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

From what I watched CohhCarnage playing it, the game seem decent. Bugs and performance problems should not have been allowed to kill it.

 

The game is downright fun. Would recommend anyone play to at least the first real dungeon (a mage tower - you'll know it when you get to it) before abandoning the game.

 

Slavs will torrent/steal anything just for the sake of it. Subway Surfers has like billion active seeders. Why?

I haven't followed the game at all, someone got a rundown on why it's shit apart from the shoddy rushed release. I mean, that's to be expected in TYOOL MMXVIII

 

Good to know that it's not a completely terrible game. Maybe I'll get it on 90% sale this Christmas.

 

The sense of pacing and adventure in Legend of Grimrock 2 is top notch.

 

I almost reached the end of the game, and it's now appearent that the game also suffers from 2 major issues:

1) Economy - money is useless, I have 20K gold and none of the equipment that vendors offer has better stats than the gear I found in the dungeons

2) Pacing. If you finish the first big dungeon ( Alduin's mage tower ) you'll understand. The game goes from Skara Brae, two areas that are mostly NPC/combat oriented, to the mage dungeon which is almost 2 straight hours of puzzling with no combat.

After that, you get a decent exterior area, followed by 5 horrible hours in a maze-like linear corridor area full of trash combat and repetitive puzzles. After that, the game improves and better balances its pacing, but you already need to get past the 20-hours stage to reach that..

The mid/late game dungeons and areas are much, much improved IMO. Not only they look better visually, but they're more interesting with a nice mix of combat and semi-interesting puzzles.

It is funny, most games start strong and lose steam past the mid-game, but BT4 is the opposite: the early areas kind of suck, then by mid game you'll have experienced a few decent ones, and by the end-game most areas are good ! Weird.

 

I bet the Shacknews intern disagrees with you, and that's the point. Grimrock is too solitary and introspective for most gamers.

 

T:ToN also had a horrible tutorial. I imagine how many players asked for a refund just because of that bizarre intro.

 

The game will be fun after all the patches come out. For now i would recommend for people to wait. The game is mainly basic puzzle solving that need some basic logic,it is interesting but those trash puzzles are too many.

I don't know how people like felipepepe can say that this game is a dungeon crawler. The old ones don't have a 6 hours of kicking fays in the ass and pushing boulders around mixed with 10 minutes of combat. The game is charming and fun for what it is,but it is no blobber!

 

It's a bad dungeon crawler when compared to... basically any other dungeon crawler, but it's also a pretty bad puzzle game when you compare it with Portal, Antichamber and the likes, as it keeps resorting to trash, isolated puzzles that take no advantage of the game's engine or locations.

I mean, they create a room with a permanent gravity spell, where goblins are stuck to the ceiling and giant rocks flow around. What imaginative puzzle you must complete there? YOU PUSH BLOCKS.

 

I really do like this game now, but fantadomat indeed has a point about the puzzles. Every once in a while is fun to break things up, but even in the first "real" dungeon it's overkill. Its stuff anyone has done a million times before, moving blocks around, solving magic number squares, etc. The gear puzzles are kinda unique I guess, but get old real quick.

 

But...but... moving blocks is fun.

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I do want to thank Roqua for tirelessly defending the game here. Without you I would never have given the game a second chance, and I really enjoy it now.

 

To be fair, you have to be a real hardcore RPG gamer to understand The Bard's Tale 4. The party building is very subtle, and without a solid grasp of skill synergy the ability tree will go over a typical Codexer's head. There's also Fargo's old school outlook, which is deftly woven into the mechanics - a design vision which draws heavily from RPG classics like Heartstone, for instance. The fans understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths this game, to realise that it's not just deep - it says something deep about the genre itself. As a consequence people who dislike The Bard's Tale 4 truly ARE idiots- of course they wouldn't appreciate, for instance, the existential nihilism in the endless series of fairy puzzles unlocking doors to trash loot or worthless shorcuts, which itself is a cryptic reference to Beckett's Waiting for Godot. I'm smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as Fargo's reimagining of old school mechanics unfolds on their computer monitors. What fools.. how I pity them.

And yes, by the way, i DO have a tattoo of Brain Fargo's face on my left buttock cheek. And no, you cannot see it. It's for the ladies' eyes only- and even then they have to demonstrate that they're within 5 IQ points of my own (preferably lower) beforehand. Nothin personnel kid.

 

But, but Fargo is a veteran of the industry with a deep understanding of the genre. He is like

 

Welp, thought it's just my potato PC at home is too old to run the game, sadly my PC at work with i5 8400 and GTX 1060 can't run it at 60fps high setting either (medium texture looks horrible), it's playable when I set shadow to medium but there's still occasional framedrops here and there. Guess I'd just listen to the soundtrack while waiting for patch

At least Pathfinder's coming out tomorrow

 

That is unnecessary oversimplification of things. It is not important the physical part of a puzzle the toll it takes on your brain. The important part for a puzzle is to make you stop and think for a few minutes,this game does have some interesting and hard puzzles,like the big lava puzzle in the lodge of the wolf. Still most of them are very easy and unnecessary,they draw out the game and kill the pace.

Another thing i found out incredibly annoying is the environment blockades,or the lack of them. Throughout the game you get all kind of songs and items to help you get past those blockades,yet the game is filled mainly with stupid simple puzzles instead of nice blockade that need a song or a bomb.

PS:It is not a fucking blobber or dungeon crawler,not even a bad one. It is a fucking first person jrpg with focus on puzzles. It should have been called towers of zleda or something.

 

Yeah, what were they thinking with the tutorial area is a complete mystery to me.

 

What tutorial area? The undercity is the best area in my opinion. It have great dark and brooding atmosphere and it doesn't have any puzzles. It does kind of feel like a real place. It is shame that the writing didn't do anything with it. Oh also it have the most fun exploring,the songs could open a secret path and you get to use all those items like bombs and grappling hooks. It is shame that they went down the puzzle rout. Who the fuck puts 20 random puzzles in the middle of "scary" forest. The pichts are hyping the retarded level as dark and dangerous while it is filled with their brothers and stupid pixie puzzles. At least the teleport one was fun.

Sooo yeah i did like the undercity the most from all the levels i have seen.

PS:Ohhh and it is the level i managed to find Darth Roxor and Infinitron.

 

The devs should've been polishing their starter areas instead of doing shit like this:

 

I disagree,finding Roxor or Infinitron is always a fun thing,it makes me chuckle and warms my jaded hearth.
Here is a screenshot of infi plotting with his friends in a traditional ancient jew way.

 

Desire to purchase the game reaching critical mass

 

Go ahead and purchase it ,it is a good game. Just wait at least till the next patch before you play it.

 

Aaaand the GOG patch is out, and it's only a 25 GB download!

 

Anyone who can recommend BT4 in its current state is a fucking moron.