You don't make a Bard's Tale clone without a magic mouth. I like the drawn gfx although' they clash a bit with the UI, also the perspective is completely fucked, the next tile does not feel like it's the next tile, of course you get to it but it's really confusing at first.
I can see the guy who made The Warrior's Tale mocking Devil Whiskey, when looking for a way to make the game work on Windows 7 I saw the guy said there's no point making a Bard's Tale clone with an automap and a permissive save system, they're pivotal features, which is not wrong regardless of how you like those.
Many systems of Devil Whiskey are even closer to the Bard's Tale (mostly stuff which were not implemented in Warrior's Tale but are in Devil Whiskey, but not only), you can summon and recruit as many enemies as you want, there are enemy group distances in combat, the range of numbers is more or less the same if we consider Bard's Tale trilogy, mage changing class is straight like in The Bard's Tale. Yet you can save everywhere and you've got an automap.
In The Warrior's Tale your warriors directly start with 50 HPs and the beginning is easier than in The Bard's Tale and other clones, your mages pick 2 magic schools, they eventually learn all schools so it's the same but with a slightly different presentation, there's the weapon skill, different AC numbers, each attack in a round is its own text (I thought I never saw that in a blobber although' I doubt it's the only one), there's only one special slot for summons but no recruitment. Here are the (incomplete) maps (I also mapped the town which is also in the manual like I always do because I forget to check, so it is here too) :
Both games have OK, not great, dungeons. Honestly I think these games (Gates of Integrity too, if not better) get this part quite right. I would not say perfectly for the same reason in the three games, they feel like you cast Disarm Trap and absolutely nothing can happen, you can't get lost or anything, Devil Whiskey gets different spells for different traps but basically with very friendly put spinners, single anti-magic tiles (you can just walk further and cast your light spell again) and other such things you won't get lost in this game and that's not even mentioning the automap. I played Wizardry 1 recently and, yes, on that front it's different. However the atmosphere, vibe texts, riddles and puzzles, etctera, all these games do that right, and you have to cast the spells, let's not go too far, it's not that the dungeons have no trap but rather that we really know how to deal with those at this point. It's why we like those games anyway, even the mediocre ones, it's plain P&P (system and content) put into video games, focused on some parts of it but the important part is there's no additional bullshit from other video game genres or anything like that. I always think the encounter rate could be at least slightly smaller, even if it's overall probably never as high as in The Bard's Tale.
Playing with some recruited monsters is something I like in those games, so it's a bit of shame you can't in
The Warrior's Tale. I did not like itemization because finding an item I would use was too rare, mithril pieces would be worse than plate pieces for my warrior and nobody else could use those, I think. The game is overall an easier, shorter, simpler Bard's Tale, rather to recommend to neophytes which never playerd Bard's Tale and want some simple yet proper experience where they at least draw their own map.
Devil Whiskey is OK to good, it's a recommendable game, someone who does not directly like The Bard's Tale will probably not like it either (same structure with one dungeon after another, high encounter rate) but as far as very direct The Bard's Tale clones as concerned, it's the best one, I guess (there are still a few I have not played, for example there's Silversword but it's a mobile game so I probably won't), although' I imagine it also depends on how you feel with automaps and save everywhere, it's certainly half of the gameplay of these games which is lacking, not being lost in dungeons is boring to me, I just think I'm more in the minority here, if you just want to smash monsters then it might be the definitive game of this kind. It's big (it's not that long, maybe 30 or 40 hours, only due to automap) and very complete (I did not touch crafting, for example, while I think it's more than very basic), both systems and content are solid enough, it's just that on many aspect I could not help but think it could be a little better. Encounter rate could be slightly lower (not sure exactly how it works, when you enter a dungeon it's insane then as you explore it gets very tolerable), there are more than 200 spells yet I did not feel it was some amazing variety and something similar can be said about items (consumables felt like they were only items that cast spells only mages could use, spells that the mage would already have, a couple of times at most consumables were relevant), while regarding monsters, a bit on the contrary, enough of those feel unique but there are not that many and you feel like you keep fighting the same enemies to some extent, frome one dungeon to the next there are generally many same enemies. The number of points of interest in dungeons is really not impressive, sure with an automap clearing the floors goes very fast but that's not exactly what I'm looking for, I'd rather have no automap and smaller, more furnished dungeons. The game could be less linear, there's like one optional dungeon and all the other ones you do in order like in typical Bard's Tale style. Despite all these limits I think the game is solid enough, party building is great, combat is certainly above average with plenty of options (there are some skills for not-mages, Hide in shadows is not the only one), enemies propose different threats, distances are often not anodyne, some boss fights are irrelevant while some other are cool, despite the low number of points of interest the game is still paced decently enough by small story pieces, riddles, boss fights and relevant chests, it's a cool P&P-ish game and it's certainly better than the average dungeon crawler without Wizardry or Might & Magic in its name.
EDIT : Oops, I wrote Gates of Eternity instead of
Gates of Integrity.
Helherron is excellent by the way, huge with a fully open and handcrafted world, great character system, itemization and combat and more than decent encounters, it's really a high point of the genre which everybody should play.