Bard's Tale IV - Releasing September 18th

I am feeling pretty let down after playing the demo awhile (I've played enough to get the 4 pre-mades into my party).

Limiting each party member to just 3 active abilities/spells is SO incredibly limiting. It's really starting to bug me. Most of my characters have hit level 3 or 4, and they've all spent about 5 skill points (you start with 3 and get 1 per level). I now have 1-2 more skill points to spend on each character, but there's no use getting another active ability because I can't slot it anywhere. My bard already knows 2 good bard songs and has a useful sword ability, so she's done; no use learning another bard song, some of which also sound useful. And magic spells? Nope, no use getting another spell if the ones I have now are working OK.

I need to spend 8 skill points to unlock the next 'tier' of abilities, so I guess I need to buy some passives. What I can't understand is what motivation there is to unlock all these abilities further down the tree, when I can't use many of them. I suppose the intent is to get us to think ahead and change up our abilities based on the situation, but that just feels so cumbersome. Just let us get our abilities and use them. That is certainly the Bard's Tale way, with the Archmage eventually having access to 100+ spells at their fingertips.

What's also odd is that the character stats don't increase as you level; you either have to explicitly buy passive stat bonuses, or equip better armor/weapons with higher stat bonuses. You want more hitpoints? You need to equip armor with a higher CON bonus (your constitution is basically your hitpoints). Want more damage? Get a weapon with high STR bonus (oh, and this appears to apply to wands as well…from what I can tell, the Pillars mechanic of strength affecting spell damage seems to be applied here).

It's also weird that you can respec at any time. I initially had my beginning bard put a skill point in maces, since she started with a club. But then I found a good sword. No problem, I just went to the skill tree and re-spec'd on the fly to remove the blunt skill and get the sword skill instead. I don't know if things will get frozen at some point (maybe that's what the Review Board is for?), but I find myself wondering why I should even make my own characters, when I can just change the pre-mades on the fly as I play.

All in all, I'm just generally frustrated that one of the classic CRPG's that started it all is trying hard to be so damn cute in its RPG mechanics. This game's purpose is not to reinvent the genre for us, it's to give us something that we all know and love. Right now I'm finding the mechanics more frustrating than fun…
 
Joined
Mar 10, 2009
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Hrm, I still find it quite interesting and I also kind a bit of "condensedness".

Though limiting it down to just 3 abilities might indeed not be enough. Maybe 4 or 5 would give you enough wiggle room to try something out.

I actually just recorded a video for the other guys to show the talent tree and I came across some kind of "last stand" skill, which you basically use as last restort in case you are close to dying. Why should you ever take a skill which can only be usefull if you messed up? Taking an other skill might not let you in a situation where you'd need to use that skill. ^^

For the respeccing I don't see a problems in the weapons as you described.
I see some problems in situational abilities like lockpicking. Why would you keep your lockpicking skill locked? You can as well move it to a more efficient spot while you are not unlocking a chest.

Still, I am very optimistic that the game will be fun. To me the first couple of hours were pretty great.

Anyways, for those interested into the skill trees, I finally recorded a video in english to show each and everyone of these talents. :p
(1080p will be available once the video is fully processed in 20 minutes or so)
 
Joined
Jun 2, 2012
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4,691
Wow if everything in Fantasm's post is true, this game is a massive disappointment.
 
Joined
Sep 26, 2007
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