Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

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

Self-Ejected

theSavant

Self-Ejected
Joined
Oct 3, 2012
Messages
2,009
I knew the blobber game crowd is small, but didn't think it was *that* small. At least 10x smaller than the isometric game crowd (PoE, Kingmaker).
Even if steam statistics only shows a tenth of the real amount of players, it's still very few in comparison.
Even Grimrock 1 had higher peak than BT4 (not much, but still), and they had a budget of what? 50k or so...
 

V_K

Arcane
Joined
Nov 3, 2013
Messages
7,714
Location
at a Nowhere near you
I knew the blobber game crowd is small, but didn't think it was *that* small. At least 10x smaller than the isometric game crowd (PoE, Kingmaker).
Even if steam statistics only shows a tenth of the real amount of players, it's still very few in comparison.
Even Grimrock 1 had higher peak than BT4 (not much, but still), and they had a budget of what? 50k or so...
I don't think a bad blobber with a terribly launch is any indication of the size of the blobber crowd. As I've posted earlier in the thread, MMX has a decent 8k maximum.
Grimrock 1, I think, didn't come to Steam immediately after release, that's why its numbers are so low even though it sold over a mil copies. Because Grimrock 2 has a higher maximum (4k), although it sold half as much.
 

BEvers

I'm forever blowing
Joined
Aug 14, 2018
Messages
808
Even Grimrock 1 had higher peak than BT4 (not much, but still), and they had a budget of what? 50k or so...

Grimrock 1, I think, didn't come to Steam immediately after release, that's why its numbers are so low even though it sold over a mil copies. Because Grimrock 2 has a higher maximum (4k), although it sold half as much.

I was confused why you thought Grimrock's numbers were disappointing, but now I realize you're using Steamcharts. Steamcharts didn't start tracking until July 2012, but Grimrock was released in April 2012. Use Steamdb instead: https://steamdb.info/app/207170/graphs/

Grimrock 1 peaked at 6k, Grimrock 2 at 4k, BT4 at 2k. Very clean progression.
 

BEvers

I'm forever blowing
Joined
Aug 14, 2018
Messages
808
And blobbers are still holding up just fine against certain other big budget titles:

Untitled.png
 

newtmonkey

Arcane
Joined
Aug 22, 2013
Messages
1,725
Location
Goblin Lair
I like this game, but I think it's a complete and utter failure. For whatever reason, its strange mix of cardgame like combat, low-tier Myst clone puzzles, and exploration ended up working somehow for me. Having said that, I got burnt out from fairy puzzles and have been playing other stuff over the past week or so. I'll get back to it, I just need a break from the standard "fight 2-3 battles, solve 3-4 fairy/block/door puzzles, repeat" loop.

I think the game is a tough sell to pretty much anyone—BT fans waiting for the true followup to BT3 or even Dragon Wars won't want to have anything to do with this kind of game, while blobber fans or even "traditional" RPG fans in general will get annoyed at the lack of initial party customization, the excess of puzzles, and the weird combat. Modern RPG converts will likely get annoyed with the lack of story/romances or whatever. Even new fans of RPGs brought in by Grimrock series or even M&M10 will likely find the streamlined stats and focus on artificial puzzles vs environmental puzzles jarring. Anyone without a super computer will likely have a stroke when they can't get a consistent 60 fps even though there is no AI or physics or animation or anything going on, even in the nicer looking areas.

I put the time in and learned to enjoy it for what it is, but I really do not understand the audience for this one. I'm guessing reddit/twitter/streamers. But it's way too "complicated" and rough for that group of people, who just want to coast through and get some edgy oneliners/screenshots to generate fan art, maybe flip out over the singing in the game.
 

V_K

Arcane
Joined
Nov 3, 2013
Messages
7,714
Location
at a Nowhere near you
Grimrock 1 peaked at 6k, Grimrock 2 at 4k,
It still doesn't correspond very well with sales figures though. SRR had a similar sales progression in its first year (although probably slightly oursold Grimrock now), but concurrent players peak much higher, at 24k. MMX also has a higher peak but lower sales than either Grimrock.
 

Agame

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Mar 29, 2015
Messages
1,702
Location
I cum from a land down under
Insert Title Here
I like this game, but I think it's a complete and utter failure. For whatever reason, its strange mix of cardgame like combat, low-tier Myst clone puzzles, and exploration ended up working somehow for me. Having said that, I got burnt out from fairy puzzles and have been playing other stuff over the past week or so. I'll get back to it, I just need a break from the standard "fight 2-3 battles, solve 3-4 fairy/block/door puzzles, repeat" loop.

I think the game is a tough sell to pretty much anyone—BT fans waiting for the true followup to BT3 or even Dragon Wars won't want to have anything to do with this kind of game, while blobber fans or even "traditional" RPG fans in general will get annoyed at the lack of initial party customization, the excess of puzzles, and the weird combat. Modern RPG converts will likely get annoyed with the lack of story/romances or whatever. Even new fans of RPGs brought in by Grimrock series or even M&M10 will likely find the streamlined stats and focus on artificial puzzles vs environmental puzzles jarring. Anyone without a super computer will likely have a stroke when they can't get a consistent 60 fps even though there is no AI or physics or animation or anything going on, even in the nicer looking areas.

I put the time in and learned to enjoy it for what it is, but I really do not understand the audience for this one. I'm guessing reddit/twitter/streamers. But it's way too "complicated" and rough for that group of people, who just want to coast through and get some edgy oneliners/screenshots to generate fan art, maybe flip out over the singing in the game.

The game that no one asked for with features and mechanics that no one wanted... is a complete disaster. Its a shame, and I hope they learn their lesson from this and get back to the "semi-modernised" but similar game mechanics as in Wasteland 2. But if W3 is also a failure on launch can they survive three lemons in a row?

And its interesting to see the nostalgia money train finally get derailed, if you dont have an IP with a massive fanbase like Wasteland/Fallout. BT4 just reeks of bad decisions, wishful thinking and fabulous optimism. I think it was a big vanity project for Fargo to go out on a high. And boy has that backfired.
 

Urthor

Prophet
Patron
Joined
Mar 22, 2015
Messages
1,872
Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
Kingdom Come Deliverance vs Pathfinder Kingmaker is going to be a very interesting game of the year vote IMO

Why would anyone sane vote for KCD, at least Pathfinder puts up a decent difficulty, KCD was trash easy from get to go and it's still is to this day. KCD is Oblivion 2.0 and anyone who thinks that game represents incline should be punished by sniffing Hillary's Clinton diaper, that should teach them.

KCD combat was only easy if you looked up the guide on the internet, went into the random corner and got the pristine heavy armour super duper early. Otherwise it was an extremely original, pretty great technically ARPG combat system with a good world.

If you were doing RPG of the year purely on best combat system who do you give it to? Probably those two off the top of my head, none of the super indie titles released in 2018 have been good games for combat fags at all
 

Themadcow

Augur
Joined
Feb 17, 2012
Messages
308
I think the game is a tough sell to pretty much anyone—BT fans waiting for the true followup to BT3 or even Dragon Wars won't want to have anything to do with this kind of game, while blobber fans or even "traditional" RPG fans in general will get annoyed at the lack of initial party customization, the excess of puzzles, and the weird combat. Modern RPG converts will likely get annoyed with the lack of story/romances or whatever. Even new fans of RPGs brought in by Grimrock series or even M&M10 will likely find the streamlined stats and focus on artificial puzzles vs environmental puzzles jarring. Anyone without a super computer will likely have a stroke when they can't get a consistent 60 fps even though there is no AI or physics or animation or anything going on, even in the nicer looking areas.

Excellent summary of the issues. I backed BT4 to the tune of $110 for a game I hoped would be a true sequel. Instead, I find myself with 8 hours played... reinstalling Elminage Gothic at the weekend before despairing at it's terrible UI, uninspired environments and archaic legacy design issues (stats dropping on level up etc) - all things that a decent budget Western blobber could have fixed brilliantly. Despite that, I still had a better time with Elminage because it knows what it wants to be and delivers it in spades.
 

glass blackbird

Learned
Patron
Joined
Apr 9, 2015
Messages
664
PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015
Kingdom Come Deliverance vs Pathfinder Kingmaker is going to be a very interesting game of the year vote IMO

Why would anyone sane vote for KCD, at least Pathfinder puts up a decent difficulty, KCD was trash easy from get to go and it's still is to this day. KCD is Oblivion 2.0 and anyone who thinks that game represents incline should be punished by sniffing Hillary's Clinton diaper, that should teach them.

KCD combat was only easy if you looked up the guide on the internet, went into the random corner and got the pristine heavy armour super duper early. Otherwise it was an extremely original, pretty great technically ARPG combat system with a good world.

If you were doing RPG of the year purely on best combat system who do you give it to? Probably those two off the top of my head, none of the super indie titles released in 2018 have been good games for combat fags at all
Alternatively, if you went with archery every fight was more or less the same and offered the same lack of challenge.
 
Self-Ejected

theSavant

Self-Ejected
Joined
Oct 3, 2012
Messages
2,009
I just looked for a "skill guide", so I could plan all my party members in advance (and not wanting to fire up the game). Didn't find such a thing, but some guy made an hour-long video and goes through all the skills available. Could be helpful for some.

 
Self-Ejected

theSavant

Self-Ejected
Joined
Oct 3, 2012
Messages
2,009
Does anyone know something about the following things:

a) Is it possible to summon more than 2 summons? Let's say your full party consists only of 2 Wizards, and both of them have the skill "Summon 2 Skeletal Warriors", so you could have 4 Skeleton warriors at the same time?

b) I have read on Steam forums, that some say, that "Strength" actually makes some spells stronger... and not "Intelligence"... Uhm, is that true??
 

fantadomat

Arcane
Edgy Vatnik Wumao
Joined
Jun 2, 2017
Messages
37,083
Location
Bulgaria
b) I have read on Steam forums, that some say, that "Strength" actually makes some spells stronger... and not "Intelligence"... Uhm, is that true??
You want to have to spell casters,the imp is better as pure str build while the elf woman is better for a int build. Int damage spells are very useful too. Also go for channeller as early as possible with both of them,oh and that shocking spells is very useful,the one that goes in straight line and hits both enemies.

Int damage is used to break charge abilities and ignores armour.
 
Self-Ejected

theSavant

Self-Ejected
Joined
Oct 3, 2012
Messages
2,009
I'm still a bit confused by that (btw. it would probably be easier to reinstall the game than ask these questions, but will only do at next patch). But I'll try to nail it down as follows:

There is a spell like "Charged Bolt" which only does Physical damage (no Mental and no True). Does this spell become *stronger* over time? And does it depend on the "Strength" or "Intelligence" stat of the magician? So if I would like increasingly stronger "Charged Bolts", I'd have to spend points on Strength?
 

Sinatar

Arbiter
Joined
Jan 25, 2014
Messages
569
I'm still a bit confused by that (btw. it would probably be easier to reinstall the game than ask these questions, but will only do at next patch). But I'll try to nail it down as follows:

There is a spell like "Charged Bolt" which only does Physical damage (no Mental and no True). Does this spell become *stronger* over time? And does it depend on the "Strength" or "Intelligence" stat of the magician? So if I would like increasingly stronger "Charged Bolts", I'd have to spend points on Strength?

All damage in the game is determined by strength including all spells.
 

Zed Duke of Banville

Dungeon Master
Patron
Joined
Oct 3, 2015
Messages
11,756
I'm still a bit confused by that (btw. it would probably be easier to reinstall the game than ask these questions, but will only do at next patch). But I'll try to nail it down as follows:

There is a spell like "Charged Bolt" which only does Physical damage (no Mental and no True). Does this spell become *stronger* over time? And does it depend on the "Strength" or "Intelligence" stat of the magician? So if I would like increasingly stronger "Charged Bolts", I'd have to spend points on Strength?
Mental damage spells scale with intelligence, physical damage spells scale with strength. Note that unlocking the Archmage slot yields a few spells, one of which does a tremendous amount of true damage (avoids both armor and mental defense) and scales with strength.

I had one practitioner focus on strength and the other on intelligence, so that one would use more of the spells that scale with strength and other more of the spells that scale with intelligence.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,228
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
GameBanshee review: http://www.gamebanshee.com/reviews/121369-the-bard-s-tale-iv-barrows-deep-review/all-pages.html

Introduction

The first game in The Bard's Tale - or should I say Tales of the Unknown - series was a dungeon-crawling RPG created by Michael Cranford and the Brian Fargo-helmed Interplay team way back in 1985. And now, two direct sequels, a "construction set", an action-RPG spin-off, and more than 30 years later, Fargo's new studio, inXile Entertainment, decided to update the series' classic “first-person exploration, turn-based combat” formula for the modern audience. The result? The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep.

As is usually the case with reinventing the wheel, things didn't go exactly as planned, and instead of a triumphant return of the dungeon crawler, we got a game with some great ideas and neat features but also a heap of issues and questionable design decisions.

Barrows Deep actually has very little in common with its predecessors despite a plethora of nods, references, and returning characters, but I do think that it can provide an enjoyable experience to anyone looking for 30-40 hours of dungeon-crawling action.

Story and Exploration


The game starts with you witnessing a public execution, running around the streets of Skara Brae for no apparent reason, and then going through an extended tutorial section where you get a chance to familiarize yourself with the game's controls and mechanics.

This intro section is not very well done in my opinion. It does very little to showcase the game's actual strengths, is kind of confusing and entirely pointless. Play through that intro, and you'll think that the game is all about holding W in dull linear corridors while following glowing quest markers and occasionally engaging in simplistic combat.

But even in those grey and gloomy tunnels, some of the game's positive qualities manage to shine through, like its more than decent level design.

Even those initial claustrophobic tunnels are designed in such a way to always show you something intriguing and cool just outside of your grasp. You find locked doors that you have no way to open, you activate hidden switches and levers that seemingly do nothing, you occasionally catch a glimpse of a blocked-off part of the area you will need to revisit later, you stumble onto mysterious signs and glyphs that clearly do something, you just don't know what that something is.

The game keeps dangling these little mysteries right before you, and you can't help but press onward just to find out what awaits you behind the next corner.

And later on, when you get to the first real dungeon that actually has some color in its cheeks and offers plenty of winding paths, puzzles, challenging encounters, and non-obvious ways to progress, this is where the game is at its best.

Going just by the opening sections, you wouldn't guess how varied the game's tilesets get or what weird, imposing, verdant, magical, glacial, or otherworldly environments your party of adventurers will visit on its heroic quest.

Speaking of that quest. The game's story goes something like this - the local church gets a bit overzealous with its prosecution of heretics, magic users, older races and unsanctioned adventurers, and starts executing everyone it doesn't like with enough enthusiasm to put even Warhammer's inquisitors to shame.

As one of those adventurers, you're not particularly fond of this new development, so you set out to try and find out why your kind is being so unfairly maligned. In the process, you stumble upon a mysterious sorcerer who goes around resurrecting ancient villains, all antagonists from the earlier Bard's Tale games, while also framing those with a chance to put a stop to their nefarious plans. And from that point onward, your main goal becomes just that.

The story won't be winning any awards, but it does its job and is quite engaging, especially for a dungeon crawler, a subgenre of RPGs not known for its intricate plots. It does fall apart somewhere at the end where it feels like the developers were in a rush to ship the game already, but prior to that, it's good enough to make you want to find out what happens next.

As a side note, something I have to mention here is how when you load the game, the bard on the menu screen comes to life and actually sings you a verse or two, recapping the latest story developments. I think it's a great touch and exactly the kind of unnecessary thing that can make a game go from merely good or bad, functional or broken, to an experience you can fondly remember twenty years later.

The game's dialogues are fairly simplistic and don't leave a lot of room for meaningful choices, but at the very least they're competently written and aren't overly verbose. Every conversation is voice-acted, which adds to the game's atmosphere and its overall Celtic aesthetic.

The sound effects and soundtrack are quite outstanding, further reinforcing the game's Celtic motifs and leaving you with numerous pleasant tunes to listen to on your journey.

Your party of adventurers that can include up to six characters and can consist of both story characters and custom mercenaries rarely stays silent and spices up the occasional backtracking sections with plenty of banter. The neat thing there, is that your custom mercenaries don't simply exist to smite evil and keep quiet, and instead participate in party banter as well.

And while I have nothing but good things to say about the game's sound, its visuals, on the other hand, are more uneven. You do get some nice vistas and good-looking dungeons, but most of the textures look blurry and washed out, and the game's humanoid NPCs don't look all that impressive either.

Still, if you don't play games for their fancy visuals, you'll find plenty to occupy yourself with while exploring Barrows Deep's world of Caith. The game offers a nice variety of outdoors areas and self-contained dungeons, and even though the main story path is strictly linear, most of the bigger hub areas will give you plenty of opportunities to stray from the beaten path and explore the game's robust optional content.

Oftentimes, in order to progress, you'll need to solve a puzzle or ten, and those are quite varied, to the point where you could remove all the quests and combat from the game and have it be a pretty competent puzzler.

You have your moving blocks, spinning cogs, flowing streams of energy, guidable fairies, mystical riddles, and everything in-between. And while with some of those, the developers took the quantity over quality approach, many of the puzzles are fairly inventive and satisfying even when they're not the most original.

For example, there was this one cog puzzle in a room with a moving stream of lava dripping from the ceiling. You had to solve the puzzle before you got a refreshing lava shower, which reminded me of that opening scene from Magnum, P.I. where Tom Selleck's titular character had to focus on picking a lock and not the dogs chasing him, which added a good amount of tension to the whole situation.

Apart from the puzzles, this being the bard's tale and all, you'll also have the bardic songs of exploration to help you on your journey. One of them deals with thorny vegetation blocking your way, another breaks cracked walls, and so on.

And on top of that, you have consumable items like grappling hooks, lockpicks, and acid bombs to help you get where you need to go. Not only can you find or buy those, you can also craft them, along with an assortment of potions, healing food, and even some weapons.

Another thing to mention, is that the game was designed around free movement. Usually, I prefer my dungeon crawlers to have tile-based movement, but I can't say that I was missing it in Barrows Deep. It feels nice to traverse the game's maps with the current movement setup. And the tile-based option will be added to the game later anyway as part of the Legacy Mode that will also allow you to draw your own maps, if that's your thing.

Now, unfortunately, the main quest was designed with quest markers in mind. But at the same time, some of the side quests are refreshingly cryptic and offer little clues as to what you need to do to complete them, so in that sense, Barrows Deeps strikes a decent balance between obtuse and obvious.

And overall, the game's pacing is more good than bad. Sure, the intro is pointless, the ending feels rushed, and some of the dungeons lean too heavily on either combat or puzzles, but generally you have a nice selection of activities before you, and they rarely manage to get stale before some variety comes your way.

Character System and Combat


In order to appreciate the game's combat and its underlying systems, you first have to come to terms with the fact that your character is not your character. Your party is your character.

Each individual adventurer can have up to four skills memorized, a usable trinket, and a mobility skill determined by their boots. Which leaves us with a total of six active abilities multiplied by up to six adventurers. And in order to use most of these abilities, you have to spend the so-called opportunity points that come from a shared pool. You start with three and as the game progresses, you get up to eight.

And while the game's spellcasting classes use mana for their spells instead of opportunity, for the most part in order to get mana, they still have to spend some opportunity first.

With such a setup, you shouldn't treat any individual character as your main and think of the rest as the backup crew. Instead, you should look at the encounter you're facing and consider how you can combine your party members' skills together for the best possible outcome.

If you think along these lines, having merely four spells or attacks on each individual character doesn't seem that bad. Which is why the decision to have you start the game with merely two characters and then slowly, over the course of roughly 10-15 hours, gather a full party seems counter-intuitive. Instead of learning to approach things as a well-oiled combat machine from the start, you go through the game's opening sections wondering why its skill and attribute systems feel so basic and overly simplistic.

What do I mean by simplistic? Well, there's a total of five attributes in the game. Strength governs damage across the board for both warriors and spellcasters, Constitution directly represents health, and Intelligence determines how good a character is at channeling spells. And then, for some reason, the game considers Armor Class and Spell Points to also be attributes. And that's that.

Now, when it comes to races, you have several flavors of human, dwarves, elves, and the trow that are like a mix of halflings and goblins. Each race comes with a single unique passive ability. Dwarves, for example, can't be moved by enemies and Baedish humans get additional skill points when leveling up.

The game's four classes are the Bard who drinks lots of booze and buffs the party, the Fighter who hits things with other things and moves other combatants around, the Rogue who exchanges opportunity points for damage, and the Practitioner who casts spells and wins you the game.

Each class has access to a few dozen skills. Each time a character levels up, they get a single skill point. Some skills raise attributes, others grant active abilities, and others yet give powerful passive bonuses to those active abilities.

The skills are divided into three tiers and are arranged into distinct skill trees, so that in order to get to the stronger skills, you have to specialize your characters in certain ways. On top of that, some of the skill trees are connected by dotted lines, which means that skills in that particular tree are mutually exclusive.

And on top of that, some skills, like the Rogue's Hide in Shadows or the Practitioner's Dragon Breath can also be used outside of combat. The former makes your party harder to spot, and the latter acts as a magic torch.

And after completing a certain quest, you'll be able to gain access to the Cleric skill tree that acts as a prestige class of sorts and gives access to a number of healing abilities and fairly strong combat passives.

All this gives you a fair degree of character-building freedom that you wouldn't expect this game to have after playing it for just an hour or two.

You are also free to mess things up, since you can't change your characters' skills after choosing them. Personally, I liked this feature because it made me feel like my choices when leveling up mattered and that I had to live with them and adjust to my sub-optimal decisions, instead of just figuring out how things worked and creating a min-maxed party that was good at everything.

But if you mess up too much, as you play through the game you'll find plenty of mercenary tokens that allow you to create new characters and use them to bolster your party.

The strangest quirk of Barrows Deep's skill system that needs to be mentioned is its weapon-specific skills. Contrary to what common sense may tell you, in Barrows Deep you don't need a bow to use bow skills or a sword to use sword skills. As long as you have a skill mastered and memorized, you can use it in combat regardless of what you have equipped. However, appropriate weapons usually grant significant bonuses to their skills, so in the end, you will want to use the right weapons with the right skills anyway.

The big exception are the elven puzzle weapons that require you to solve their puzzles in order to unlock their unique features, like stunning the entire enemy team for a round, or dropping a deadly avalanche of cabbages on an enemy.

Back when these weapons were first announced, I had high hopes for them, and the end result is kind of cool in a way, but they do disappoint a bit. First, unless you craft them yourself, their base stats will be much lower than those of normal late-game weapons. Then, the puzzles themselves are usually quite similar between weapons. And finally, the original announcement boasted that we'll be able to fail the puzzles and ruin the weapons. And I don't know if maybe I wasn't trying to fail hard enough, but during my playthrough, the weapons were only getting stronger.

Apart from the elven stuff, all the other gear is mostly randomized, with a few unique pieces here and there. The unique stuff is great and oftentimes grants you special active abilities, but the rest is sort-of just there. Or not there, since drops are also randomized. Which is at its worst when you spend a good fifteen minutes solving a tricky environmental puzzle only to get a few coins and an item that goes straight to the nearest vendor.

So, how do you use all those weapons? You take them into battle, of course.

The combat in Barrows Deep is turn-based and takes place on a 4x4 grid divided in half between the opposing parties. Your actions before a battle starts determine who gets to go first or how your enemies will be arranged on their side of the grid. Some of the battles have multiple waves of enemies, which allows you to face more than eight of them in a row. There are three damage types that interact with armor in different ways, and all the active abilities have unique areas of effect.

Your enemies all have their own abilities and tricks, like skeletons that you have to kill on the same turn or they'll keep resurrecting, or berserkers that retaliate when hit by melee attacks. All in all, there's a lot to consider when approaching the game's combat, and early on it offers a satisfying degree of challenge. The normal difficulty is perhaps a bit too easy, but hard will provide you with some neat encounters and tough boss battles.

That is until you find powerful gear and unlock some of the stronger skills. By then, you'll have figured out a winning strategy which you will use to win most encounters with little to no effort. And the most unfortunate part there is that you do all those things with a good chunk of the game left to go.

So, you have the early game when you feel weak and outclassed. You have the mid game where you become strong and exact your revenge on all the enemies that seemed tough and scary. And then you have the late game where combat becomes a mindless chore that just wastes your time.

The existing enemy and skill variety just can't support the game's length. I would have much preferred a shorter, more focused experience with fewer repeating puzzles and battles that exist solely to pad out the hour count, but as the bards said, you can't always get what you want.

Technical Information


Sadly, Barrows Deep was released in a sorry state where if you think of a possible issue, you could probably find it in the game.

The game crashed on me multiple times. It took over a minute to load its larger areas. It didn't run all that well and didn't look nearly good enough to justify such poor performance. I've also encountered quite a few bugs - I had items duplicate, I got stuck on the terrain, I saw flickering textures, and had skills not work as intended.

On top of it all, there were numerous typos here and there, and early on, some people encountered a game-breaking bug that made it impossible to complete the main quest.

The game's inventory is one of the clunkiest inventories ever, and you don't even get the benefit of a pause while trying to manage that mess of poorly sorted tabs and mounds of crafting garbage.

You can only save the game at certain locations, and as some cruel joke, you also get an option to break most of the checkpoints for some additional experience. Which is not a very smart thing to do when the game can crash at any moment. Luckily, these checkpoints are never too far apart, so if you save at every opportunity, you should never loose too much progress. Additionally, the game autosaves when you quit, so you don't even have to backtrack to the last checkpoint when you have to stop playing.

All these issues are exactly why, right after the game launched, inXile Entertainment promised to fix as many of them as possible in the coming weeks. I finished my playthrough before the second patch dropped, but even the first one fixed a good number of bugs and slightly improved the game's performance.

Because of that, I trust inXile to fix the game's technical issues in a timely fashion and don't really count them against the game. Still, if you consider picking it up, I would advise you to at least wait until the first three, already announced, patches are released.

Conclusion


In the end, I feel like The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep suffers from something of an identity crisis and doesn't know exactly want it wants to be.

It manages to combine plentiful quest markers for the main quest with quite a few side quests, and some of the latter give you very little to go on and there is an expectation that you'll just figure them out eventually. It has a robust party-based combat system, but it doesn't give you a full party for a good dozen hours of play time. It hides plenty of well-hidden secrets and satisfying side areas, but its main story is as linear as it gets.

A lot of these design choices are frustrating, but despite that nagging feeling that things could have been a bit more satisfying, I had a lot of fun playing the game, exploring its areas, and solving its puzzles and riddles. We're not exactly swimming in dungeon crawlers these days, so I'd certainly recommend it to anyone interested in this particular subgenre of RPG. But do yourself a favor and wait until it's all patched up and has a few more coats of polish.
 

dragonul09

Arcane
Edgy
Joined
Dec 19, 2014
Messages
1,445


What's there to show anymore Fergie, the game is dead, barely 500-600 players in the last few weeks and it keeps going down, stop wasting money and time on this wreck and move on, no one will ever notice:lol:
 
Self-Ejected

theSavant

Self-Ejected
Joined
Oct 3, 2012
Messages
2,009
I wonder what Fargo would make different, if he had the knowledge from now and could make BT4 again.
Would he make it closer to the originals? Or would he make an isometric game instead?
 

Themadcow

Augur
Joined
Feb 17, 2012
Messages
308
I wonder what Fargo would make different, if he had the knowledge from now and could make BT4 again.
Would he make it closer to the originals? Or would he make an isometric game instead?

If it was me, I probably wouldn't farm out the project to a new team helmed by millennials with no prior experience of making similar games. Yeah, that's probably where I'd start.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom