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Codex Review RPG Codex Review: The Bard's Tale IV

Self-Ejected

theSavant

Self-Ejected
Joined
Oct 3, 2012
Messages
2,009
Yeah, I think Steam counts every minute you spend in the game, regardless if you reload or not.
Reminds me of Dead Space 1, which showed me a playtime of only 12 hours after finishing it, but it seriously felt like 20 hours or more (it took me 3 days to finish). I think the game just counted the playtime where you actually got through the missions without reloads.
 

felipepepe

Codex's Heretic
Patron
Joined
Feb 2, 2007
Messages
17,274
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Terra da Garoa
Yes, I lost a few hours due to bugs that forced me to reload, but certainly not 20 hours.

My Steam clock is bloated because the game was in a shitty state when it came out, so I played it for a bit, gave up, idled for cards (used them to buy Loki on Steam) and then restarted the game when the second patch came out.
 

Morkar Left

Guest
Yeah, I think Steam counts every minute you spend in the game, regardless if you reload or not.
Reminds me of Dead Space 1, which showed me a playtime of only 12 hours after finishing it, but it seriously felt like 20 hours or more (it took me 3 days to finish). I think the game just counted the playtime where you actually got through the missions without reloads.

It's even worse with steam. I have hundred hours of Elite Dangerous and really played only 20 hours. The clock starts as soon as you click on the play button in Steam. For Elite Dangerous it opens the launcher which allos you to start the game. As long as I had the launcher open it counted to my playtime. In short: playtimes in Steam are hugely inflated.
 

Darkzone

Arcane
Joined
Sep 4, 2013
Messages
2,323
I haven't played it beyond the Kylearan's Tower, because i had not time to do it. But i want to address one point of felipepepe's criticism: 2 round fights.
Fuck have you played BTI-III? If not then i recommend to you to play the remastered version to see it for yourself. Every fight in BTI late game is just 1-2 rounds long. I needed just one Round for the 4x99 Berserkers and for Mangar i need just 2 rounds.
 

felipepepe

Codex's Heretic
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17,274
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Terra da Garoa
I haven't played it beyond the Kylearan's Tower, because i had not time to do it. But i want to address one point of felipepepe's criticism: 2 round fights.
Fuck have you played BTI-III? If not then i recommend to you to play the remastered version to see it for yourself. Every fight in BTI late game is just 1-2 rounds long. I needed just one Round for the 4x99 Berserkers and for Mangar i need just 2 rounds.
So what? Their combat systems and encounter design are entirely different, nothing that applies for one serves for the other. Why are you even bringing this up?
 

Darkzone

Arcane
Joined
Sep 4, 2013
Messages
2,323
I haven't played it beyond the Kylearan's Tower, because i had not time to do it. But i want to address one point of felipepepe's criticism: 2 round fights.
Fuck have you played BTI-III? If not then i recommend to you to play the remastered version to see it for yourself. Every fight in BTI late game is just 1-2 rounds long. I needed just one Round for the 4x99 Berserkers and for Mangar i need just 2 rounds.
So what? Their combat systems and encounter design are entirely different, nothing that applies for one serves for the other. Why are you even bringing this up?
Because the critic that you apply is also part and the appeal of the entire BT series (with the emphasis upon MIBL, MAMA, FAFI, JOBO, NUKE) and the sequel is measured upon and compared to the predecessors, like in the case of Fallout or Ultima or Wizardry or etc series.
So you have figured out a combo and build that lets you spare resources and win major or minor (i get from your review, that this were minor fights ) fights within 2 rounds. Good for you. But this was not different for the majority of fights in BTI - III.
Think what you had to do to win the 2 round fights in BTIV and what was in BTI: R1(AAHU(Fire Horn)C(MIBL)C(MIBL)), R2(AAAU(Fire Horn)C(MIBL)C(MIBL)) (here spot the difference between R1 and R2).
 

mondblut

Arcane
Joined
Aug 10, 2005
Messages
22,178
Location
Ingrija
Ok, let's stick to your analogy: if we assume that the game doesn't end in a draw, you can have all kinds of mind boring situations between goals: players resorting to repetitive fouls and interrupting the flow of the game because they have no technique, divers trying to cheat the judge with fake fouls and fake injuries, delays because of said cheaters, repetitive corners that go nowhere because there are no tactics involved, bizarre missed attempts on goal, retarded wrong assistances, bad crosses, free kicks in the defensive half that amount to nothing, players wasting time to preserve the result, sneezed balls outside the box, etc. I could go on all day, but the point is that some games seem like 90 mins torture and make goals look like miracles.

All this is still a legit part of the package. When your third division team plays against league champions in a cup, you are happy for every dive if it brings them 20 seconds closer to the result.

All entertainment is 95% filler. Average "good movie" has maybe 5 minutes of exciting stuff, the rest is boring exposition. Average "good album" has maybe half of a song that is actually great, the rest is padding to reach 45 minutes of running time. Average sports is maybe 30 seconds of excitement per match. How come games are suddenly expected to be about snorting weapons grade buttonawesomin without pausing from the moment you click "install"?

Maybe it's just me, but I still fondly remember the times when an RPG was expected to play for at least a hundred of hours. And, guess what, 99 of that hundred was padding and filler. Yet they somehow still blow the buttonawesomin-powered crap out of the water.

The problem is that we need to have entertaining content to add genuine pacing. Filler content and trash mobs are not the conscious result of a school of design. They are the result of lazy developers that are not doing their job right and want add some stuff to pretend it's like the rest. Do you know what kind of cRPGs has tons of “filler pacing”? Fucking jRPGs!

JRPGs lifted that from Wizardry, and Wizardry can do no wrong. :obviously:

Of course, the main purpose of padding in an RPG is to treat you with that sweet, juicy, delightful XP. If game mechanics are trash and you get no reward for your persistence, there is no point in that padding. Then again, there is no point in such a game to exist to begin with.
 

Zombra

An iron rock in the river of blood and evil
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Make the Codex Great Again! RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
I haven't played it beyond the Kylearan's Tower, because i had not time to do it. But i want to address one point of felipepepe's criticism: 2 round fights.
Fuck have you played BTI-III? If not then i recommend to you to play the remastered version to see it for yourself. Every fight in BTI late game is just 1-2 rounds long. I needed just one Round for the 4x99 Berserkers and for Mangar i need just 2 rounds.
So what? Their combat systems and encounter design are entirely different, nothing that applies for one serves for the other. Why are you even bringing this up?
Because the critic that you apply is also part and the appeal of the entire BT series and the sequel is measured upon and compared to the predecessors
No. "Is it like the previous games" is not the purpose of a review. It's about whether the game is good.
 

felipepepe

Codex's Heretic
Patron
Joined
Feb 2, 2007
Messages
17,274
Location
Terra da Garoa
I haven't played it beyond the Kylearan's Tower, because i had not time to do it. But i want to address one point of felipepepe's criticism: 2 round fights.
Fuck have you played BTI-III? If not then i recommend to you to play the remastered version to see it for yourself. Every fight in BTI late game is just 1-2 rounds long. I needed just one Round for the 4x99 Berserkers and for Mangar i need just 2 rounds.
So what? Their combat systems and encounter design are entirely different, nothing that applies for one serves for the other. Why are you even bringing this up?
Because the critic that you apply is also part and the appeal of the entire BT series (with the emphasis upon MIBL, MAMA, FAFI, JOBO, NUKE) and the sequel is measured upon and compared to the predecessors, like in the case of Fallout or Ultima or Wizardry or etc series.
So you have figured out a combo and build that lets you spare resources and win major or minor (i get from your review, that this were minor fights ) fights within 2 rounds. Good for you. But this was not different for the majority of fights in BTI - III.
Think what you had to do to win the 2 round fights in BTIV and what was in BTI: R1(AAHU(Fire Horn)C(MIBL)C(MIBL)), R2(AAAU(Fire Horn)C(MIBL)C(MIBL)) (here spot the difference between R1 and R2).
I don't know how you played up to Kylearan's Tower without figuring this out, but this is not a real sequel. Besides the setting and a few spell names, it has fuck all to do with the previous games. I mentioned this at the start of the review and said I would judge it as its own thing.

Because, as I mentioned, the logic is entirely different. Bard's Tale I-III are games about attrition, even more than Wizardry. Individual battles are meant to be extremely fast, but they will force you to spend spell points, decrease your HP and fuck you up with status effect, until you're forced to go back to town and spend a fortune to restore your party. Combat in those games is actually extremely simplistic, the entire gameplay loop hinges on exploring as much of the maps and gathering as much XP and gold as possible before going back - be too ambitious and you die, be too cowardly and you might not have enough money. At least that's the idea, because those games had some ludicrous balance mid-game and the solution becomes "grind like hell".

Meanwhile, Bard's Tale IV has one save totem that fully restores health every 5 minutes, has no status effects that carry between battles, spell points are per battle and the game is filled to the brim with food & healing items. Your party is basically always at full power, there are no resources to manage or spare. Moreover, it has several spells and abilities that require channeling and/or saving mana, meaning you need battles to last multiple rounds, or those abilities are just useless. Even the speed is entirely different, you can do like two entire BT1 battles before even the passive buff animations play in BT4.

That's why Bard's Tale 4 encounter design is retarded. Maybe the designer was bright like you and didn't figure this out, but they are operating under entirely different rules, pacing and concepts. BT4 battles need to have much more weight and challenge, since they are self-contained. Instead, they can be won just as easily, carry no consequence, take longer and have way less variety than even BT1. There's nothing like a dragon fucking your entire party up with his breath, spiders applying poison, vampires draining levels, etc. That's why it sucks.
 

sstacks

Arcane
Joined
Jan 30, 2014
Messages
1,151
*reads felipepepe's review and the first couple of pages of comments*

Well, that whole game release went South fast even by Codex standards.

169rp6.jpg
 

sstacks

Arcane
Joined
Jan 30, 2014
Messages
1,151
To be fair, looking around it's not getting universe love and praise outside of the Codex either. Gamespot actually gave it a 40%. Steam users are at 58%.
 

Diggfinger

Arcane
Joined
Jan 6, 2014
Messages
1,199
Location
Belgium
So how far along are we, in terms of BT4 selling 2 million copies (which Fargo announced would trigger him to buy back Interplay)?

Felipe bought a copy, obviously.
Twitter-guy bought 1, and I saw a few other tweets like that so let's count 5.
Then there's Steam...let's say 17 copies.
Probably Cleveland Mark Blakemore bought a copy too, just to prove how inferior to Neanderthal us mere human beings actually are.
...adding GOG sales and rounding up....brings us to about 119 copies sold!
Only 1,999,881 to go! Sally forth, brave comrades!
:happytrollboy:

*goes back to playing Grimoire*
 

Cleveland Mark Blakemore

Golden Era Games
Übermensch Developer
Joined
Apr 22, 2008
Messages
11,556
Location
LAND OF THE FREE & HOME OF THE BRAVE
I haven't played it beyond the Kylearan's Tower, because i had not time to do it. But i want to address one point of felipepepe's criticism: 2 round fights.
Fuck have you played BTI-III? If not then i recommend to you to play the remastered version to see it for yourself. Every fight in BTI late game is just 1-2 rounds long. I needed just one Round for the 4x99 Berserkers and for Mangar i need just 2 rounds.
So what? Their combat systems and encounter design are entirely different, nothing that applies for one serves for the other. Why are you even bringing this up?
Because the critic that you apply is also part and the appeal of the entire BT series (with the emphasis upon MIBL, MAMA, FAFI, JOBO, NUKE) and the sequel is measured upon and compared to the predecessors, like in the case of Fallout or Ultima or Wizardry or etc series.
So you have figured out a combo and build that lets you spare resources and win major or minor (i get from your review, that this were minor fights ) fights within 2 rounds. Good for you. But this was not different for the majority of fights in BTI - III.
Think what you had to do to win the 2 round fights in BTIV and what was in BTI: R1(AAHU(Fire Horn)C(MIBL)C(MIBL)), R2(AAAU(Fire Horn)C(MIBL)C(MIBL)) (here spot the difference between R1 and R2).
I don't know how you played up to Kylearan's Tower without figuring this out, but this is not a real sequel. Besides the setting and a few spell names, it has fuck all to do with the previous games. I mentioned this at the start of the review and said I would judge it as its own thing.

Because, as I mentioned, the logic is entirely different. Bard's Tale I-III are games about attrition, even more than Wizardry. Individual battles are meant to be extremely fast, but they will force you to spend spell points, decrease your HP and fuck you up with status effect, until you're forced to go back to town and spend a fortune to restore your party. Combat in those games is actually extremely simplistic, the entire gameplay loop hinges on exploring as much of the maps and gathering as much XP and gold as possible before going back - be too ambitious and you die, be too cowardly and you might not have enough money. At least that's the idea, because those games had some ludicrous balance mid-game and the solution becomes "grind like hell".

Meanwhile, Bard's Tale IV has one save totem that fully restores health every 5 minutes, has no status effects that carry between battles, spell points are per battle and the game is filled to the brim with food & healing items. Your party is basically always at full power, there are no resources to manage or spare. Moreover, it has several spells and abilities that require channeling and/or saving mana, meaning you need battles to last multiple rounds, or those abilities are just useless. Even the speed is entirely different, you can do like two entire BT1 battles before even the passive buff animations play in BT4.

That's why Bard's Tale 4 encounter design is retarded. Maybe the designer was bright like you and didn't figure this out, but they are operating under entirely different rules, pacing and concepts. BT4 battles need to have much more weight and challenge, since they are self-contained. Instead, they can be won just as easily, carry no consequence, take longer and have way less variety than even BT1. There's nothing like a dragon fucking your entire party up with his breath, spiders applying poison, vampires draining levels, etc. That's why it sucks.

Something went horribly wrong here.

TEN MILLION DOLLARS, HOMEY
THAT'S A LOT OF CHANGE FOR TEN HOURS OF LOUSY PLAY
A MILLION DOLLARS AN HOUR FOR A RAILS POPAMOLE SHOOTER
CHECK OUT THOSE TEXTURES
UNITY STANDARD FOREST GRAPHICS 100%
NOT EVEN A BUMP MAP OR TWO
SO WHERE DID FARGO SPEND THE MONEY?
 

Grauken

Gourd vibes only
Patron
Joined
Mar 22, 2013
Messages
12,738
Imagine you would have had that budget, Grimoire could not have been played by mortals due to its greatness, it would have broken minds
 

Grauken

Gourd vibes only
Patron
Joined
Mar 22, 2013
Messages
12,738
Somebody needs to do some meme-worthy pictures of both of them
 

Themadcow

Augur
Joined
Feb 17, 2012
Messages
308
So how far along are we, in terms of BT4 selling 2 million copies (which Fargo announced would trigger him to buy back Interplay)?

Felipe bought a copy, obviously.
Twitter-guy bought 1, and I saw a few other tweets like that so let's count 5.
Then there's Steam...let's say 17 copies.
Probably Cleveland Mark Blakemore bought a copy too, just to prove how inferior to Neanderthal us mere human beings actually are.
...adding GOG sales and rounding up....brings us to about 119 copies sold!
Only 1,999,881 to go! Sally forth, brave comrades!

SteamDB reckons about 600 peak active users this weekend (vs Pathfinder: 16000) , and it's sitting on an estimated 20--50k total sales. Plus, y'know, GOG sales. That's got to be at least 56 more.

By my estimates, Fargo should have enough sales to be able to afford one or maybe two letters from Interplay. I'd go with 'P' and 'Y' since they're worth the most in Scrabble.
 
Last edited:
Self-Ejected

theSavant

Self-Ejected
Joined
Oct 3, 2012
Messages
2,009
I learned something from the review I didn't really realize while playing (call me dumb): that weapons do not have their own Damage value, but only increase the character Stats and thereby increase the Damage. That's very simple, yet effective. I like it.
Btw. I'd be all for that abridged 10 hours long version. I rather have a quality 10 hours than a repetitive, artificially stretched 40 hours. Which is also better for replaying instead of thinking "omg.. all this unnecessary shit again" and thereby even preventing a replay. I'm sure I've mentioned this in the inXile forums long before... "I've said it all along. I told you so. You should have listened."
 

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