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

[Darkzone]

I don't know how you played up to Kylearan's Tower without figuring this out, but this is not a real sequel. Besides the setting and a few spell names, it has fuck all to do with the previous games. I mentioned this at the start of the review and said I would judge it as its own thing.

Only because you say so, doesn't make it so. People are judging and complaining about BTIV, because they measure and compare it to BTI-III and on this basis they give BTIV bad ratings. I just arrive at a different conclusion, because i understand that things change over time and the changes accumulate. In this case we don't have a progression series of changes between BTIII (1988) and BTIV(2018), besides the DW as sequel to the BTI-III mechanics and DW already showed many changes despite its was released only one year later than BTIII.
If InXile say that BTIV a sequel to BTI-III, then i will judge it so since i'm not the owner and master of this franchise.

Because, as I mentioned, the logic is entirely different. Bard's Tale I-III are games about attrition, even more than Wizardry. Individual battles are meant to be extremely fast, but they will force you to spend spell points, decrease your HP and fuck you up with status effect, until you're forced to go back to town and spend a fortune to restore your party. Combat in those games is actually extremely simplistic, the entire gameplay loop hinges on exploring as much of the maps and gathering as much XP and gold as possible before going back - be too ambitious and you die, be too cowardly and you might not have enough money. At least that's the idea, because those games had some ludicrous balance mid-game and the solution becomes "grind like hell".

Money isn't a problem in BTI-III and you cannot buy good items. HPs also aren't a problem since Badh'r Kilnfest in BTI regenerates the party inside combat and REST restores all HPs. Troll Rings are also usefull if you dont want to cast REST in the late game.
What might be a problem are the SPs, but that is in BTIII (Crystal Gem, Flare Crystal, Harmonic Gem) not valid and BTII-III has Rhyme of Duotime. In BTI-III you have Mage Staff for outside the combat and Conjurstaff (BTI certainly) for combat (mid-late game). Also in BTI if you have Ring of Power you don't even need to cast MIBL and you can save yourself the SPs in the mid-late game. In other words this argument only applies to early-mid game for BTI-II and is irrelevant for BTIII.

Meanwhile, Bard's Tale IV has one save totem that fully restores health every 5 minutes, has no status effects that carry between battles, spell points are per battle and the game is filled to the brim with food & healing items.

Yes the Save Heal thing is a bad design decision in my opinion and it would have been better to let the player just rely on the limited food resource. Or it should heal only the party if the player consumes the save point making its use also limited.

Your party is basically always at full power, there are no resources to manage or spare. Moreover, it has several spells and abilities that require channeling and/or saving mana, meaning you need battles to last multiple rounds, or those abilities are just useless. Even the speed is entirely different, you can do like two entire BT1 battles before even the passive buff animations play in BT4.

Or you drink the potions or booze that give you instant SPs, so that you don't have to channel the SPs.

That's why Bard's Tale 4 encounter design is retarded. Maybe the designer was bright like you and didn't figure this out, but they are operating under entirely different rules, pacing and concepts.

Never go full retard and never project. What applies to you doesn't necessarily apply to others.
This were specific design decisions based upon to you and me unknown factors. And i will not state that you are wrong or that you are correct on this one, because i haven't played BTIV beyond Kylearan's Tower and it could be that the game falls appart in mid - late game.

BT4 battles need to have much more weight and challenge, since they are self-contained. Instead, they can be won just as easily, carry no consequence, take longer and have way less variety than even BT1.

This could quite be and i will definitely not argue against the importance and value of challenging combat. I also expect quite the challenge from combat, but in BTI-III there was also no challenge in combat, if you had the equipment and spells. The fights in BTI-III are all repetitive and in the end have rarely a real and weighted importance besides the XPs and perhaps the found items. Why do you think people are rumbling over and over again about the 4x99 Berserkers fight? Because this is the only true memorable fight in BTI due to its enemy type and grouping and not due to its difficulty.
The 4x99 Berserkers fight could be won in just one round, if you have two casters with MIBL and you will have certainly at this stage the two casters with MIBL.

There's nothing like a dragon fucking your entire party up with his breath, spiders applying poison, vampires draining levels, etc. That's why it sucks.

The only thing that was dangerous in BTI were the stoning and level drain effects of some monsters and if such a monster appeared then Run was the choice since this effects you couldn't heal with the casters. Old was not a problem with a very low AC due to armor (like L0), since this effects hit mostly the 1-4 places and the casters in 5-7 were the decisive PCs in combat. Poison was no problem with FLRE and FLAN or REST, but in the early game it was costing many SPs.

Btw. If you look at your statements then you will see that you are measuring and comparing BTIV to BTI-III. This is not a bad thing i will definitely not make a hangman's rope for you out of it. I'm just pointing this for you out and for your self-perception.

 

[sstacks]

Okay, Cleve and Felipepepe bromance when?

It's currently a buddy cop flick where two guys who irritate each other are just put in the same car.

 

[felipepepe]

Btw. If you look at your statements then you will see that you are measuring and comparing BTIV to BTI-III.

You made a post asking "why don't you compare it to its predecessors", I replied explaining why they aren't comparable. It's not that fucking hard.

Also, I cannot take seriously someone who says that money and HP in Bard's Tale isn't a problem because of a LEVEL 7 spell... unless you are the type of person who spends 20 hours autistically grinding, then go "LOL, DIS GAEM IS SO EASY!!!1".

 

[theSavant]

I shouldn't read reviews, I shouldn't read Steam forums, I shouldn't read inXile forums. Because when I read these, I get angry. I wasn't even that angry before, but reading all the issues make me angry. I'm angry of what inXile has made of BT4. All those shitty design decisions! We've seen them coming long ago, we've warned them, we've sugarcoated them. All for nothing. They didn't care. I don't even want to finish this game anymore. Eventually I will (as a KS backer), but only once and never again.

 

[Van-d-all]

Of the 30h mentioned, I'd rather spend that time sperging builds in Pathfinder. Which I did.

 

[Ocelot570]

Between cleaning, gardeners, maids, the pool, taxes, etc, that place probably has a higher upkeep than InXile...

I did not know that Fargo lived in such excess. He tries to keep up his fighting man persona of working for all people making old games, but after seeing this, I have lost all faith in anything he can ever do. He masquerades as a middle class man acting like he is struggling to fund his games and all. This is an outrage.

 

[theSavant]

This is also why I think most of his sponsors comes from his own family or their banking business. Where else did he get all his funds? No one can tell me after all these games he made, which were rather losses than profits, he is able to sustain his lifestyle or even pay a full game development studio. What a joke! It's a bankers family ffs. Fargo Wells is a banking business for over 150 years, found in 1852. Guess how rich these people are now. This family tribe is richer than rich. Anyone knowing how banks work, knows they are the rulers of the world. No one tell me he has earned his wealth by his own effort. Tell that Santa Clause.

I give it Brian, that he has a heart for the arts. I appreciate his efforts in that. But he can probably only do that because his family tree gives him the backbone to do that. He is probably allowed to invest and even waste money within certain limits (we are talking of millions $$ here). Of course his family would love to see if he made profit, but I don't think it matters that much. What he wastes with 10 millions for the development of a game, is back in their pockets by other businesses who regularly pay interest for credits to Fargo Wells after a couple of years.

 

[Morkar Left]

I think you guys are vastly overestimating his wealth. If he had THAT much money he would have never lost Interplay. And believe me, the guy is butthurt about losing that company. Otherwise he wouldn't have called his new company InXile and still wanting to buy back Interplay which value today is almost zero.

 

[sser]

I honestly thought that was a joke, but apparently it's true:

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

People still debating about Barf's tale?

 

[Bohr]

I honestly thought that was a joke, but apparently it's true

I vaguely remember him downplaying the link in some old interview, along the lines of the only benefit he'd got was slightly better service at the bank, but I guess he could have been downplaying it to burnish his selfmade/indie cred so who knows. The reports of the early years do make more of the family/oil wealth of "Michael Boone" though, who bought out Fargo's Saber software for $5k and for whom Fargo and Heineman worked before Boone decided to change the company's direction and develop whiteboards instead.

 

[felipepepe]

I think you guys are vastly overestimating his wealth. If he had THAT much money he would have never lost Interplay.

Interplay was huge back then, worth over 100 million dollars... Fargo can be extremely rich for a person, but still not rich enough to keep a company that was bleeding millions per month. And I bet his severance deal was pretty good.

 

[MRY]

Still not sure I get all the dislike for Fargo.

I have no idea whether his money is the product of his businesses or inheritance or both (in what proportion). I know he is sometimes described as a Wells Fargo "heir," but that can mean anything. He clearly grew up richer than average, but regardless, he was simultaneously a jock who was "a standout athlete at his school, a star of the football team and so good a sprinter that he and his coaches harbored ambitions for a while of making the United States Olympic Team" and a dork who spent "all summer" in high school trading code back and forth with a friend to make a game called Labyrinth of Martagon. So it's not like he's some rich guy who just coasted and was handed everything on a silver platter. And during his time at Interplay, he coded, designed, and produced many great games, for many systems, that are beloved by even the most hard-hearted Codexers.

You may think that his crowd-funded games disappointed. But he delivered all of them, unlike many other prominent crowdfunded projects (like Star Citizen or Project Phoenix), and they were not wild departures from what was promised (like Godus or Mighty No. 9 or arguably Double Fine Adventure or Underworld Ascendant is gearing up to be). They may have been worse or smaller, but they weren't ridiculous departures, I would argue.

My sense is that overhead and logistics are hard to rebuild, which is why companies that have existing structures (like Obsidian) have been able to do better with their Kickstarter money than inXile has.

Also, as I've noted before, people are confused about how much it costs to make games in the U.S. because (1) indies who put unrepaid sweat equity in can develop games for a fraction the cost, (2) games made in developing nations are made a fraction the cost, and (3) Kickstarters pitch at a fraction of what they actually need. On the other hand, I suspect that with a decent-sized starting capital, and regular crowdfunding cash infusions, you can keep the machine going for a long time even on relatively low revenue streams from your games. So I doubt inXile has drained Fargo's wealth or made him rich. More likely, he enjoy(ed)(s) game development and figured there was a chance he'd hit the jackpot, so he kept at it for a while.

 

[Neanderthal]

Yeah theres a lot worse devs out there. I'm not crowdfunding ever again though so I don't really care.

 

[Roguey]

Still not sure I get all the dislike for Fargo.

As Infinitron put it some time ago, Chad Fargo stole their girlfriend.

 

[Tigranes]

MRY makes an important point: inXile effectively had to use Kickstarter funds to start a whole new RPG company, because it's not like they had spent the last decade making RPGs and getting/accumulating development expertise like Obsidian had.

Wasteland 2, in that aspect, was as good as we could have hoped for: an overambitious and superjanky, ultimately falling-short CRPG that nevertheless had its heart in the right place and tried to deliver the real thing. I thought that was worthwhile to back. Anyone who expected a masterpiece would have been deluded.

Sadly it's the end of the line - after Torment and BT4, there's a limit to how long you can wait and how much money you can give to crowdfunding after several failures to improve on that. Troika got 3 games, and each of them were special classics in their own way even while being broken.

I have no hate for Fargo, he at least has spent years and years using all his powers to try and give us good old CRPGs, which is more than you can say for most people.

 

[Fenix]

Also, as I've noted before, people are confused about how much it costs to make games in the U.S. because (1) indies who put unrepaid sweat equity in can develop games for a fraction the cost, (2) games made in developing nations are made a fraction the cost, and (3) Kickstarters pitch at a fraction of what they actually need. On the other hand, I suspect that with a decent-sized starting capital, and regular crowdfunding cash infusions, you can keep the machine going for a long time even on relatively low revenue streams from your games. So I doubt inXile has drained Fargo's wealth or made him rich. More likely, he enjoy(ed)(s) game development and figured there was a chance he'd hit the jackpot, so he kept at it for a while.

Also if you think about all that criticism about stale state of RPGs, codexers here criticise it a lot - and so do I - and it's about West and western PRG actually.
But let's imagine it will be outsourced eventually to the China and East Europe, like with everything else...


While I have nothing against EE, but all games made in China... lol no.
Though it's highly unlikely, given that SJW and such using games for their goals, so they need to hold the reins, so at least AAA will be there forever.

 

[The_Mask]

Still not sure I get all the dislike for Fargo.

First...



and then...

 

[MRY]

Fenix I'm fairly optimistic. I think all sorts of barrier to entry have been lowered in a way that makes it possible for games like AOD, Underrail, Disco Elysium, SitS, etc. to get made. The complexity and polish of those games is staggering compared to the comparable indie titles from 20 years ago. As long as people stick with it, they'll develop the experience and skills to be the next generation of 90s-cRPG-developer equivalents.

sorinmask Honestly, not sure what the difference between the pitch and the game is. The pitch is a bunch of marketing fluff, taglines, and concept art, but it seemed like everything they listed was in the game in one way or the other. IMO there's a difference between releasing something that's shorter, uglier, wordier, and clunkier than was expected (which I take to be the core knocks on TTON) and something that's categorically different in look and feel than what players expected (which I take to be the case with DFA, M. No. 9, etc.). Obviously I'm absurdly biased on this front, but I don't think any of what inXile has released was a bait-and-switch or course change.

(I should add that the pitch is cringe-inducing now in a way that it wasn't before, but not sure why. Maybe it's the fabulous optimism mixed with Star Wars fan film seriousness...)

 

[Zeriel]

Quick note to "cash grab" theorists: y'all know that Brian Fargo is from the Fargo family, right? Wells Fargo? The bank? He already has money beyond your wildest dreams of avarice. You can say a lot of things about him but scamming backers for $ does not hold up.

There's a difference between having money and making money. You see a lot of people ruin themselves in this way, they want the "thrill" of success and being someone who matters. Remember that in the 90s Fargo was a big deal, he had a thin golden time when he got a taste of what the big boys experience all the time. It's probably hard to go from being printed up in the newspaper as a local boy who made good as an executive to just sitting in your McMansion waiting to die.

As I mentioned in the Grimoire thread, Felipe is a poseur who doesn't play or like old non-anime-moeblob blobbers (moeblobbers?).

Realistically, moeblobbers are usually clones of very old Wizardry games, so being a fan of moeblobbers but not western blobbers is basically another way of saying you are more hardcore than someone who is just into the most recent western blobbers and disdains moeblobbers because muh weeb menace.

 

[Grauken]

Honestly, not sure what the difference between the pitch and the game is. The pitch is a bunch of marketing fluff, taglines, and concept art, but it seemed like everything they listed was in the game in one way or the other. IMO there's a difference between releasing something that's shorter, uglier, wordier, and clunkier than was expected (which I take to be the core knocks on TTON) and something that's categorically different in look and feel than what players expected (which I take to be the case with DFA, M. No. 9, etc.). Obviously I'm absurdly biased on this front, but I don't think any of what inXile has released was a bait-and-switch or course change.

I agree about W2 and TTON, those were what I expected to get when kickstarting them, even if the execution was lacking, but BT4 is not at all what expected to get, not even close. I don't think its bait and switch though, Stonekeep should have clued me in that Brian doesn't have any clues about good blobbers

 

[MRY]

If I recall correctly, the BTIV pitch was mostly just eye and ear candy without a lot of substance ... ?

 

[Zombra]

Quick note to "cash grab" theorists: y'all know that Brian Fargo is from the Fargo family, right? Wells Fargo? The bank? He already has money beyond your wildest dreams of avarice. You can say a lot of things about him but scamming backers for $ does not hold up.

There's a difference between having money and making money. You see a lot of people ruin themselves in this way, they want the "thrill" of success and being someone who matters. Remember that in the 90s Fargo was a big deal, he had a thin golden time when he got a taste of what the big boys experience all the time. It's probably hard to go from being printed up in the newspaper as a local boy who made good as an executive to just sitting in your McMansion waiting to die.

That's my point. Fargo wants to recapture his glory days of making awesome games. He's sincere about wanting to do good work again, and he'd love to get rave reviews and sell millions of units. This is apparent over the whole development cycle of Wasteland 2 and that of TTON. The theory that this time he deliberately cut corners to sell an intentionally subpar product for one last big cash-in is laughable on its face.

 

[Zombra]

As for pitch vs. product, BTIV did indeed deliver what was promised in the pitch (perhaps not a great version of what was promised, but it is what was promised). Go back and actually read the kickstarter pitch page and you'll see it's all there. Thousands of backers didn't read it, and even if they did they filled in the blanks with what they wanted to see: "This game is going to basically be BT 1-3 but with better graphics." That's never stated - or even strongly implied - anywhere.

 

[Darth Roxor]

how much is inxile paying you for all these apologetics, all the time, in all the threads