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

Darth Roxor

Royal Dongsmith
Staff Member
Joined
May 29, 2008
Messages
1,878,403
Location
Djibouti
so now that i've downloaded 25 gb of patches and reinstalled the game thrice, i dont really like playing it :neveraskedforthis:
 

Darth Roxor

Royal Dongsmith
Staff Member
Joined
May 29, 2008
Messages
1,878,403
Location
Djibouti
after 75 gbs of 3 patches, the game still runs like ass and even the most basic of things like opening the inventory can freeze it for 5+ seconds sometimes

a monkey would have coded this better i swear
 
Self-Ejected

theSavant

Self-Ejected
Joined
Oct 3, 2012
Messages
2,009
Darth Roxor how do you like the game for now?

Btw. "Save Anywhere" is obviously worked on. From a comment in the Steam reviews:
Michael@inXile [Entwickler] Verfasst: 17. Okt. um 19:48 Uhr Hallo Rongkong Coma,

Das Speichersystem wird aktuell überarbeitet und wird es in Kürze ermöglichen, jederzeit zu speichern.

"The Save System is being worked on and shortly will allow to save anytime."
 

Gord

Arcane
Joined
Feb 16, 2011
Messages
7,049
Finished it yesterday.
For anyone who cares, here come Gord's Neutral-Positive (tm) impressions:

When inXile made the Bard's Tale 4 Kickstarter, my main reason for backing it was actually that it came with a free copy of Wasteland 2 - a game which was not exactly considered the greatest thing since sliced bread by the Codex. Nevertheless, I was curious enough about it, but being the cheapskate I am, obviously I didn't want to spend too much money on it. Having another potentially interesting game on top (BT4 itself) sealed the deal for me.
I knew about the original trilogy, of course, but never considered myself a particular big fan of the games (and did, so far, not play part 3). As such, I also didn't have any super specific expectations when it came to BT4's gameplay and/or content beyond it being a blobber/dungeon-crawler in a vaguely celtish-inspired fantasy setting. IMO, it was clear they wouldn't deliver a faithful, carefully modernized new iteration of the old games' formula, but rather something different right from their Kickstarter pitch.
Consequently - if you expect and demand just that, better avoid BT4.

A few weeks before the release we also saw the release of another offspring of the BT4 Kickstarter: the first part of the original trilogies remaster, which for some time looked unlikely to ever see the light of day.
I played through that game shortly before BT4 and found it to still be a fun experience, if rather simplistic and a bit grindy overall.

Anyway, BT4. As everyone noticed quite fast, inXile botched the launch. Hard. So much, that one might actually wonder if they purposefully tried to commit financial suicide there.
The game released with horrible performance issues and a big number of bugs, at least one of them preventing the game from being finish-able at all (little did we know then, that the prize for the buggiest kickstarter-release 2018 would actually be claimed by Owlcat's Patfinder:Kingmaker only a few days later).
The Steam ratings consequently quickly reflected the poor release state of the game, with one of the major complaints being the technical issues of the games.
Luckily, for me the game was playable enough on my mid-range gaming toaster, even though the framerate was much lower than one would expect from the game's graphics. I also got spared from the worst bugs (I think the game crashed a total of 3-4 times over my entire playtime and I could complete all quests).
Patch 2 and 3 have since improved the framerates in many (but not all) areas quite a bit, and also fixed many of the quest-related bugs.
Still, while being quite playable, in terms of performance the game still has some way to go, imo.

Another of the somewhat difficult to understand decisions inXile took, is having start the game in one of the actually ugliest areas - Skara Brae proper. As mentioned also by felipepepe, it's a rather uninspired grey-and-brown run-of-the-mill fantasy town. Apparently the release build defaulted to low graphics settings for many, emphasizing the bland looks further.
To inXile's defense, patch 3 has improved the situation a bit, overhauling the lighting of both Skara Brae upper and underground.
For all non-graphic-whores that managed to keep playing, however, the first real dungeon that players would encounter (Kylearan's tower) is a pretty different story. It offers several nice vistas and an overall nice mix of BT4's main gameplay elements: combat, riddles and exploration.

While the combat is nothing I would call very complex, I found it to be fun enough most of the time - and it's certainly more involved than the even simpler iteration of the original trilogy.
The biggest issue I had with it is that it only worked really well until around half-way through the game. At that point, the player has encountered most enemies and probably skilled a party that can deal with most of them easily and without having to adjust the strategy too much. Sooner or later the player will likely be steamrolling 99% of the encounters (which is actually faithful to the original games).
:troll:
I would have, however, liked a way to flee from combat or change the active skills, which are limited to 4 per character - e.g. by giving up my own turn. While this doesn't matter later in the game, esp. early on some encounters could be very difficult without the right skills.
The different types of riddles/puzzles play a much more pronounced role than in the old games. About 95% are made up of the 5 main types: stone-block-pushing, fairy golf, power-line routing, celtic-knot-turning and shifting around of turning gears. They are usually not very complicated, although a couple of them might have you ponder over them for a few minutes.
The exploration part has you finding secret doors/passages and solving puzzles for loot. In the best moments, the different elements work nicely together, creating a good pacing.
In the not-so-good moments, inXile just put several puzzles of the same kind one after another (albeit usually with increasing complexity), without doing much to shake the routine up a bit. Luckily that is limited to only some areas in the game.

The character system is, again, not a very complex one, but I found it serviceable enough. Sure I wouldn't have minded a more elaborate one, but then again old BT didn't exactly have a very complex system either, so maybe it is a bit unreasonable to expect too much here. At least you can actually influence your characters progression this time around...
You start the game with 4 different classes at your disposal (bard-fighter-rogue-practitioner(spellcaster), which can be skilled in different ways over the course of the game. Each character class typically has 3 or 4 tabs containing a tree-structure of skills and upgrades. An additional skill tab can be unlocked later in the story for another special set of skills. Each level-up, you get 1 skill point, which can be used to unlock a node in the skilltrees. Nodes range from simple stat-bonuses, over active or passive skills, to capstones, which give certain special abilities to further differentiate characters a bit.
Since you will accumulate quite some level-ups over the course of the game, eventually the really useful nodes will be taken, so you might find yourself taking boring stat-bonuses or skilling characters increasingly similar towards the end of the game.
Stats are, with the exception of those gained from the respective skill-nodes, almost exclusively governed by equipment. Con translates directly to HP, Int increases damage of mind-spells and helps you resist mind-damage-spells (important for channeling abilities), Str increases all other damage. Each piece of armor or weapon will give a bonus to those stats (and sometimes armor for flat dmg reduction, or additional spell points), and some, in particular the uniques and puzzle weapons, come with special abilities (like unique active skills, special buffs/debuffs or a bonus to another skill).

About the other much discussed features of the game, the limited save-system and missing respec, I can only say that I didn't care.
There are usually enough spots to save, the game saves on exit (will be deleted on load, however), so no danger of losing content because you have to go to bed/work/shopping/masturbate. Admittedly it sucks if you lose progress due to a crash, but that did rarely happen for me. And concerning respec, I just didn't think it was necessary.

Overall, the game is a somewhat uneven one. You start in the most ugly area of the game, yet they do have some very beautiful areas, so it's not that they totally lack talent in that department. A similar thing can be said about character/NPC models - humans and elves look amateurish, while trow, dwarves (well, from a technical PoV) and most enemies actually look quite decent.
The combat is fun especially early on, but eventually becomes too samey, also because they hardly shake up enemy encounters after about mid-point of the game.
In the best areas, they get the mixture of the different gameplay elements just right, in other areas, they overly rely on repetitive single elements.
The decision to (slowly) unlock party slots is also something many people understandably have criticized.

Conclusion:
In total, I would rate it 6-7/10 - it's good for what it is, but no great, soon-to-be classic masterpiece.
Still, for some reason, like an 80s action B-movie, the game had a certain charm and was mostly fun to play. Oh, and the music is quite nice (even if I would have liked to stuff Rabie's guitar into his mouth after the 10000th rendition of Snow in Summer).
I certainly don't regret having backed it (I didn't mind getting WL2 and BT1-3 remastered out of it, either).
 
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BEvers

I'm forever blowing
Joined
Aug 14, 2018
Messages
808
Brian popped up on Cohh's Twitch today and was asked if Bard's Tale 5 was in the works.

Untitled.png


:negative:
 

Themadcow

Augur
Joined
Feb 17, 2012
Messages
308
Thanks to the remaster update, yesterday BT4 only had 100 more peak players than BT Remastered. Weekend figures will be interesting.
 

Biggus

Scholar
Joined
Jul 4, 2015
Messages
208
I wonder at what point they give up? Probably when Trilogy has a higher player count than BT4 (and that doesn't seem too far away.)
Then again, other devs continue on regardless :P

yF7Wr1c.png
 

sebas

Scholar
Patron
Joined
Dec 20, 2015
Messages
282
Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut
Well, a series with a huge fanbase like Total War can afford to botch up a release this badly (though I am sure it still hurt), but a niche developer doing a niche game? Doubt there's any coming back from this. The new audience won't touch it cos of performance and steam ratings and the old guys will rather just play the remastered trilogy.
 
Self-Ejected

theSavant

Self-Ejected
Joined
Oct 3, 2012
Messages
2,009
I wonder at what point they give up?

Legitimite question. With such a small amount of players and still losing players I wonder if they care about patching and gridmode anymore. All these efforts will bring them back no players at all. It's botched. Also... there are still more people playing Oblivion than BT4... wtf
 

J_C

One Bit Studio
Patron
Developer
Joined
Dec 28, 2010
Messages
16,947
Location
Pannonia
Project: Eternity Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
I wonder at what point they give up? Probably when Trilogy has a higher player count than BT4 (and that doesn't seem too far away.)
Then again, other devs continue on regardless :P

yF7Wr1c.png
It's kinda cruel to show Grimoire's playercount in these comparison charts each time. That game is dead.
 

Biggus

Scholar
Joined
Jul 4, 2015
Messages
208
I wonder at what point they give up?

Legitimite question. With such a small amount of players and still losing players I wonder if they care about patching and gridmode anymore. All these efforts will bring them back no players at all. It's botched. Also... there are still more people playing Oblivion than BT4... wtf

oops, I should have scrolled back a bit, it's already happened. Wonder what the weekend figures will look like? Probably not good.

aKExtY1.png
 

Deleted Member 16721

Guest
Upgrade your toasters, fellas. I had no issues running the game in sweet 1440p at ultra settings. No lag, no crashes, etc.. The game is good, a very good blend of first-person exploration with 'crawler combat. I enjoyed the 30 hours I spent with it and will go back sometime after Kingmaker. It's a good game, stop hating on the great Brian Fargo! :positive:
 

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