Preview Rock, Paper, Shotgun retro The Bard's Tale

[Saxon1974]

Yes. Dragon Wars was really pretty nifty. I recall that it had moments of true C&C, many different environments, a sinking city, a pornographic statue yard and a great starting level. It was Bards Tale, but consistent, with a paragraph book to move the story along -- remember those? Looking at the screenies at Mobies, lol. '1 omnious fellow appears'. good stuff.

One reason why many people look back so fondly on BT's is that, other then wizardry, that was basically it. Bt2 an Bt3 were a power-gamers fantasy. They were hard though. Dragon Wars was more fun. BT3 had a lot of mindless wilderness wandering. I can't remember the setting really. I just remember wandering around a lot killing everything.

Bards Tale also holds the distinction of being one of the first mouse driven games that I can remember.

I definitely need to go back and play Dragon Wars. I dont recall mouse support for Bard's tale, but Im guessing thats because Im playing the C64 version, I think the Amiga version has mouse support.

I never really like Bard's tale III, I think it had more random encounters then even the first 2 did, and so I got bored with it quickly.

Then again, its been years since I played it, but Im going to again eventually.

 

[crufty]

Definitely! The spells were good too in Dragon Wars. You just didn't get them--you earned them; you had to find them to cast them. None of this "I'm level 6 I get fireball" tripe. You turned level 6, lucky you. Now go find the fireball scroll. And, as you only got 2 skill points per level, your magic users REALLY had to be magic users to get to the good stuff. To have the most fun, try to avoid reading the walkthroughs. There isn't much in the way of conversation, like bards tale, it was mostly combat. But, to its credit, it was consistent--magic was outlawed, and starting out I really did feel like I was leading a ragtag bunch.

I'm sure there were faults, given the game is almost 20 years old now. In terms of difficulty, its not the hardest game ever, but it was fun (I thought).

Plus, it had automap, which was a godsend in those days of graph paper.