that it helps a lot too in real time combats. In ELEX I definitely applied sometimes experiment curiosity in combats and it helped made them even better. But this is also merged with another element of real time combats, the pure learning curve.

But I believe there's a significant amount of RPG players that put more importance into character/party building. And for them, combats is mainly the result of their building precision. If combats are tedious it doesn't matter because it's the reward of the build well crafted.

Add to that RPG designers (beside Rip Bioware) that lost skills or never hard much skills to design combats (I pinpoint you Bethesda) and then are lazy to design fun combats and the result is I find most fun combats in non RPG games, which is a piety.

But as too easy difficulty is breaking easily combats fun, I also admit that with complex class systems, complex skills systems, and even worse with party, the RPG context makes the task a lot harder.

Wisdom said:

Not finishing a game is almost a requirement for 'professional' reviewers.
The 2017 handbook of professional journalism clearly outlines the following.
You are only supposed to spend 30 minutes in the intro area, make your initial grading and complaints about the entire scope of the game and never play again. Later on, you watch a YT clip of the final credits and *update* your score to reflect any changes.

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People urge to substitute the world they worked to build.

Professional reviewers have their tastes, likes and desires. They have the vid products they would like to play and those they would not.

In an US american dominated world, they are managed as the others: top dog eat dog world stuff. Reviewers who get the products they would like to test sit at the top. In these cases, they will gladly play fully these products as they are the ones they want to play.

And reviewers at the bottom must build their credentials if they want to climb the ladder, which means playing the products they are handed. Once up, they will be able to review products they like, to play them on job hours instead on playing them off job hours.

I very much assume that every reviewer here plays their games when not on their job
And almost always, none of them have any games handed to them, which means they play the games they want to play.
Not sure where they are on your ladder though.

Myrthos said:

Not sure where they are on your ladder though.

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Probably somewhere dedicated to non professional reviewers. Which seems to be hard to figure out.