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

Reapa

Doom Preacher
Joined
Jul 10, 2009
Messages
2,340
Location
Germany
The game is far from being a complete trainwreck but it has substantial issues which prevents it from being a good rpg. That doesn't mean that you can't have some fun with it. But I doubt it would last the whole game.

The biggest problem imho is actually the whole character system and straying away waaay too far from a normal rpg system and having a bit too much repetitive puzzles too often (having the puzzles in is actually pretty good and entertaining). With the wrecked up char system comes some bad balancing and a very weak economy. Add some other nonsensical design decisions like the token system and overall you get a 65-70 % rated game.

RPG developers are moving away from deep stats in favor of a "streamlined" and "mainstream " experience. Meanwhile, I look at sports games (which sell millions of copies) and see 10 main stats with another 30 derived stats ranging from 0-100.

Maybe rpg devs are just fucking stupid. This game was rancid shit and I'm glad it failed. Stop dumbing down the genre.
Now that you mention it... wtf is going on?
I used to assume consoletardisation was at the core of the shallowing. But your observation just blew my mind and i am left without a theory for what is happening to rpgs. Of course bad UI can still be blamed on multiplatfoming but the low depth and the trend towards action rpgs can't...
 

Whiskeyjack

Learned
Joined
Jul 8, 2018
Messages
156
The game is far from being a complete trainwreck but it has substantial issues which prevents it from being a good rpg. That doesn't mean that you can't have some fun with it. But I doubt it would last the whole game.

The biggest problem imho is actually the whole character system and straying away waaay too far from a normal rpg system and having a bit too much repetitive puzzles too often (having the puzzles in is actually pretty good and entertaining). With the wrecked up char system comes some bad balancing and a very weak economy. Add some other nonsensical design decisions like the token system and overall you get a 65-70 % rated game.

RPG developers are moving away from deep stats in favor of a "streamlined" and "mainstream " experience. Meanwhile, I look at sports games (which sell millions of copies) and see 10 main stats with another 30 derived stats ranging from 0-100.

Maybe rpg devs are just fucking stupid. This game was rancid shit and I'm glad it failed. Stop dumbing down the genre.
Now that you mention it... wtf is going on?
I used to assume consoletardisation was at the core of the shallowing. But your observation just blew my mind and i am left without a theory for what is happening to rpgs. Of course bad UI can still be blamed on multiplatfoming but the low depth and the trend towards action rpgs can't...
https://cheltips.com/world-of-chel-eashl-player-class-loadout-guide/

Seriously - here we have classes, athletic stats (Str ,Spd, Acceleration, etc.) which effect other things, plus height and weight (which affect the applied stats like checking, shooting, etc.), complete with feats.
 

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
https://steamcommunity.com/games/566090/announcements/detail/1694939468106895732

Hotfix 4.2 is live
29 NOVEMBER - PAUL_INXILE

Hello everyone,

We have just released a hotfix regarding the following issues:
  • Loading time improvements. These improvements are targeted for people with non-Solid State Drives.
  • Reported push block puzzle issues with free movement are now resolved.
We also have an additional known issue:
  • If player charges characters on elevated platforms or cliffs, there is a chance that the combat will start off-grid or the player will not be aligned properly to the combat. We are working to address this in the next full patch.
Thanks for helping us to continue improving the game for everyone. Please keep letting us know if you are still having any issues with The Bard's Tale 4: Barrows Deep.

The team at inXile
 

Curratum

Guest
I actually deleted my negative one and added a positive one since the last two patches improved performance A LOT and fixed loading times to a reasonable leve.

Game is pretty awesome, now that I can finally play it.
 
Self-Ejected

theSavant

Self-Ejected
Joined
Oct 3, 2012
Messages
2,009
I have meanwhile trashed my laptop and "upgraded" to a Intel HD 4400. The game runs a bit better now. Not smooth, but at least no annoying freezes anymore. Also the SSD was a savior compared to the HDD.

Btw... this is so typical for "new game engines":

iq8wog.jpg


It looks like the floor covers half of Stone circle. But when you approach it, you walk into the floor. So the actual floor is lower than the terrain appears to be. This is either a mistake in the level design or an "AAA" engine feature. Actually I believe it's an AAA-feature: The game probably use some type of shaders, which change the original terrain. And if your GPU does not support this specific feature, it will cause errors like that. This is what I hate on many so called "AAA" game engine upgrades: they sometimes put some crappy shaders on it, which change the appearance in an abysmal way, cost huge amounts of performance, and only look good if you have a high-end system. But without that it looks worse than a terrain from 10 years ago with simple textures and clean sculpting...
 
Last edited:
Self-Ejected

theSavant

Self-Ejected
Joined
Oct 3, 2012
Messages
2,009
Currently I am also totally annoyed by that "You shall return to the Adventurer's Guild to unlock the next Tier". So I had 20 about battles or so, and every 2nd or 3rd battle I get a message that another member can unlock the next Tier. So I should frequently backtrack through all the levels to the Adventurer's Guild just to unlock the 3rd Tier? I knew this whole idea of "you must prove being worthy at the Adventurers Guild" was a shit idea all along. Maybe I wouldn't mind as much, if they wouldn't make it a pain in the ass to backtrack the whole way: But this Inshtriach Forest is a fucking Maze full of stupid puzzles, closed doors, and blocked paths. And then I would also have to backtrack through the Baedish Lowlands and then back to Skara Brae... this is just annoying and enraging. Or is there a shortcut I missed?

Also it came to my mind, what someone else said: that it makes no fucking sense, that the required keys to open the passage to the forest village and similar important places are "hidden" in the forest. I mean come on... that's just retarded. Every thug could take it. The stupidest idea to keep thugs away. And when you open that other passage or whatever, there are already thugs in there anyways... Gosh! You can clearly see that these puzzles are just there for the sake of puzzles. There is no other point to them. Come on, give me a break!
 
Last edited:

fantadomat

Arcane
Edgy Vatnik Wumao
Joined
Jun 2, 2017
Messages
37,083
Location
Bulgaria
Currently I am also totally annoyed by that "You shall return to the Adventurer's Guild to unlock the next Tier". So I had 20 about battles or so, and every 2nd or 3rd battle I get a message that another member can unlock the next Tier. So I should frequently backtrack through all the levels to the Adventurer's Guild just to unlock the 3rd Tier? I knew this whole idea of "you must prove being worthy at the Adventurers Guild" was a shit idea all along. Maybe I wouldn't mind as much, if they wouldn't make it a pain in the ass to backtrack the whole way: But this Inshtriach Forest is a fucking Maze full of stupid puzzles, closed doors, and blocked paths. And then I would also have to backtrack through the Baedish Lowlands and then back to Skara Brae... this is just annoying and enraging. Or is there a shortcut I missed?
You just have to do it twice,just wait for when all your companions need to do it. You sill level up and can store points if you don't feel like spending it on other stuff.
 

Curratum

Guest
Now that the game performs reasonably after the last two patches, I sat down and played what, 17 hours of it.

RPG of the year for me, I have no idea what you inflamed neckbeards were on about. The game has charm, is funny without trying too hard, looks gorgeous, the location design is great, the combat is somewhere between serviceable and good fun and the dungeons and puzzles are amazing, just hard enough to stall you for a few minutes, never taking too long and never being instantly solvable.
 
Self-Ejected

theSavant

Self-Ejected
Joined
Oct 3, 2012
Messages
2,009
You just have to do it twice,just wait for when all your companions need to do it. You sill level up and can store points if you don't feel like spending it on other stuff.

I hoped to not backtrack more often than necessary. Was just having a look at the guide and it seems I can do it all at once. When Iwon Rheg and Mangar is done the main plot requires to return to the Adventurer's guild anyway. Fortunately.
 

Zombra

An iron rock in the river of blood and evil
Patron
Joined
Jan 12, 2004
Messages
11,538
Location
Black Goat Woods !@#*%&^
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
Currently I am also totally annoyed by that "You shall return to the Adventurer's Guild to unlock the next Tier". I knew this whole idea of "you must prove being worthy at the Adventurers Guild" was a shit idea all along.
Yeah. This is another "legacy" feature from the original games we could have done without, a bone thrown to grognards who wanted this to be as much like the originals as possible. There sure as hell was plenty of pointless backtracking in the originals.

Also it came to my mind, what someone else said: that it makes no fucking sense, that the required keys to open the passage to the forest village and similar important places are "hidden" in the forest. Come on, give me a break!
Ehhh. You're not wrong, but I find your expectation of verisimilitude a bit silly.
 
Self-Ejected

theSavant

Self-Ejected
Joined
Oct 3, 2012
Messages
2,009
Also it came to my mind, what someone else said: that it makes no fucking sense, that the required keys to open the passage to the forest village and similar important places are "hidden" in the forest. Come on, give me a break!
Ehhh. You're not wrong, but I find your expectation of verisimilitude a bit silly.

Yes and no, it just adds to other silly things like... various paths in the forest which run almost parallel and are only 2 steps away from each other, only grass in between, but blocked because of invisible walls (and of course can only be accessed by solving puzzles). Really? Really? Such level design is plain dumb! Nowadays I expect better than that.

Which brings me to the next point... the map: some paths connect with each other in this maze of a forest (Inshriach), some paths not. The map however does not really show which paths do and which don't. Also sometimes is just a pile of debris or a stone which end a path. So you often get confused which path you must take to get somewhere, run in circles, end up lost. I also noticed these issues in Lower Skara Brae... you walk into one direction because the map shows an open path, and then there is a pile of debris blocking your way. The map shows nothing. Instead you must go some path around 3 times the length. Hugely annoying.

This section (Forest of Inshtriach) almost made me sick. What a coincidence that one of the quests in the forest is to free it from a "sickness". And when you have done this section, the forest recovers. So did I recover as a player, because I was almost through all these annoying and confusing things. I mean...huh? It's almost as if the game events apply to the player experience as well. Almost funny. Almost.
So the good news is: it probably can't get worse than this forest (also having looked at the maps in the gameguide). If you have finished this, a milestone is completed.

Currently I am also totally annoyed by that "You shall return to the Adventurer's Guild to unlock the next Tier". I knew this whole idea of "you must prove being worthy at the Adventurers Guild" was a shit idea all along.
Yeah. This is another "legacy" feature from the original games we could have done without, a bone thrown to grognards who wanted this to be as much like the originals as possible. There sure as hell was plenty of pointless backtracking in the originals.

Ok, after having kicked my ass from Mangar multiple times at Sulphur Springs I decided to go back. Fortunately backtracking was not as bad as expected. Actually quite fast with the various portals (Skyhenge, Stonerings), and crossing the Baedish Lowlands was quick as I could easily fight through the broad path instead of going through the maze section (this is actually positive, as it shows they wanted to make backtracking quicker).

Which brings me to the next point... why I lost against Mangar with a party of six: I think I chose skills for my characters which are rather useless when you have to deal with boss fights. What you need in boss fights are characters which need to be able to make huge damage in short time. Actually I believe that at least 1/3 of all skills are useless and just there as fillers (so the skilltree doesn't look empty). So the skilltree is basically a puzzle too, where you need to sort out the wheat from the chaff. It's exhausting... really.

Which brings me to the next point... every combat round Mangar "babbles" some shit (taking up to half a minute or more), before actually taking an action, and therefore puts the whole combat on hold. And this happens despite having deactivated "Enemy babbling" in the game options. Whose stupid idea was to force the player to listen to this crap? Especially when it's expected that people will have to do this fight multiple times. This is just utter crap!

I could write book about dumb design decisions in the game... I honestly can't remember the last time where I faced so many dumb and annoying things in a game.

Eventually I also noticed some positive things:
- Once back at the Adventurer's Guild I was pleasantly surprised by the new song played by Rabbi (I think he changes his songs when you reach certain milestones). I really enjoyed that tune. Much better than the one he played before. Sooo much better.
- While my characters were wrongly skilled, the Adventurer's Guild unlocked the last Skilltier and offered me to change the skilltree from every single character from ground up (each for a token though).
- You can hire the "A-Team": yes, I found that idea of a preconfigured party dumb at first - but ironically it makes sense now: because chances are high that you misskill your characters completely. And instead of trying to figure out what exactly was misskilled, you can just scrap it and buy that preconfigured team. All of them are fully equipped and at your current level... and probably well chosen skills (not sure about that though.... but it should be).
- Sooooooooooooo glad that Save Anywhere is there
 
Last edited:
Self-Ejected

theSavant

Self-Ejected
Joined
Oct 3, 2012
Messages
2,009
Man this thing is bugged... I refunded the skilltree but have still access to the skills from before in my mastery slots. Doesn't feel good, as you never know if it causes game crashes later on. So even when you think there is something good in the game (option to refund skilltree), the game slaps you in the face right afterwards. What a trainwreck. This game should have been half the size in EVERYTHING. Maybe then it would have been an actual enjoyable and mostly bugfree game.
 

Nyast

Cipher
Joined
Jan 12, 2014
Messages
609
This section (Forest of Inshtriach) almost made me sick. What a coincidence that one of the quests in the forest is to free it from a "sickness". And when you have done this section, the forest recovers. So did I recover as a player, because I was almost through all these annoying and confusing things. I mean...huh? It's almost as if the game events apply to the player experience as well. Almost funny. Almost.
So the good news is: it probably can't get worse than this forest (also having looked at the maps in the gameguide). If you have finished this, a milestone is completed.

Yeah, forest of Inshtriach is easily the worst part of the game IMO. Not only it has big design issues ( invisible walls as you mentionned ), but I was already ready to hang myself when I barely reached half of it. This map simply never ends. Even when you think it does, it does not. It also has a succession of repetitive puzzles and trash combat which makes it pretty boring. Its design is labyrinthesque, so not only does it look huge on the map, it's in fact even longer when playing the game due to all these zig-zagging serpentine paths which makes you lose even more time. I dunno if you've reached the star-combination puzzles section yet, but this force you to backtrack in the maze area so much that it makes me sick just thinking about it.

Basically, if this map was cut in half, it'd already be too long for what it is, but no.. they had to drag it to the max.

There is another map later in the game, in the icy island, which has a similar design, but it's shorter so it's not as bad.
 

Gord

Arcane
Joined
Feb 16, 2011
Messages
7,049
I didn't like Inshriach that much either (definitely a few too many puzzles and generally overstaying its welcome a bit), but it's definitely exaggerated here (yeah, I know, we are on the Codex, it's obvious).

Also it does help to unlock Skyhenge as fast as possible so one can use the teleporters - of which there are quite a few. And the teleporters make the star-combinations pretty straight forward, too.
 

Nyast

Cipher
Joined
Jan 12, 2014
Messages
609
Personally I like games that have a more dynamic pacing. That forest map lasts for what ? Like 10 hours ? Always seeing the same mobs, same graphics, same puzzles, etc.. It wouldn't be that bad if the game was less linear and you'd come back once in a while to complete a portion of the map. But the way it is designed, when you reached Inshtriach, you have no other maps or anything else to do in game, that's the main way to advance the story, and you'll stay in it forever doing the same things over and over.
 

Zombra

An iron rock in the river of blood and evil
Patron
Joined
Jan 12, 2004
Messages
11,538
Location
Black Goat Woods !@#*%&^
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
It's interesting to live in a time where gamers are vocal about games being too short and about games being too long. "100+ hours of gameplay" used to be a selling point. That appears to be changing.
 

CryptRat

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Sep 10, 2014
Messages
3,548
It's interesting to live in a time where gamers are vocal about games being too short and about games being too long.
It was always a thing for as far as I can remember (something like 30 years ago).
 

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