Codex Review RPG Codex Review: The Bard's Tale IV

[Goral]

Why the hell would I ever install this game after every single review telling me everything I need to know about the product?

lol
If you would be stupid enough to rely on reviews then most of them are favourable (and by favourable I mean 7/10 or higher rating) and those that are not give poor ratings mainly due to bugs (but they are in minority, not even 30% of reviews with rating give 6/10 or lower rating): https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/the-bards-tale-iv-barrows-deep

I simply know that I would loathe playing the game not even a dozen hours in. Might as well save myself the trouble.

That's funny coming from a cuck who paid for a mod made by parasitic firm which is only known for mods and you knew perfectly well what you were getting into:

There is an actual argument for the enhanced editions in their support of other platforms.
But that's pretty much all there is to it.

I bought the game just to find out what actually improved and... well.. it was pretty much nothing.
The game is as butt ugly as it was when it released. The blurry, large-scaled icons, the horrendous 3D models, the clinical cleanliness of the entire environment, the catastrophically ugly UI, the weird hover effects when leaving an area, the small size of the areas, the camera controls from hell, ... everything about this game is ugly as hell. And it has always been - it's not like I loathe oldschool graphics, I recently replayed Turok (yes the N64 one) and the graphics in there are old, but have a coherent style that still has its appeal. In contrast to NWN.
You'd expect them to improve all of that.
They improved nothing.
I refunded after an hour, of which 30 minutes was creating my character.

Now there's talk about higher polygon models, but at this rate it'll probably take several years to get anywhere.

Also, you agreeing with Politician that I'm inXile fanboy only shows how retarded you are.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

Every single game is 90% "mindless filler". That's called "pacing" and it comes with the territory.

That's bad design. The great games that had trash mobs were great games despite of them, not because of them.

 

[thesheeep]

Why the hell would I ever install this game after every single review telling me everything I need to know about the product?

lol
If you would be stupid enough to rely on reviews then most of them are favourable (and by favourable I mean 7/10 or higher rating) and those that are not give poor ratings mainly due to bugs (but they are in minority, not even 30% of reviews with rating give 6/10 or lower rating): https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/the-bards-tale-iv-barrows-deep

How retarded can you actually get? Are you aiming for a reward?
I don't give a flying fuck if reviews are positive or negative. I am interested in what they tell me about the game so that I can make decisions based on facts, not on if someone liked it or not.
For example, I don't care too much that felipepepe didn't like it, but the factual information he presented in the review is of interest and tells me that I most likely wouldn't like it, either.

Also... metacritic? Seriously?

I simply know that I would loathe playing the game not even a dozen hours in. Might as well save myself the trouble.

That's funny coming from a cuck who paid for a mod made by parasitic firm which is only known for mods and you knew perfectly well what you were getting into:

I bought the game just to find out what actually improved and... well.. it was pretty much nothing.
...
I refunded after an hour, of which 30 minutes was creating my character.

Now there's talk about higher polygon models, but at this rate it'll probably take several years to get anywhere.

Your retardation is only matched by your lack of reading comprehension.
If I knew that they had not changed anything of value to me, I obviously wouldn't have bought the game to find out. Duh!
Had they done something good to the game (besides making it run on linux, which I prefer to use), I likely would have kept it.
Plus I refunded, so no money was given to anyone.

Also, you agreeing with Politician that I'm inXile fanboy only shows how retarded you are.

I was actually agreeing with him on you being highly irrational.
Your fanboy status, well... you don't get tags for nothing around here.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

Also, you agreeing with Politician that I'm inXile fanboy only shows how retarded you are.

But you are, Goral. You are. You hand out bad ratings like candy everytime someone is criticising inXile games. It can be any one of them: W2, T:ToN, BT4. For some bizarre reason, you have to defend inXile games on principle. Weird.

 

[Infinitron]

lol what is this, are you two fighting over the title of chief Iron Tower Studio fan?

I haven't noticed Goral being an inXile fanboy. He has the tag because of ITS.

 

[Black Angel]

 

[Don Peste]

Point is, why spend time gathering mana and chanelling when enemies die in 1-2 turns?

Aren't you exaggerating?

 

[nikolokolus]

It's almost like the studio who brought us such classics as Choplifter HD and Hunted: The Demon's Forge wasn't the one to lead the vanguard of the return to great RPGs?

Oh well, at some point I'll try to play through this thing once the multi-GB patches stop rolling out every week or so, but that first hour or so I tried to slog through at about 8 FPS and the boring assed intro didn't instill a lot of enthusiasm. For now I'm just going to pretend that I backed a kickstarter for a Bard's Tale I-III remaster, and for $20 (or whatever the hell the minimum tier was?) I think I got my money's worth.

 

[Goral]

I don't give a flying fuck if reviews are positive or negative. I am interested in what they tell me about the game so that I can make decisions based on facts, not on if someone liked it or not.

Why the hell would I ever install this game after every single review telling me everything I need to know about the product?

Let's look at what reviewers have to say about the game (disregarding the score):

https://www.pcgamer.com/the-bards-tale-4-barrows-deep-review/

(...)
As up-to-date as The Bard's Tale 4 looks and sounds (the ambient audio is fantastic), a number of the underlying systems are unforgivingly old-fashioned. Characters can't be re-specced, so if you make a bad choice or decide you don't like how your front-line tank is shaping up, that's too bad. Inventories aren't accessible in a fight, so forget about asking everyone to hold up while you open your pack and pull out a healing potion. Speaking of which, healing potions are in extremely short supply, and you can forget about crafting all you need because one of the herbs needed to make them is just as rare. And The Bard's Tale will happily throw enemies in your path that you are woefully unprepared to handle. (...)

The cons they talk about are very minor (e.g. there’s no inventory autosorting or stacking and the performance isn't great although the patch has improved it a lot) so if you went by that reviewers word you would have bought the game.

https://www.godisageek.com/reviews/the-bards-tale-iv-barrows-deep-review/

(...)
Outside of combat and exploration, The Bard’s Tale IV is full of puzzles. These range from simple block-pushing ones, through to full-on riddles that you may not even be able to solve until later in the game. There are Elven weapon stands that require certain items to activate, as well as pedestals that offer riddles as to what object(s) you will need to present in order to unlock their secrets. This gives the game a distinctly old fashioned vibe, going back to the stories of Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, and the vast number of Dungeons and Dragons tales from before many of us were even born. It’s not at all what I expected when I went into the game, but it was a welcome surprise.

The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrows Deep is a well-crafted and deep adventure. It combines different genres and mashes them together to form a fun and challenging RPG that almost anyone can enjoy. Sure, it suffers from a character creation tool that’s little more than a character select, and everyone has faces that would curdle milk, but don’t let that put you off playing this gem of a game. (...)

https://www.gry-online.pl/S020.asp?ID=12954

One of the core elements of the game are also numerous environmental and logic puzzles. Moving cogs which unlocks doors, pushing boulders for a similar purpose or getting into a place with a chest full of trinkets and valuable metal, remote control of silly magic sparks makes an amazing fun! (...) I really like the fact that inXile did not try to push illogical riddles, those that would stop our march towards winning for several dozen minutes, or simply ill-conceived. (...)
The Bard's Tale IV's strongest side is combat though. They take place in turns, on a board divided into sixteen fields. Eight for enemies and eight for us. In the middle lies an impassable boundary, which gives the fight a little card-style style. But only a little bit, because we do not experience any cards that extend the skills of our charges here. Instead, we acquire new abilities from several development trees for the gained experience points, but they differ depending on the character class (warrior, bard, rogue and magician). (...)

The only thing he didn't like are bugs and shitty Polish localization where diacritic signs are missing.

etc. etc.

I've pointed you to metacritic because they have links to full reviews which for the most part praise BT 4 and present an entirely different view than felipepepe's but you're too retarded to see my point. I don't care whether you like the game or not, I'm just laughing at you believing one guy while completely disregarding other reviews and claiming that "every single review" solidifies felipepepe's opinion. It doesn't, it's the opposite in fact. And I'm not saying that these reviewers are right, I'm saying you can't believe their word, you will have to play the game yourself because its core elements strongly rely on ones preferences. You might like combat and puzzles for example which most of the reviewers praised.

lol what is this, are you two fighting over the title of chief Iron Tower Studio fan?

I haven't noticed Goral being an inXile fanboy. He has the tag because of ITS.

I have a tag because Crooked Bee got butthurt. When I received the tag (beginning of 2017 and a couple of months after DR release) I've practically stopped posting on IT forums and on their games in general, I have however laughed at CB's love for jRPGs. What's interesting though is that no UR fanboy got the tag, even though they're much more fanboyish than I am.

 

[agris]

Point is, why spend time gathering mana and chanelling when enemies die in 1-2 turns?

Aren't you exaggerating?

With a non-cheesy party, I haven’t had non-boss / non-wave fights last longer than 2 turns in a while, definitely since I had a 5th party member slot unlock.

 

[Barghest]

Seriously, no save anywhere option? Am I allowed to bitch and moan?

 

[felipepepe]

Point is, why spend time gathering mana and chanelling when enemies die in 1-2 turns?

Aren't you exaggerating?

With a non-cheesy party, I haven’t had non-boss / non-wave fights last longer than 2 turns in a while, definitely since I had a 5th party member slot unlock.

Yup. The Wizard with that explosion perk wipes out enemies without armor. Even if you face someone with heavy armor, taunting it twice reduces it to 25% armor without spending a single opportunity point...

I was using two warriors, one rogue, two bards and one wizard. That's a very non-optimal party. Replacing the second bard with a second wizard would make the game even easier.

 

[Mortmal]

You have to kill every enemies in one turn when encountering the skeletons , in second part of the game else they respawn with full health. Tbh after doing the same fights an hundred of time i got bored of it too. The ice island is filled with them and one optional dungeon with nothing but skel fights. Most of the time i jsut AOE them with the dragon breath spell with my copy pasted mages.

 

[thesheeep]

I simply do not understand how a single person can show so much stupidity... is this a language problem?

I don't give a flying fuck if reviews are positive or negative. I am interested in what they tell me about the game so that I can make decisions based on facts, not on if someone liked it or not.

Why the hell would I ever install this game after every single review telling me everything I need to know about the product?

Let's look at what reviewers have to say about the game (disregarding the score):

https://www.pcgamer.com/the-bards-tale-4-barrows-deep-review/

(...)
As up-to-date as The Bard's Tale 4 looks and sounds (the ambient audio is fantastic), a number of the underlying systems are unforgivingly old-fashioned. Characters can't be re-specced, so if you make a bad choice or decide you don't like how your front-line tank is shaping up, that's too bad. Inventories aren't accessible in a fight, so forget about asking everyone to hold up while you open your pack and pull out a healing potion. Speaking of which, healing potions are in extremely short supply, and you can forget about crafting all you need because one of the herbs needed to make them is just as rare. And The Bard's Tale will happily throw enemies in your path that you are woefully unprepared to handle. (...)

The cons they talk about are very minor (e.g. there’s no inventory autosorting or stacking and the performance isn't great although the patch has improved it a lot) so if you went by that reviewers word you would have bought the game.

It is 100% irrelevant to me which cons you or anybody else considers minor.
What I get from this is that the inventory lacks features (which is mentioned in a lot of other reviews in addition to other criticisms of it), that it doesn't have re-spec (which is good if you actually like to use your brain), that you can't use inventory items in combat (which is weird) and that the game is hard if you are a "professional" without knowing the first thing about games.
You are correct that I might have bought the game based on that review alone, but for entirely different reasons than you assume.

Because that's what you do, you assume without knowing the first thing.

I won't even dig into the other examples*, since you - true to your nature - entirely miss the point. What I get from reviews are facts, which I then collect and use to form a picture.
And not once did I say that only one review formed my entire opinion of a game - as that would be stupid as fuck.
The Codex review was just the drop that spilled the cup, hence my thanks towards the author.

Besides, this is PCGamer, their mainstream direction alone puts them extremely low on my radar. I usually care about the analysis of people who actually understand something about specific genres. Not "professional" gaming journalists.
Just as an example, this reviewer mentions no re-spec being a con, while anyone who actually likes to use their brain prefers it that way. This willy-nilly bullshit ruined Diablo 3 (well, among other things), as there is no weight to any character choice you make.

I'm just laughing at you believing one guy while completely disregarding other reviews and claiming that "every single review" solidifies felipepepe's opinion.

Which I have never claimed, nor would I think that.
Whatever made you assume that is a product of your inferior text understanding. It might be a language problem, after all.

* "faces that would curdle milk" is awesome, though. i'll try and remember that one.

 

[Diggfinger]

FelipePepe plays game like Bard's Tale IV for 10 hours, a game which cannot be taken seriously after 10 million dollars and a team of so many people you can't see them all because of the coverage of the earth, gives it a soft thumb's up.

FelipePepe plays Grimoire for 120 hours, with gameplay so rich he didn't even begin to break the surface judging by his review, declares it "hopelessly broken" because he found some exploits like Bards class and Deep Freeze in the initial version. Out of 120 hours and 224 areas, 250 monsters, 64 NPCs and a single area more fun than the entire game of Bard's Tale IV.

Gives you some idea of how worthwhile his reviews are. A word to the wise about the stealth pokemon fanbois.

When will that Matt Chat interview happen?

A world of fans is waiting to hear from The Neanderthal!!!1 :D

 

[Rivmusique]

ADVANCED GENIUS TACTICS SPOILER:

Spoiler

Was/is vorpal plating working as intended? It was mostly with Patch 2 I think, but the buff lasted at least two turns and the spell-point steal effect applied to spells. Any fight with a caster or two on the other team was shredded during first strike because my 2 practitioners began with 2 spell points (a practitioner talent and bard's Minstrel talent, I think), one buffed the other with VP, the buffed one used arcane missle or whatever to put an explosive charge on every enemy, tapping in to their mana pools whenever it needed more. Also, that caster had a weapon that stripped ~10 armor off with every hit. When the explosions went off it was insane. Ridiculously powerful, combat was pretty much DOA when I first used that (around exiting the tunnel if I remember right).

Still, mostly enjoyed the game. It went overboard with enemy placement from about the snow island onwards, it has the worst inventory I've seen in a long time, the standard puzzles (push block, fairy golf, blood lasers and gears) were similarly too frequent and simple on the main quest path, definitely wearing out their welcome and hidden rooms/chests too often just had some boring shit like coins or mushrooms. But I loved the soundtrack, the visuals were pleasant once I'd left skara brae (and I don't know if a patch changed something, or the town itself changes, but a return to the Skara at around mid game had me appreciating it a lot more), the optional dungeons were usually good puzzle-wise, some early fights were fun (the first two Magnar encounters were probably my highlights, small toolkit or just me not knowing what I was doing, perhaps), the "find a landmark that teaches you a song" puzzle weapons were fun to solve (though too often not worth using once solved) and I liked that it had me keeping notes.

Performance was poor when I first started, but a patch improved it quite a bit. I had that same fall through floor bit as the screenshot in the review, 2 fights where I couldn't attack any enemy and therefore had to surrender and return to a totem, lost about ~15mins both times, and another time I ended a fight and it dropped me out of bounds so I couldn't get back to the main path and had to load an earlier save. A checkpoint save system like this sucks if the game is unstable and BT4 is. Glad the first forced reload happened early so I learned to stop CONSUMING save points.

A fine game that I was glad to play, and I will probably go back at some point with a different party as I know there was a few sidequests I didn't complete, perhaps when that Legacy Mode is done? But doubt it will ever be a favourite.

felipepepe

they don't respawn (except for the end-game [fuck whoever approved that])

What do you mean by this? I noticed a few guys back on maps that I'd cleared long ago and had to retread (like when you return to the forest for the sword), but no specific area with enemies that respawned while I was on the map.

 

[felipepepe]

they don't respawn (except for the end-game [fuck whoever approved that])

What do you mean by this? I noticed a few guys back on maps that I'd cleared long ago and had to retread (like when you return to the forest for the sword), but no specific area with enemies that respawned while I was on the map.

Killing Zanta in the castle makes enemies in that area respawn (all the cultists and undead outside revive) and adds a fuckton of copy-paste cultists to almost every other area in the game, like lower Skara Brae and the Baedish Lowlands.

 

[agris]

I was using two warriors, one rogue, two bards and one wizard. That's a very non-optimal party. Replacing the second bard with a second wizard would make the game even easier.

Yup, my exact setup. When the party limit was 4 characters: 1 each of bard, fighter, rogue, wizard; 5 characters: +1 bard; 6 characters: +1 fighter.

Setup your characters like this:

F B F    ↑ front
B R W

Both fighters use the heavy armor line and get guard and critical block + stun on block and you're soaking and blocking damage for everyone else. Add in biting taunt and sunder armor on both and you'll be able to handle the heaviest of armored enemies. Making your wizard a conjurer asap is a no brainer, and build your skills so that you get a SP at the start of combat, at the end of combat, and meditation only takes a single round. Bonus, give them the wands that guarantee criticals (aka refund a SP) and apply two stacks of armor rend on all (including magic) attacks, and dragon fire + pretty much anything else is instant win. Levitate enemies around, use your 2nd bard as a SP generator, and have your rogue bounce around with razor strop + shiv, slinking strike and that off-hand weapon you get from Mangar that does mental damage.. well, it's rinse and repeat.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[felipepepe]

Now this is some bullshit:

 

[BEvers]

Shoe's on the other foot now, Fargo is exposing Codexian lies

 

[Grauken]

I doubt he played his own game

 

[BEvers]

I doubt he played his own game

Well, nobody at inXile noticed that the game had a plot blocker...

 

[Bohr]

"600 hours of content possible in one playthrough" - Brian Fargo

 

[BEvers]