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Bard's Tale The Bard's Tale Trilogy - remaster by Krome Studios

octavius

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Paladins are great as party leaders, since the leader's resistances affect the whole party. At least it was that way in the originals.

Summons or spell bound characters with AoE spells and abilities, especially bosses like Oscon, may be better than your own monks and fighters in the end game, when even the best monk or fighter can't kill more than one HP sponge per round unless using items.
 

Infinitron

I post news
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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
Bard's Tale 3 delayed to 2019:



https://steamcommunity.com/games/843260/announcements/detail/1708450266993616679

Thief of Fate Schedule
30 NOVEMBER - LINDS

9520260ef0fc5a42f153126318547293f21dca1b.gif


Hey everybody!

So we've been doing a lot of work on Thief of Fate - reading through the clue books and the manual; looking at the original map illustrations - and there is just so much that was layered into the lore, but wasn't able to be displayed on screen because of the technical limitations of the time.

We want the Bard's Tale Trilogy version of Thief of Fate to be the best that it can be. That means that we want The Palace to look like it's underwater. To make Gelidia not only be a land of eternal winter, but look like it too. For Urmech's Workshop to have mechanical walls (and occasionally, be filled with oil).

Because of all of this (and more - oh so much more!), Thief of Fate and the Legacy mode aren't going to be ready until early 2019.

We want to make it very clear that this is nothing to do with money, nor inXile's recent acquisition by Microsoft. This is simply that we (inXile and Krome) want to make the game be the best it can be - and we need more time to get it all in place.

One of the things that we’ve enjoyed since the game’s launch in August is the conversation with our fans. Now that we’re in the final stretch of development, we’re taking this delay as an opportunity to offer a peek behind the curtain. To that end, we plan on creating a Beta branch on Steam as well as a Thief of Fate Beta specific forum area. Before Christmas 2018, we'll populate this Beta branch with a version of Thief of Fate that will be playable (but will have some bugs) - with some of the art (enemy cameos, dungeon art and such) not complete. We welcome peoples' feedback and comments on the beta and we'll keep you all informed on progress as we approach the full release.

As Steam is the development platform for the game, this beta will only be available for Steam users. GOG users will, of course, receive the finished product on the same day as Steam users.

We've included a taste of the work-in-progress art below, so you can see some of these things that we're talking about and hopefully get a feel for what we're trying to get in place and why we're taking the extra time.

Cheers
Linds

C-64 to Remaster Enemies
Please note we only had still frames for the C-64 images!
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Urmech Dungeon Environment
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Gelidia Environment - The Land of Eternal Winter
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Chronomancer Female Portrait
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Darth Roxor

Royal Dongsmith
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BT2 is fairly more extreme than 1. Dark Domain level 4 is p much a quickdraw duel now between my casters and their hordes of 25 dudes who one-hit-kill my characters :neveraskedforthis:

Still, it also seems to have much more potential for glorious breakage, since spell points regen hella faster now (and there's a mana regen point just one floor above), and I much appreciate the new bard's songs that have made thieves completely obsolete.
 

Darth Roxor

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Lol, this game is pretty ridiculous. The moment you can cast wind mage, you've won.

and then your archmages get mangar's mallet themselves, and your party basically turns into a B-29 squadron
 

Roguey

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And Pepe will tell you that old crawlers were perfectly balanced and Grimoire is just unfinished. :M
 

Darth Roxor

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And Pepe will tell you that old crawlers were perfectly balanced and Grimoire is just unfinished. :M

Indeed, the most funny thing with regard to that particular bit of wisdom was when I played BT1, and the final dungeon ended up being exactly what Pepe slammed Grimwah for - it was a series of quickdraw duels where either my casters nuked the opposition first, or the opposition nuked me.
 

Darth Roxor

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And finished Destiny Knight.

:neveraskedforthis:

To be honest, this was a really stupid and shitty fucking game. Any notion of party advancement/development disappears before you get even the third wang segment (out of seven), because at that point you have maxed stats on everyone, maxed levels on all casters, and probably most of the best gear except for some later bumps like the sword of zar. After that you might as well uninstall because what remains are 4 more dunjins that you'll just be constantly sprinting through, running from all encounters because there's absolutely no point whatsoever in trying to fight them (and attempting so is an exercise in frustration since nearly all of them past a certain point carry instagibs).

And don't even get me started on how retarded the death snare puzzles become. I swear, like four of them are based solely on nothing but stupid repetition (hurrrrrrrrr circle the room around 5 times; hurrrrrrrrr navigate the labyrinth to the teleport 7 times).


How's bard's tale 3? Worse or better? I'm not even sure now whether I should wait for it because 2 has left a very foul taste in my mouth.
 

octavius

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3 is more story driven, and has some added classes.
Like 2 it suffers from being rather unbalanced, with the beginning dungeon being very tough, and then becomes too easy if you fight every battle. Level design gets better with each dungeon, but is never as challenging to map as in 2.
2 is Michael Crawford BT and 3 is Burger Heineman BT.

Speaking of the original games, of course.
The new versions have popamole auto-maps which will reduce the challenge, but OTOH I'm sure they fixed some of the imbalances and the very primitive to hit mechanics.
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
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lol sorry Roguey, looks like Roxor ended up agreeing with felipepepe's general point of view
My issue with Felipe's review wasn't "Grimoire degenerates into a a bad game after a strong opening" it was "Grimoire is an unfinished game."
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
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Messages
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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
Woot: https://steamcommunity.com/games/843260/announcements/detail/3142848113566418629

Thief of Fate BETA Released!
22 DECEMBER - LINDS

9520260ef0fc5a42f153126318547293f21dca1b.gif


Hi all!

As we have previously mentioned, we're working away furiously on the Thief of Fate remaster, but it's going to take a little more time to get all the various elements in place, to make it the best that it can be!

As promised, we have made a new BETA branch available in Steam, which has our current work in progress version of Thief of Fate. The game is fully playable (completable from start to finish), but various art for monsters, locations and environments are not complete; and there may be bugs throughout the game.

This BETA version is for the people who would like to participate in the final development push for the Bard's Tale Trilogy. It will be lacking in the spit and polish that will be in the final release. If you just want to play the game and relive past glories, we would recommend waiting for the full release.

If you wish to access this BETA build:
  • Quit and reload the Steam client.
  • Right click on the game in your Steam library.
  • Select "Properties".
  • Select the "Beta" tab.
  • In the dropdown, select the "beta" option.
  • Hit OK.
The BETA version including Thief of Fate will then be queued to download.
A special "beta bugs" subforum has also been set up in the Community Hub. Please post any problems, comments or questions there!
https://steamcommunity.com/app/843260/discussions/1/

In addition, this BETA version has a partially implemented Legacy Mode available for all three volumes. Some Legacy features will not be available until work on them has been completed. Currently, the following Legacy Mode options are available:
  • Original XP levels (characters level up more slowly).
  • Grindable fights (99 Barbarians for teh w1n!).
As per the previous volumes, there have been various changes made, to fix bugs of yore as well being part of our remaster efforts. We've compiled a short list of the major items below. We have blacked out some very heavy spoilers, so if you want to go into the game spoiler-free, please do not highlight the blacked out text.

Thief of Fate Changes
  • Wilderness maps have been changed to terrain based, similar to that in Destiny Knight, with the placement of features to match the maps that were in the clue book. Wilderness maps no longer wrap.
  • Thief of Fate just uses Badhr Kilnfest in place of Bring Around Ballad, as the songs are identical in function. Legacy mode will allow switching back to Bring Around Ballad.
  • Chronomancer teleports have been reorganised to be .
  • The Ruins of Skara Brae now more closely reflect the city that you know and love, from Tales of the Unknown.
  • Longinus reappears to give his final prophecies.
Tales of the Unknown Changes / Fixes
  • Add some Skara Brae journaling on the stables and the snow drift.
  • Fixed Mangar casting MageFlame (should have been casting disrupt)
  • Fixed 99 berserkers not triggering.
  • Fixes for resetting the gates in Skara Brae
  • Fixed melee disrupt spell of heroes like Mangar not working correctly.
Destiny Knight Changes / Fixes
  • Fixed missing Arms Master of the Graphnar Fist encounter.
  • Graphnar Lord - updated encounter to show the monster art and name, to make it consistent with other fight in this dungeon level.
  • Fixed Oscons Fortress level 1 magic mouth to add appropriate journal notes based on the answers given.
  • Added Review board to Colosse.
  • Fixed grammar error in Destiny Stone dungeon magic mouth messages.
  • Grey Crypt - Changed Sphynx to change up and down stairs based on answers given.
  • Destiny Stone - Fixed case where party is full on getting Zen Master and hitting escape or cancel falls through to finish the dungeon. Added message to say you got 'The Ring'.
  • Fixes for various issues with the Snare puzzles on Destiny Stone and Grey Crype not being reset correctly on load.
General Changes / Fixes
  • Fix some grammar errors in the temples.
  • Individual monster attacks are now spread throughout combat - they were just attacking in groups before.
  • Warstrike now burns instead of chokes.
  • Added missing full stop to "drop item" request.
  • Casino double down now uses proper casino rules (hits you with 1 more card).
  • Player strength increases chance to hit.
  • Fixes for summon spell ranges and the Summon Help spell.
  • Melee damage now takes drained-level into account.
  • Added ability for spells to heal OLD condition.
  • Fixed issue with teleporting into scripted empty rooms not running the scripts.
  • Fog and skybox tweaks to BT1 and BT2.
  • Updated blizzard effects for all volumes.
  • Improved visuals of automap.
  • Combat spells are now castable in noncombat but will fizzle - this is necessary as they are used to solve puzzles in Thief of Fate.
  • Fix monster gender and summonHelp probability bugs.
  • Rogues can now identify items. Failure to identify means the item can never be identified.
  • By popular demand, change '#' back to '()' for item charges, in the UI.
  • Added option for a Bard to stop singing their current song.
  • Unequipped items are now usable outside of combat - saves the user having to equip,unequip etc., just to use an item.
  • Fix for "Hide in Shadows" to always go first in combat.
  • Fixed Push-Back spells not working for enemies.
  • Monsters with a PUSH spell (Force of Tarjan, Far Foe, Sand Storm) will preference that if they are <50 feet from the player.
  • Player ADVANCE now has much higher priority.
  • Wineskins are now available in Taverns.
  • Monks now use roll table from Thief of Fate - goes up to 2048 max damage.
 

Jack Of Owls

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Been playing this recently and it's wholly addicting. I couldn't stand the original version of Bard's Tale III (the only BT I attempted to play) even on the C64 because I was just coming off the high of playing my very first fantasy cRPG - the majestic Dragon Wars, which was so good it was almost single-handedly responsible for instilling a life-long love of RPGs in me. I'm currently only on BT1 but I'm approaching the end-game about to enter Mangar's tower and I don't even have an archmage yet. Oh, the foolhardiness! There's something soothing and zen-like playing a blobber with a beautiful auto-mapping system, seeing those squares get ticked off one by one and figuring out some nut-bustingly hard mazes, and this along with an updated and very pretty interface and art makes me recommend it.

The gameplay in BT1 is very primitive with a ridiculously minimal story but it satisfies my soul even though I've played MUCH more sophisticated RPGs since then. But this new remastering reminds me of the fun I had with Dragon Wars (which also had a superb auto-mapping system which the remastered triliogy reminds me of). Almost can't wait for them to release Bard's Tale III since the Mad God Burger also did Dragon Wars. Just can't tolerate those ugly graphics and horrendously high encounter rates on the C64 (the DOS and Amiga versions are far far worse I heard). I'm thinking most of the bugs will be fixed.

If you were curious about the BT series but couldn't abide the crude engines of older platforms, THIS is the one to play. I can almost guarantee you'll get hooked, at least on the first game.
 

Jack Of Owls

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Well, I finished the remastered version of Bard's Tale 1 and while it wasn't the most exciting old school blobber I've played, I don't regret completing it. Krome Studios did an excellent job on updating this old dinosaur and making it playable for modern fans of cRPGs that still want that original feel. I'm thinking I'm going to skip BT2 and wait a few days for Bard's Tale 3 to be released. BT1 felt like a tech demo/prototype for the ideas that Michael Cranford had for his enhanced vision/variation of Wizardry. I'm worried that BT2 is going to be too much of the same but just BIGGER (and thus more slogging) and I need at least the barebones of a sophisticated storyline to create motivation for wanting to continue. BT3 will certainly have that, I'm sure. Now that I'm familiar with how the BT series system works and its interface, I'm eagerly looking forward to see what Krome Studios has done with Bard's Tale 3. I can't praise these guys enough.
 

MaDPuPPeT

Krome Studios
Developer
Joined
Feb 9, 2019
Messages
3
Hi. MaDPuPPeT from Kromestudios here. (Or GNOME Studios as one of our reviewers called us...)
Not long now. Just polishing off bugs, and then fixing the new bugs I create in the process of fixing other bugs... but nearly there. Bugs are pretty minor now like spelling and grammar errors. I'm not allowed to give a date but... very soon.
 

KeighnMcDeath

RPG Codex Boomer
Joined
Nov 23, 2016
Messages
12,859
And finished Destiny Knight.

:neveraskedforthis:

To be honest, this was a really stupid and shitty fucking game. Any notion of party advancement/development disappears before you get even the third wang segment (out of seven), because at that point you have maxed stats on everyone, maxed levels on all casters, and probably most of the best gear except for some later bumps like the sword of zar. After that you might as well uninstall because what remains are 4 more dunjins that you'll just be constantly sprinting through, running from all encounters because there's absolutely no point whatsoever in trying to fight them (and attempting so is an exercise in frustration since nearly all of them past a certain point carry instagibs).

And don't even get me started on how retarded the death snare puzzles become. I swear, like four of them are based solely on nothing but stupid repetition (hurrrrrrrrr circle the room around 5 times; hurrrrrrrrr navigate the labyrinth to the teleport 7 times).


How's bard's tale 3? Worse or better? I'm not even sure now whether I should wait for it because 2 has left a very foul taste in my mouth.
Maxed levels? WTH? If I recall on the dos version there was NO MAX. I had dudes on BT1 with levels registered as ** hp & mp as *** because I went well over 99. I know I never hit that on BT2 since they got rid of the ** for levels.

YeH I wanted to get my characters as bad ass as that Phlegm barf Kai dude on the box
24070_back.jpg

The only bit of interesting talk (or any at all) on inxile forum is hoped for BTCS when finished with TBTT. Well, something about remastering wasteland and someone piped in about Escape from Hell & dragon wars but no mention of Fountain of dreams or swords & serpents (which you could probably make with BTCS along with Cranfords first game Maze Master)

Remastered BTCS is probably a pipe dream.
 
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Darth Roxor

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Maxed levels? WTH? If I recall on the dos version there was NO MAX. I had dudes on BT1 with levels registered as ** hp & mp as *** because I went well over 99. I know I never hit that on BT2 since they got rid of the ** for levels.

I meant max caster levels, i.e. no new spells.

And sure, levels keep increasing, but what point is there to them other than hp increases that hardly matter in the long run because of omnipresent instagibs?
 

KeighnMcDeath

RPG Codex Boomer
Joined
Nov 23, 2016
Messages
12,859
Not sure these days, back then before I had internet I was recording every monster and item stats so I spent countless months trying to make sure I missed nothing. Maybe OCD grinding (later I found therewas UGE so you could just hax your characters.

It’s kind of the same with the first two might & magics. At least in that game there was a quest series you could reset and slowly get higher perm stats if you grinded the hell out of it (again pointless I suppose). Top the fact c64 level glitch was just dumb.
 

Jack Of Owls

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Messages
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Location
Massachusettes
I wouldn't mind seeing Dragon Wars (the true Bard's Tale IV) remastered by Krome. Although I have to admit that DW on WinUAE looks and sounds fantastic. Most of the "quality of life" enhancements that Krome coded into the Bard's Tale Trilogy Remastered were actually present in Rebecca Heineman's original version of Dragon War in 1989, at least on the Amiga and Apple IIGS versions.

Still playing BT II remastered. I hope it picks up because I'm at the snare in Dargorth's Tower, and with two ArchMages I'm actually finding it rather easy. Fearing the legendary difficulty of this game, I suspect I might have grinded too much and ended up too powerful. I'm really finding that Archmage spell that instantly teleports enemy spellcasters from 90' feet away to within a cunt hair of my fearsome front-line paladin, monk and Greater Demon that I summoned that can instantly stone anything it hits quite useful. Hah, take that you fragile fleshly little mage baddies!
 

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