Bard's Tale The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep - Director's Cut

[theSavant]

Patch has improved framerate ever so slightly for me, around 5 fps boost in most areas. (My PC: i7-7700HQ, 32 GB RAM, GTX 1050 ti)

It's pretty sad when a dungeon crawling game that should be far less demanding than other types of games can't reach at least 60FPS on a computer with those more than adequate specs.

To be fair you should have quoted the rest:

I run it with everything set to ULTRA other than shadows set to HIGH, with Temporal AA. Average FPS tends to be in the 30-45 range. The 5 fps boost from the latest patch actually helped a lot with this, as areas that were just under 30 fps are now at 30 fps for much smoother experience.

ProphetSword: can you really imply, that this game is especially demanding when he can run the game on Ultra, high shadows and AA with a gtx 1050ti?

This is more or less the same as any other UE4 game (i.e. Hellblade). BT4 runs even better on my total shit computer than "Into the Stars", which is also an UE4 game, and which only consists of empty space. And BT4 has the same performance on my computer as the "New Unreal Tournament". I don't see any exceptional bad performance issues, than what UE4 already demands as a base requirement. It's simply a demanding engine, even if almost nothing is in the scene. But I honestly don't know what all these people are doing with their upper-medium or high-end computers, that they are so mad about it.

 

[ProphetSword]

I'm just saying that a properly optimized engine wouldn't run like shit on a system that has fast processors, 32 GB of RAM and decent video card.

 

[Bohr]

BT4 runs even better on my total shit computer than "Into the Stars", which is also an UE4 game, and which only consists of empty space. And BT4 has the same performance on my computer as the "New Unreal Tournament". I don't see any exceptional bad performance issues, than what UE4 already demands as a base requirement. It's simply a demanding engine, even if almost nothing is in the scene. But I honestly don't know what all these people are doing with their upper-medium or high-end computers, that they are so mad about it.

Bro, given what you said earlier (below) are you really well placed to judge how well this runs? Not trolling here, just not sure that comparing one game running at 5fps to another running at 4fps or 6fps or whatever is enough to conclude "I don't see any exceptional bad performance issues".

It worked! I was surprised it even started. Runs totally awful, but it runs (5-10 fps guesstimated).

 

[Zombra]

To anyone lurking who doesn't have the game yet, I have an extra copy to give away. Contest thread, established Codex citizens only.

 

[theSavant]

are you really well placed to judge how well this runs?

Maybe or maybe not. That's why I also mentioned examples, i.e. Hellblade. If you look for benchmarks (or on youtube), they are en par with that of BT4.

Basically it's the same what happened every time game graphics and engine made a huge step up, which is approximately every 7 years. If you had a mainstream GPU and the new generation comes, any game you play will stutter around at 5-10fps (which is were I am currently). As soon as you buy a mainstream GPU of the current generation, you are once again in the 40s. I made that experience 3 times now. And since the Bro with the 1050Ti said he can run it on Ultra, I see it again confirmed. It's exactly as I expected. I don't know what other people are expecting. Maybe they are just unrealistic.

I think the game has a problem with any area where there are a lot of character models standing around. I'm wondering if they are not culling anything at all when rendering.

Yes, probably. The long-known problem... game developers just putting everything into the scene and think it works. This is also a problem, when they buy lots of 3rd party assets, instead of making their own. Probably unoptimized models, and then all this different shit mixed together in the scene. But what can you do... no developer cares about that anymore. Not much optimization is possible after that.

 

[Nyast]

The craziest thing with BT IV is that the difference between graphic setting levels is HUGE. Shadows on anything below HIGH ruins the lighting, while setting foliage to anything below ULTRA removes not only half of the trees and grass, but even environmental objects like fences. Setting effects to anything below HIGH seems to kill the antialiasing for some reason, while setting it to MEDIUM basically removes most effects as far as I can tell.

Later areas in the game look really good... but there's also nothing going on besides putting graphics up on the screen. There's no physics or AI or whatever. It makes no sense at all to me that the Adventurer's Guild of all places slows down to 20 fps. I think the game has a problem with any area where there are a lot of character models standing around. I've noticed this too in later outdoor areas with a lot of large groups of encounters. Once you start killing groups of enemies, the frame rate improves quite a bit in these areas. I'm wondering if they are not culling anything at all when rendering. (The Adventurer's Guild is simply an anomaly; it slowly fills up with characters as you progress in the game, but for me at least, it's 20 fps whether you first step foot in there with only a handful of NPCs, and 20 fps 15 hours later when it's now got double the amount of characters hanging around).

That doesn't make any sense: there are far more NPCs around in the city ( upper Skara Brae ) than there is in the adventurer's guild. Think about how many npcs are displayed when you're walking in a city street or shop areas..

 

[Gord]

Adventurers guild is a strange thing indeed.
Maybe it's related to some specific model on the map. Something being rendered with far more polygons than necessary. Or some buggy effect.
Or they fail completely at occlusion culling. Anyway, it's far more taxing than it should be, even considering how bad some other areas are, performance-wise.

Interestingly, I got solid 60fps in some of the dungeons, e.g. Mangars Tower, or parts of the sentry tower in the Baedish Lowlands.
And those areas are definitely much bigger and not exactly empty either.

 

[Raghar]

I'm just saying that a properly optimized engine wouldn't run like shit on a system that has fast processors, 32 GB of RAM and decent video card.

On Laptop.

Aka, the CPU is limited by TDP max power permitted for laptop at peak usage it has pitty speed like 2.80 GHz, and TDP can be configured as low as 35 W. Basically, for creativity that uses 32 GB RAM, desktop is better.

 

[Bohr]

Get your balance-related dms in now

 

[agris]

newtmonkey and others who are playing this - when did you do Mangar's Tower? I just finished Kylearan's Tower (the first proper dungeon in the game), and I can go into Mangar's but I don't want to over-level myself and make the rest of the game trivial. I beat the first orange encounter in Mangar's, and it wasn't very hard..

 

[BEvers]

From what I've seen the combat becomes trivial about halfway through, grinding or no grinding. The challenge lies in the puzzles, which aren't affected by character levels.

 

[Gord]

newtmonkey and others who are playing this - when did you do Mangar's Tower?

I did it right after talking to the guy you have to meet there for the mainquest. Most of the encounters in the tower are indeed not very difficult, except for the last ones (somewhat depending on your party, I guess).
I liked the boss-fight at the end, as it had me play around a bit with the skill and equipment loadout of my party. There's also another optional & big fight close to the boss that might be too challenging at first.
The total XP is not so much that you need to worry about overleveling and by comparison the lowlands had imo more difficult encounters.

 

[gruntar]

Patch has improved framerate ever so slightly for me, around 5 fps boost in most areas. (My PC: i7-7700HQ, 32 GB RAM, GTX 1050 ti)

It's pretty sad when a dungeon crawling game that should be far less demanding than other types of games can't reach at least 60FPS on a computer with those more than adequate specs.

Thats Unreal Engine Unity shitty programming for you!

fifty

 

[Jenkem]

is this game good yet?

 

[agris]

The performance is a lot better for me on an old i5 2500 and amd 290, but greater skara brae continues being the worst performing areas. I get 60 fps at 2560x1600 with a mix ultra/high in dungeons, but that nose dives in the tavern where you do party management for some reason.

 

[glass blackbird]

So, is this game good or not?

 

[Bara]

Finished the game and while the patches seemed to fix performance everywhere else in the game the last area just tanks. Defiantly turn down the graphics there. Some one said it's just the shadows but I just set everything down to high.

Also the end of the game feels like it can be summarized as no one learns anything ever.

Spoiler

There was a party dialogue where a companion laments that how the Humans seemed to have all forgotten the crimes of the All War and she only learnt of it from the Elf & Dwarf songs. Then my elf party member pips up saying this was a mistake of the Elves and Dwarves as they cast a spell of forgetting on humanity worried what that they would fall back into old habits / worship their Cthulhu gods again.

At the end of the game though you beat the bad guys mend the seal but this time the Elf queen and Dwarf King decide we'll cast the spell of forgetting again but on all the racers!

Overall was fun enough but little disappointing if you haven't already I'd suggest just playing Wizards & Warriors and Bards Tale 1 remaster if you haven't already and just pick up 4 if you still have interest in it on a sale or such.

 

[Morkar Left]

Can somebody tell me when you can finally get a full party? I'm out of Skara Brae after 14 HOURS with a shit lot of tokens and STILL HAVE NO FULL PARTY!

So far my initial impression still stands with the addition that the limited skill slots really get in the way of enjoying a level up. It even goes so far that I stopped spending skill points for my rogue because I can't use the active skills anyway. And attributes raise only (at least to 95%) by equipment is retarded. Seriously. And VD is right with the armor skills. It's annoying to have to invest extra skill points in every piece of armor you can wear. Dividing it in light, medium, heavy and robes would have been more than enough.

It's a bit of a bummer because there is good content in the game.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Can somebody tell me when you can finally get a full party? I'm out of Skara Brae after 14 HOURS with a shit lot of tokens and STILL HAVE NO FULL PARTY!

You probably should have reached 6 party members by 14 hours. After spending a long time with 4 PCs, you receive a 5th party member when you meet Fiona, which should happen shortly after leaving Skara Brae (avoid unnecessary encounters and dungeons), and you can immediately ditch her for a 5th custom character. If you then proceed through the forest, you'll soon obtain a 6th party member, but this one you'll be stuck with until you complete this portion of the main quest, at which point you can swap her out for a 6th custom character.

 

[Morkar Left]

Can somebody tell me when you can finally get a full party? I'm out of Skara Brae after 14 HOURS with a shit lot of tokens and STILL HAVE NO FULL PARTY!

You probably should have reached 6 party members by 14 hours. After spending a long time with 4 PCs, you receive a 5th party member when you meet Fiona, which should happen shortly after leaving Skara Brae (avoid unnecessary encounters and dungeons), and you can immediately ditch her for a 5th custom character. If you then proceed through the forest, you'll soon obtain a 6th party member, but this one you'll be stuck with until you complete this portion of the main quest, at which point you can swap her out for a 6th custom character.

I'm on my way to her (actually I'm near the quest marker). But good Lord what an unnecessary and convoluted drag on... who came up with THAT idea? Really slowing down my enjoyment further. I can get behind the idea with the first 3 companions to introduce you in the story, establish and connect your "main" char with the AG and get you comfortable with the system. But at the time you're entering Kylearans tower you should have access to full party slots. Tweak the enemies if necessary...

That really screams like "We want to make our own game regardless of how the old games were". That's really a shame, because in other things they payed good attention e.g. for "Under Brae" you can use the old map from the BT1 manual as orientation and you won't get lost with it. Kylearans tower has the same layout than in the original.

I really, really hope they will get back to the drawing board regarding party, level up and char/skill systems.

Btw. fps are bad outside Skara Brae with lots of hiccups. But the "open" world design seems to be good. All in all reminds me of Frayed Knights and Wizards and Warrios.

 

[Gord]

It would have been good to open up the remaining party slots quicker, true.
I also wouldn't mind to have some way to either run from a fight, or change talents during one, e.g. you give up your turn with the character, but can swap an active talent for another one.

 

[newtmonkey]

The game should have opened up party creation sooner, but it's also balanced so that you add one new party member every few hours... I don't think this is something that could just be added easily, sadly.

Most of the quest party members can actually be dropped immediately after getting them, which I recommend doing. There are exceptions (the sixth party member is apparently locked into your party until you finish her quest).

Having said that, you reach a 4 character party pretty quickly, and 4 characters are enough to explore the mechanics imo. All in all, it's not a very deep combat system (tho leagues beyond M&MX), so anything after 4 characters is just a bonus. What I mean by that is, once you reach 4 characters the combat and character building gets much more interesting, yet doesn't get THAT much more interesting with your 5th or 6th character. Note: I am about 20 hours in, so take that all with a grain of salt.

[Edit] It would likely take a ton of work to do it right, but I would love the developers to add some kind of newgame+ option, where you can just make your own party straight from scratch and the game is balanced from start to end for 6 characters. 20 hours in, I really like this game, and would like to try playing through with different builds, but not if I have to slowly unlock new party slots every 2-3 hours.

 

[Agame]

[Edit] It would likely take a ton of work to do it right, but I would love the developers to add some kind of newgame+ option, where you can just make your own party straight from scratch and the game is balanced from start to end for 6 characters. 20 hours in, I really like this game, and would like to try playing through with different builds, but not if I have to slowly unlock new party slots every 2-3 hours.

This "tutorial" mode for first part of game is a horrible, horrible thing, but seems like all RPGs are doing it now, even Pathfinder sadly with the paywall custom characters. As you say it is terrible for replayability as you have to slog through so much just to get a functional party that may or may not even be characters you can create. I hope this does not become mandatory design in all RPGs from now.

 

[Morkar Left]

[Edit] It would likely take a ton of work to do it right, but I would love the developers to add some kind of newgame+ option, where you can just make your own party straight from scratch and the game is balanced from start to end for 6 characters. 20 hours in, I really like this game, and would like to try playing through with different builds, but not if I have to slowly unlock new party slots every 2-3 hours.

This "tutorial" mode for first part of game is a horrible, horrible thing, but seems like all RPGs are doing it now, even Pathfinder sadly with the paywall custom characters. As you say it is terrible for replayability as you have to slog through so much just to get a functional party that may or may not even be characters you can create. I hope this does not become mandatory design in all RPGs from now.

Yeah half the game being the tutorial IS a horrible thing. And with rpgs where you can't have full party slots it's even worse...

 

[newtmonkey]

If BTIV was truly awful or even mediocre, I really wouldn't care. I'd just play it through once and never think about it again like M&MX or DA:O (both of which are mediocre-good, but I would never want to play through them again). BTIV has interesting enough combat and character development, that I might want to play through it again with some crazy party 5-10 years from now, but I dunno if I could motivate myself to play through the 5 hours or whatever it takes to finally get AT LEAST a party of 4 custom characters.

If the game doesn't completely ruin inXile, I would love to see them implement some kind of "legacy" mode where you can just make your own characters as the game goes along. I don't even think it would take too much work on their end to do so; as is, it's just a matter of running back to the Adventurer's Guild and dumping forced characters to create your own once the game adds another party slot.