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

[BEvers]

Looks like virtually nobody has reached the second half of the game yet. There could be lots of wondrous discoveries yet to come

 

[fantadomat]

Well, no, fuckers. Right before back-tracking to the entrance they placed a BOSS FIGHT. One around a corner, which you can't notice from a distance, ambushing you. A very hard one actually, the boss has 59 ARMOR - he's impossible to kill unless you've got a party with abundant spells/mental attacks. Which wasn't how my party was setup.

If you don't notice how armoured some enemies are you will have problem. You have to pick "great sword novice1",it break part of their shield,very useful.


PS:Does anyone know how to make baked potatoes in the game? Those offering puzzles are really retarded...

 

[aweigh]

The type of argument Gord is using is meaningless and dishonest:

- There is movement in this game, there was movement in the older games too.

- There were enemies in the older games and they made new enemies for this game too.

The game has enough positive aspects (exploration, music) to stan for it if you feel inspired to do so but please don't be willfully dishonest and obtuse. It's not a good look man and it's annoying. For example you infer (state? insinuate?) that a stat becomes meaningless because you can max it out as if this is a true statement, and you also conflate randomness with (once again) meaninglessness. That was the first tip-off that you're using bad faith arguments.

To the more knowledgeable here what kind of argumentation is this called, that Gord is using? Logical fallacy? Circular? All I know is that it's dishonest.

 

[Gregz]

To the more knowledgeable here what kind of argumentation is this called, that Gord is using? Logical fallacy? Circular? All I know is that it's dishonest.

Straw man argument.

 

[Volourn]

HOLY FUKKIN' FUCKK FUKKIJN FUCK FOR YOU.

 

[Shadenuat]

To the more knowledgeable here what kind of argumentation is this called, that Gord is using

The "Baldur's Gate had this bad thing so why do you also hate PoE for it?" one.

game stretches these puzzles to no end. Dozens of them. I'm not joking. I was about to throw my computer out of the window by the 10th one. What the hell were they thinking ? It's repetitive ad-nauseam

Heh, predicted that during the very first dungeon.

 

[fantadomat]

LoL the wolf den have some really hard puzzles. It is big spike of difficulty.


You have to wire that shit so it goes to one place,it is harder than it looks,also it is the smaller puzzle.

 

[DeepOcean]

So much noise...

Okay, facts so far:

Positives:
Some people are making vague claims that some areas are well designed in terms of level design. (How exactly?)
The combat can be fun and challenging fights despite the shitty character system based on the ability combo system and encounter design. (Need specifics.)
Some puzzles are good and not a waste of time.


Negatives:

Game is buggy as hell
The loot drops are disappointing
All weapons feel the same because the damage is deterministic based on strength
The design is tilted towards you making one trick ponies
The character development system is quite simplistic with very few build options
The save system is broken because the game is buggy as hell
There are way too many toddler style Skyrim like puzzles killing the flow of the game
The armor system is quite disappointing simplistic and poorly balanced

So far the NOPE! crowd is winning, game seems like some mobile blobber light game with some merits here and there and, if you are really desperate for blobbers, you can squeeze some fun out of it . The Fargo fanboys will need to up the game, no amount of "Mah RPG Renaissance guise, please, think on Swen, Feargus and Fargo paychecks!" or "I LIKED NUMANUMA THIS MUCH!" or "Bards Tale 1 to 3 were crap too, so that magically makes Bards Tale IV good, right?" will cut it. So far I'm not seeing Fargo fanboys actually defending the merits of the game.

Seems 75% off material for me so far, not convinced despite the drama and grandstanding.

 

[Roqua]

Add the Coles to this as well.

Make fun games with good rpg elements?

 

[Mustawd]

Add the Coles to this as well.

Make fun games with good rpg elements?

Waste tons of money unecessarily due to bad management.

Did you read the last part of what I quoted where it said “incompetent managers”?

No? Oh ok. Go get your fucking shinebox and read it next time, genius.

 

[Grauken]

Add the Coles to this as well.

Make fun games with good rpg elements?

The mental contortions you have to go through to think of yourself as knowledgeable and appreciate of quality RPGs and yet remain ignorant of just how shallow your taste truly is, man that's utterly magnificent

 

[Roqua]

Add the Coles to this as well.

Make fun games with good rpg elements?

Waste tons of money unecessarily due to bad management.

Did you read the last part of what I quoted where it said “incompetent managers”?

No? Oh ok. Go get your fucking shinebox and read it next time, genius.

As long as the end result is a fun game. Did they have some growing pains getting back into the modern video game market? Sure. Did it end up turning out well for all involved? Yes.

The mental contortions you have to go through to think of yourself as knowledgeable and appreciate of quality RPGs and yet remain ignorant of just how shallow your taste truly is, man that's utterly magnificent

I knw, right! If I just stuck to pokeman, Zelda, and Metal Gear like you guys I could consider myself some sort of hardcore rpg guru!

Hero-U was a fun game with good rpg elements. Was the combat deep? No. Was the chardev deep? No. Did the QfG games have better chardev and deeper combat? No. It was better than I was expecting, and more fun than I guessed it would be. It had had far more deep combat and rpg elements than the tripe you shills jerk off over. And better combat and deeper rpg elements than most rpgs from the 80s and 90s. Compare it to any Ultima including the Underworlds, or Dungeon Siege, and other mega-hit rpgs you monkeys masturbated to when they came out (or the few of you that are older than 12 at least and were alive when they came out).

 

[fantadomat]

Some people are making vague claims that some areas are well designed in terms of level design. (How exactly?)
The combat can be fun and challenging fights despite the shitty character system based on the ability combo system and encounter design. (Need specifics.)
Some puzzles are good and not a waste of time.

The combat is really fun when you end up against some side dungeon's boss. It brings a lot of satisfaction when you beat the shit out of some tough bastard and you get away barely alive.
For the puzzles,well most of them are trash,but there are a few hard ones like the one i showed picture of,same satisfaction once you solve it. Also there is a few that are just fun.

Also saving system is shit because of how afar the points are and you can't resave on most of them. A lot of time you end up sweating after an hour puzzle solving or really hard battle,because the game could crash or you could die. The worst part of the game.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Played for around three hours without any crashes.

It does run pretty badly for how it looks (I get around 40-50 fps on a 1070 with an ancient i5 3570k) and load times are pretty atrocious (in retrospect I shouldn't have installed it on my larger mechanical HDD, should have installed it on the SSD). There are microstutters when you open your inventory or when you loot a container that are pretty annoying.

However, I was expecting something much worse based on how hysterical some people here are being. There are some very questionable character development design decisions for sure, but the game is atmospheric, battles are reasonably interesting on hard and the dungeon crawling is alright so far. I think after some patches it's going to be a pretty serviceable game - it certainly could be much worse.

It's a pity that they didn't polish a little more, I don't think it deserves all the vitriol people are spewing at it, especially on Steam, during this critical launch window. Even if Fargo & co. toil away fixing the issues, the damage is already done and no one needs another "oh, in retrospect it was a pretty great game" 10 years from now after the company goes under.

 

[newtmonkey]

Some tourney-level trolling by Roqua here lol

 

[Lahey]

He's just pretending to be Roquarded.

 

[newtmonkey]

Great Deceiver
When you get a bit further in could you post your impressions of the exploration? I immediately disliked the game and refunded it for fear of passing the 2 hour mark and getting stuck with something I'd hate, but I'm still interesting in getting it again once the bugs are ironed out. Unfortunately, it's impossible to get a feel of the game from the professional reviews so far (which are basically summaries of the game's combat system + SINGING XDXDXD), the official forum is seemingly dead, and the steam forum is full of drama about frame rate and graphics.

I'm wondering specifically what the game is like once you start going through hubs to revisit previously inaccessible areas. Since encounters are not random/do not respawn, I'm worried it will be like the second half of M&M10 were you are just walking back and forth over empty roads. Or are there plenty of shortcuts that open up (or are new encounters placed after certain points)?

 

[Mustawd]

on Steam, during this critical launch window. Even if Fargo & co. toil away fixing the issues, the damage is already done and no one needs another "oh, in retrospect it was a pretty great game" 10 years from now after the company goes under.

No...NO. The shit is buggy. They’re big boys. They knew if it was buggy it’d get blasted on steam. Cmon, this is a niche game.

If you don’t want negative reviews dye to technical issues don’t release it. “Toil” some more and fix more bugs.

Get serious man. Shit is a business. First impressions matter. And they should.

EDIT: That being said the vitriol likely is high due to inXile hate on the Codex due to a variety of things.

 

[Roqua]

EDIT: That being said the vitriol likely is high due to inXile hate on the Codex due to a variety of things

Variety of things like an rpg community that hates actual rpgs and the companies that make them? That's pretty much the only reason that really matters, isn't it?

Edit - I love all the child retards giving me their bad buttons. When I go into their profile to pull up threads to share the button love bad with them almost all of them post exclusively in general gaming blatant-non-rpgs even for super low-codex standards threads, or GD. Oh no!!! Shill general-gamers like Night-Goat that post on an rpg site that don't even like rpgs gave me bad buttons!!!! Mommy Help!!!!

 

[Great Deceiver]

None of what you just said contradicts what I said - I said it's a pity that they didn't polish it a little more and that it will hurt critical first impressions of the game.

Great Deceiver
When you get a bit further in could you post your impressions of the exploration? I immediately disliked the game and refunded it for fear of passing the 2 hour mark and getting stuck with something I'd hate, but I'm still interesting in getting it again once the bugs are ironed out. Unfortunately, it's impossible to get a feel of the game from the professional reviews so far (which are basically summaries of the game's combat system + SINGING XDXDXD), the official forum is seemingly dead, and the steam forum is full of drama about frame rate and graphics.

I'm wondering specifically what the game is like once you start going through hubs to revisit previously inaccessible areas. Since encounters are not random/do not respawn, I'm worried it will be like the second half of M&M10 were you are just walking back and forth over empty roads. Or are there plenty of shortcuts that open up (or are new encounters placed after certain points)?

Will do, but I get little gaming time these days and they might release a patch before I get much farther. I understand the concerns and the game doesn't really make a great first impression - I just don't think it's as bad as people are making it out to be.

 

[Mustawd]

None of what you just said contradicts what I said - I said it's a pity that they didn't polish it a little more and that it will hurt critical first impressions of the game.

Oh right. Lol. Sorry. Got a little intense there huh?

*puts away butterfly knife*

 

[Agame]

Some tourney-level trolling by Roqua here lol

Dare I say its more entertaining than playing BT4?

 

[Whisper]

Any strategies or advise for party composition: class and races?

Maximum amount is 6 of your characters in group?

 

[aweigh]

I'll just paste this random person's breakdown from one of the threads concerning "classes" in the game's Steam forums:

The main driver per round is your Oportunity Points. It makes no sense to build a team that just uses OP's. The Rouge is the main OP user with their big physcial hits. But You have to use the freebies Bard - Chug and their Spell Point Skills. Practitioner - Soak up SP's and then fire off their Spell Point Skills and the Fighter trying to focus the beatdown onto them and rarely damage, use a few OP's here and there.

It's somewhat of a bizarre system that doesn't leave imo too many team build options or at least it seems it doesn't. What's the point of say 4 Rogues if one Rouge can use up all the Opportunity Points with their skills, leaves the other 3 as pincusions and little more?

Seems to be pretty accurate from my limited playtime. This isn't necessarily bad, mind you, since if the combat is enjoyable then it doesn't really matter that you can't (or won't want to) vary your tactics. "More" isn't always immediately equivalent to "better", after all.

Hey, hey, I'm just trying to be positive here, o.k. If the game had more classes with more attributes and unique skills that paired well with proper itemization where everything has a distinct property then this kind of streamlined approach can actually turn out well.

 

[DemonKing]

Tried this the other day needs some serious optimization with load times and even breaking a crate having a noticeable delay. Also when I leveled up I clicked on a skill but could fine no way to reverse that choice like in every other CRPG ever.

Plenty of other games to play so I'll probably wait for a patch or two before digging deeper. Liked the nods to the older games I've discovered so far.