Bard's Tale The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep - Director's Cut

[RuySan]

Ok but why? Is it a bad game? Then why it has over 100 pages on dex? Seems like a good game by sheer publicity here.

This has been discussed previously: InXile deviated from the formula of the original Bard's Tale trilogy in both combat and exploration, while at the same time heavily "casualizing" the game in almost every respect. The result is an evidently unsuccessful attempt to reach a broad audience that has never played the original trilogy and wouldn't care for it, while also alienating the narrower audience that appreciates Wizardry-likes and might be nostalgic for the original Bard's Tale games. Changes made to combat were seemingly aimed in the direction of making it more tactical, but it's too casualized to hold much appeal for the type of CRPG player who enjoys the tactical combat of Pool of Radiance and similar games. Similarly, changes made to exploration placed a focus on mechanical puzzles, but these puzzles are too simple and repetitive to hold much appeal for the type of CRPG player who enjoys the sort of puzzles found in Dungeon Master and similar games. The Bard's Tale IV was additionally hurt by the agonizingly-lengthy loading times for those without a solid-state drive and reportedly also poor framerates for many with older and/or cheaper computers, though these issues would be less likely to be experienced now than when it was released. Also, the game is burdened with a prolonged, unskippable tutorial sequence in a dreary underground area and generic medieval city before it finally allows you to create your own party and enter the first real dungeon.

The developers were unable to attract the casual gaming audience they were so clearly pursuing. The reasons for this aren't entirely clear, but certainly InXile did itself no favors by wasting money on advertisements attempting to attract people who had enjoyed Skyrim, even though nearly anyone who considers Skyrim a good game would run away screaming at the first real puzzle in The Bard's Tale IV, and not many would be fond of the (rather odd) turn-based combat either. I suppose certain portions of the casual audience might have been interested in either the combat or the puzzles but not both simultaneously.

Wasteland 3 did absolutely fine in modernizing the formula. The problem with bt4 is that while some novelties were nice such as the combat and character system, the game was buggy, ugly, and had tons of boring samey puzzles, and also way too many battles.

The game could be pretty good with some minor changes. And having a way to skip puzzles doesn't help, because you end up with a never ending stream of battles.

Less but better puzzles and less repetitive battles. Also, nicer graphics and optimization and less bugs. And voila, a very good game is born.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

The Bard's Tale IV needed not just fewer or better-designed combat encounters but more importantly a drastic overhaul of its combat system, which was a bit of a novelty but didn't quite work and certainly failed to attract an audience. InXile might have been better served by repurposing the tactical combat engine from Wasteland 2, even though it was designed for a science-fiction setting dominated by ranged weapons rather than a fairly conventional medieval-esque fantasy setting.

The primary issues with the puzzles are that, first, a particular zone will feature a plethora of a new type of puzzle rather than providing variety, and second, the puzzles are simultaneously too difficult for casual Skyrim players and too easy for puzzle-aficionados.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Mfer's complaining about too much combat in a game about killing 999 Barbarians.

 

[cvv]

The Bard's Tale IV needed not just fewer or better-designed combat encounters but more importantly a drastic overhaul of its combat system, which was a bit of a novelty but didn't quite work and certainly failed to attract an audience.

Combat is the least of this game's problem. It's kinnda half-assed and janky but it's the "blob outside combat, grid in combat" kind that I loved in Krondor or Albion (IIRC Shadows over Riva might have the same system). Plus is turn-based.

The biggest problem by far was the amount of puzzles, that shit stopped being fun halfway through, writing, loot and fugliness. Operencia, an indie blobber made a by a bunch of scraggly Hungarians in their garage, had infinitely better production values than a game by a professional American studio.

Plus the game overstayed its welcome by about 20 hours. Too bad, RPG blobbers with a TB combat aren't born every day.

 

[Decado]

The Bard's Tale IV needed not just fewer or better-designed combat encounters but more importantly a drastic overhaul of its combat system, which was a bit of a novelty but didn't quite work and certainly failed to attract an audience.

Combat is the least of this game's problem. It's kinnda half-assed and janky but it's the "blob outside combat, grid in combat" kind that I loved in Krondor or Albion (IIRC Shadows over Riva might have the same system). Plus is turn-based.

The biggest problem by far was the amount of puzzles, that shit stopped being fun halfway through, writing, loot and fugliness. Operencia, an indie blobber made a by a bunch of scraggly Hungarians in their garage, had infinitely better production values than a game by a professional American studio.

Plus the game overstayed its welcome by about 20 hours. Too bad, RPG blobbers with a TB combat aren't born every day.

I think I already chimed in to this thread but yes, I agree with the above. 1) Operencia was fucking great 2) This game was pure Brian Fargo, i.e. 30% too long and 3) Combat was lame.

Otherwise, a grid-based dungeon crawler with puzzles, secrets, and classes should have been a fucking slam dunk. They got too clever for their own good. The class/weapon/stats/gear system was fucking atrocious and needlessly complicated. An updated version of the original Bard's Tale class and combat systems would have worked perfectly. I am flabbergasted that they went in the direction they chose.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Operencia, an indie blobber made a by a bunch of scraggly Hungarians in their garage, had infinitely better production values than a game by a professional American studio.

I think I already chimed in to this thread but yes, I agree with the above. 1) Operencia was fucking great 2) This game was pure Brian Fargo, i.e. 30% too long and 3) Combat was lame.

Otherwise, a grid-based dungeon crawler with puzzles, secrets, and classes should have been a fucking slam dunk. They got too clever for their own good. The class/weapon/stats/gear system was fucking atrocious and needlessly complicated. An updated version of the original Bard's Tale class and combat systems would have worked perfectly. I am flabbergasted that they went in the direction they chose.

The Bard's Tale IV was largely created by InXile's new studio in New Orleans, which was only announced as a future expansion in October 2015, and therefore many of the developers had little if any prior experience, assisted by a few more experienced people from the main office in California. Perusing the Mobygames credits, it seems that

• The producer had prior experience only as Quality Assurance on a smartphone game called Minions Paradise from 2015
• The creative director had previous experience only on America's Army from 2013
• One of the two project engineer leads had prior experience only on Choplifter HD and the 2004 "Bard's Tale" game (although the other had extensive experience)
• The level design lead had prior experience only on America's Army and an MMO shooter
• The combat design lead had last worked on a game called WWE All Stars released in 2011 (though he did had substantial prior experience)
• Three of the four engineers had zero prior experience, and the exception had only worked on a smartphone game called Paddington Run
• Two of the four designers (as opposed to the junior designers) had zero prior experience
• All five junior designers had zero prior experience

Not surprising that the game systems needed refinement, or that the game experienced other difficulties such as lengthy loading times (except on SSD ).

 

[DemonKing]

Necroing this thread as I finally finished as I've been making a concerted effort to get through my pile of shame.

Nice environmental graphics and ambient music. Combat was interesting to begin with but ultimately suffered from too many repetitive encounters and would have been vastly improved if you could actually fully utilise all your learned combat skills rather than having to pick a handful and make do.

Character graphics were ordinary to downright ugly. I didn't like the faux-Scottish setting and the less said about all the mind-numbing trial and error button-clicking time-waster puzzles the better. Also the inventory system sucked with limited space and merchants not having enough cash to buy all your surplus stuff meaning you ended up having to dump a lot. Itemisation was also terrible with there being nothing to visually distinguish between most items as they looked identical despite very different stats. There were very few unique/useful items that had extra powers which made it all rather dull. It was also hard to track quests as you would be guided to enter a different level but then once there the guidance identicator would disappear.

The game would have benefited from cutting most of the puzzles and repetitive combat encounters and being a 20-30 hour experience. The c.50 hours it took me to complete seems too long for the level of quality and padding on offer. Also it has almost nothing to do with the original games save the name of the main city and some mention of previous villains.

 

[Glop_dweller]

IMO Krome Studio's BT series remaster far outmatched InXile's attempt to make a BT4 by copying Frayed Knights.

*I would have paid for even InXile's BT4 if it were redone using Krome's BT 1-3 Unity3D project.

Spoiler

 

[ArchAngel]

I got this game with KS, never installed it. Then when I started using Game Pass it is on there and I am still passing over it each time I am looking for a new game to install. One day..

 

[Themadcow]

The game would have benefited from cutting most of the puzzles and repetitive combat encounters and being a 20-30 hour experience. The c.50 hours it took me to complete seems too long for the level of quality and padding on offer. Also it has almost nothing to do with the original games save the name of the main city and some mention of previous villains.

Yeah, so they made an effort to re-engage the original BT players with this project and then made a FAR bigger effort to ignore all of us when it came to the actual game design and testing. I mean, they really didn't take anything on board. I was one of the higher tier KS backers with the stupid big box to prove it - but we weren't really consulted on the game design, combat mechanics, save system or anything else really.

The big red flag should have been when they put a younger guy with no real experience of BT / Wizardry games as project lead. It felt like he didn't really want to make a BT game, and Brian Fargo was just weirdly fixed on this Scottish Highlands idea which just made no sense. It's telling that Fargo had no real input into the story of the original games - and probably for good reason.

For some reason they thought that we all loved puzzles. I have a feeling this is because they liked inventing them far more than we liked actually solving them. Puzzles in original BT were few and far between, and no-one really enjoyed them that I can recall.

If it wasn't for the fantastic original BT remasters by Krome then I'd have felt my money was completely wasted. Those remasters work perfectly on Steam Deck btw.

 

[Peachcurl]

The puzzles were actually fun to me. At least the first two or three times. Afterwards...

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

And no BTCS. Bleh!

 

[0sacred]

• The combat design lead had last worked on a game called WWE All Stars released in 2011 (though he did had substantial prior experience)

He's a neckbeard who was very proud of testing the combat system in board game form. That already didn't instill confidence in me considering the series' abstract combat. Overall he gave strong Reddit vibes.

 

[Saxon1974]

I think probably the biggest beef most of had with it was that it doesn't feel AT ALL like the original games. I could even forgive all the puzzles if it at least felt something like the earlier games.

 

[0sacred]

I never played BT before so I went in with 0 expectations and was still disappointed. Well I did expect an old school dungeon crawler, what I got was a boardgame with inferior itemization.

 

[Saxon1974]

I never played BT before so I went in with 0 expectations and was still disappointed. Well I did expect an old school dungeon crawler, what I got was a boardgame with inferior itemization.

That's fair too. I guess it not a good game really any way you slice it.