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

Originally Posted by joxer
No mmo failed commercially, that's why everyone's making one.

Wasteland 3 is not an MMO it's an optional Co-op game just like Original Sin.

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!

Thanks Forgottenlor. I appreciate your honest reflections here. As a fellow backer, I'm absolutely dreading how I'm going to react when I do finally get around to playing this as I was most certainly intending to review it myself.

As it stands, I'm still waiting for the CE package to arrive as well as for the Legacy Mode features to be added to the game. Whether the company is capable of delivering on this front given the technical problems and the title's commercial failure remains to be seen. Still, I'm not going to touch it until everything is complete and ready to go - the kickstarter promises need to be fully honored. (A gridbased crawler with optional free-form movement not vice versa!)

Since the Bard's Tale trilogy was one of my formative and most cherished RPG experiences, I had higher hopes for this. InXile's lack of belief in traditional blobber gameplay and the misguided attempt to cater to a wider variety of audiences has seemingly left a game severely disconnected from its heritage.

This has caused much disillusionment on the part of their backers and fans of the original trilogy, particularly those who have consistently voiced their concerns on the official forums. I'm quite sympathetic to some of these views and the whole debacle has been a real downer for my enthusiasm to play much of anything at the moment.

I'm a bit concerned but I am still super happy to have the remastered original trilogy. So much so that I will happy regardless of how bad BTIV is. I still firmly believe they should of called it something else rather than BTIV i.e. Bard's Tale: Barrows Deep. That way a true sequel to BT3 could of still been made one day. They could of spent a fraction of the money and just made a BTIV in the spirit of the remasters except with even better graphics and more variety i.e. different shops, more races and classes etc.

Originally Posted by Kordanor
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.

Only the final boss was "challenging", and only because I couldn't start. My main damage dealer got mind jabbed and got killed, and since I hadn't bothered with speccing the cleric to resurrect that kind of messed it up for me. I lowered it to easy and shifted my team around, and when finally all characters survived the first wave then it wasn't a problem. Don't think I did it in one round though, I believe it took two or even three…

Originally Posted by TomRon
Only the final boss was "challenging", and only because I couldn't start. My main damage dealer got mind jabbed and got killed, and since I hadn't bothered with speccing the cleric to resurrect that kind of messed it up for me. I lowered it to easy and shifted my this around, and when finally all characters survived the first wave then it wasn't a problem. Don't think I did it in one round though, I believe it took two or even three…

Ah, ok, yeah makes sense. I was also thinking about doing this with just 3 people for the achievement. But that would have meant I would have to do the 2-3 hours worth of puzzles again as well as the last group management option was before that and decided against it.

I noticed … Well, I was thinking of this game this way :

The outcry (well, somehow it sounds to me as an outcry) "it is a puzzle game ?"
shows me how much we got trained to love combat and dismiss puzzles over the last few decades - just take a look at how many puzzles RPGs in the early 80s and 90s had !
Well, I do remember LOTS of then during my "Realms Of Arcania" playthroughs … and Lands Of Lore had them as well, and Stonekeep …
Considering the sheer amount of puzzles in these games, I can do nothing but shake my head over people moaning and mourning like "this is a puzzle game ?"

We have surely been trained by Blizzard and everyone who followed their trail of money. How many puzzles did Blizzard invent in their Action-RPGs ? I doin't know about WOW, so I can't say, but the genre called "Action-RPG" does not contain a single puzzle in it. Only masses, hordes of enemies to put and end to.

I'm sure we have been trained to dislike puzzles.

I didn't dislike the puzzles per se in the game, but the time I spent on them far outweighed the time I spent either in combat or exploration. I quite like and enjoy having my mind challenged in a game, but I think it was just a bit too much compared to other features.

InXile's Wasteland 2, T:ToN, and now BT4 all had generally mixed reviews from users, although their critics reviews were somewhat better. Still, they weren't up to the PoE or PoE2 rankings from Obsidian. This doesn't fill me with great confidence for Wasteland 3.

About the future of the company: Tides of Numera was pretty cool, despite all the hate. Was it as great as Planescape Torment? Nope, but it was a good game if you really like to read. Shame it was such a financial disappointment. I wonder if the company will continue to make these games if Wasteland 3 also flops.

Originally Posted by GabrielMP_19
About the future of the company: Tides of Numera was pretty cool, despite all the hate. Was it as great as Planescape Torment? Nope, but it was a good game if you really like to read. Shame it was such a financial disappointment. I wonder if the company will continue to make these games if Wasteland 3 also flops.

To be honest what does InXile having going for them outside of these games? They are an independent company which used to make mobile games before crowdfunding (and the rather mediocre Bard's Tale from 2003 I think). So its not like they have some big publisher standing behind them. I guess they could always return to making cheap mobile games.

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
I noticed … Well, I was thinking of this game this way :

The outcry (well, somehow it sounds to me as an outcry) "it is a puzzle game ?"
shows me how much we got trained to love combat and dismiss puzzles over the last few decades - just take a look at how many puzzles RPGs in the early 80s and 90s had !
Well, I do remember LOTS of then during my "Realms Of Arcania" playthroughs … and Lands Of Lore had them as well, and Stonekeep …
Considering the sheer amount of puzzles in these games, I can do nothing but shake my head over people moaning and mourning like "this is a puzzle game ?"

We have surely been trained by Blizzard and everyone who followed their trail of money. How many puzzles did Blizzard invent in their Action-RPGs ? I doin't know about WOW, so I can't say, but the genre called "Action-RPG" does not contain a single puzzle in it. Only masses, hordes of enemies to put and end to.

I'm sure we have been trained to dislike puzzles.

I played the remake of Blade of Destiny a few years back and enjoyed it a lot, but it had what I consider a relatively small number of puzzles in it. It did have a few enviornment riddles and quests which required some logical thinking to complete, but like I said few puzzles like The Bard's Tale 4 had. It was mostly a game about exploration. Of course I'm not sure how it compared to the original, which perhaps had more puzzles, but from what those who played the original said, it does not seem like the developers removed any puzzles. Neither did any of the Wizardry games have anything comparable in puzzle volume, nor any other classic rpg I remember, though I never played Land of Lore. I've played and replayed a lot of classic rpgs, and enjoyed them, but can't remember any with the volume and kind of puzzles Bard's Tale 4 has. By the way I'm not trying to take away any of your enjoyment of the game. I've always thought puzzles were a nice variation in gameplay, but never liked Adventure games like Zork, or Myst which were built around puzzle gameplay, and I can assure you that was also true for me in 1988 as it is today. There are other players who really enjoy this kind of gameplay. Just not me.

Have to agree to forgettenlore here. I don't remember any of these games had lots of puzzles in comparison. Yes, they had puzzles, and some of the puzzles were hard to ridiculous, and there was no way that you could look them up, meaning you may have spent dozens of hours on one stupid puzzle. But the total amount of puzzles was far less in these games.

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
You gotta feel bad for inXile as both Torment: Tides of Numenera & Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep are commercial failures. Here's hoping Wastelands Three is a commercial success.

I don't feel bad for them at all; there seems to be a real disconnect between inXile and what players want in a game (any game!) and it speaks to a very flawed design process.

Wasteland 2, while better than the studio's subsequent projects, also felt stale and tedious. I am replaying it at the moment and I can't let go of the basic design that completely missed the mark. From recruitable NPCs that may as well be lifeless pack mules, to a campaign split in half (AZ/CA), the storytelling is dry and lacking excitement. This seems to be a common theme - the project lead(s) simply do not know what makes a game fun and are more focused on checking things off from a posted Kickstarter reward list, rather than gameplay and narrative.

I feel like there's a fine line between puzzles and secrets. What you want is complex secrets which might involve a puzzle but you don't want repeated puzzles rearranged just to slow down your progress.

I only made it through the red fairy forest, myself, and after that I was quite sick of Bards Tale 4. Until that point I felt as though there were a lot of puzzles but they had yet to become tedious.

As for puzzles in the original Bards Tale, I don't really think there were any. The dungeon layout was puzzling in itself with teleports and spinners which would confuse you. Future blobbers like Eye Of The Beholder added to the puzzling layout of dungeons with features like pressure plates and items you could leave on them. However, the puzzles in BT4 are often different in that they remove you from the main game to slide around cogs in minigames or repeat a puzzle weapon minigame in case you have a gem for it, this time.

I think the real Bards Tale experience was probably enjoying the knowledge of how to power-level your party on exploitative grinding spots which have "had" to be removed for the recent remake. I would have liked a straight dungeon crawler where I can enjoy replaying because knowledge let's me do it quickly. Dragons Breath 99 skeletons, run straight to the Crystal Sword, grind a room full of Berzerkers. Like a speedrun. This is why Dark Souls was so fun to replay. You start with a new class and have a fantastic plan for their progress. The first play is learning and the second play is entertainment. The first play of Bards Tale is the default party and the second play you don't take a rogue.

What I think the Bards Tale games really need is a quick macro key to give the whole party commonly used orders with a single keystroke. I think I pretty much use 3 or 4 combinations of orders. Mages all single-target spell, mages all multi-target spell, everyone else attacks, bard might as well cast magic resistance. Plus the extra keystroke required to select the only target seems only there for the extremely rare case a Dopelganger joins the party the game should only need that step when facing the threat. I like BT1 combat; it just needs less clicks.

Anyway, yes, BT4 was very disappointing and I wish they'd focused on the remakes and just added a real part 4 at the end. Share the spells between all 4 games in non-legacy mode adds content to 4 games at once! BT4 classes in BT1! etc.

To be honest I thought wasteland 2 (esp the director cut) was actually quite good. I thought bards tale iv could have been good but somewhere they got lost. Havne't played torment yet - probably should one of these days.
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If wasteland 3 is more of wasteland 2 but refined I think it will be ok however I think they are burning cash and wasteland 3 will likely be less finished than bards tale iv (which would be bad news).
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Also I think the move to LA probably cost them talent and I think it showed in bards tale iv.

I would totally agree, I found Wasteland two better than Bard's Tale four. Once you've completed a game and can look at it a bit more objectively, the truth always wins out. And the director's cut elevated it even more.

Originally Posted by Carnifex
I would totally agree, I found Wasteland two better than Bard's Tale four. Once you've completed a game and can look at it a bit more objectively, the truth always wins out. And the director's cut elevated it even more.

Agree but I didn't like how content got cut and you couldn't complete certain quests anymore with the Directors Cut version. Don't know why they made the changes.

Originally Posted by Wisdom
On a more serious, less sarcastic note…

I loved the disclaimer up front about time played. Heaven forbid we have another #MaylanderReviewGate scandal.

Appreciated the Identity Crisis section as it connects some of the pieces that didn't quite make sense to me during development.

Haha, can't have another one of those! At least we got 10+ pages of fired up discussion out of it.

Originally Posted by henriquejr
Which was…. ????

Things blew up a bit when Divinity: Original Sin 2 ended up at 4/5 stars, which was the same as I'd already given Mass Effect: Andromeda, but that one had a huge caveat at the bottom stating it was only a good game for people (like me) who are hungry for a certain type of sci-fi game. Others should look elsewhere.

The main problem was the star rating system, where something is either leaning towards 3 (60%) or 5 (100%), which is a huge gap, so most would end up in the middle of that. My opinion about a game, and whether or not I recommend it, is generally found in the final few paragraphs, as a single rating won't be able to describe who should be trying the game.

The end result was dropping the star ratings and going for something slightly more descriptive, so now ME: A is "good" and D: OS2 is "very good", both with various descriptions to accompany those labels.

At any rate, thanks for the not-a-review @forgottenlor. I find it a bit odd that the talented people over at inXile keep delivering mediocre games. I hope they finally nail something soon, or it may well be the end of the studio..

Thanks for explanation!

I will re-read your D:OS 2 review.