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

[Deleted Member 22431]

The problem, I guess, is that reinvesting that in Torment and now BT4 seems unlikely to generate much in the way of positive returns to kick on to the next project.

I dont think they reinvested everything. They also relied on a publisher to develop Torment, so.

 

[Roguey]

Both BT4 and Wasteland 3's crowdfunding campaigns started before ToN dropped. Now he's released two commercial failures in a row. Would anyone trust him with money in advance again?

What BT4 indicates is that game journalists are too eager to stop the pretence of liking obscure games. All they need is an excuse, either being some bad reviews, bugs, etc. Of course, the fact that they are selling shit only reinforces this negative trend. I also suspect that pretending that the game would have good graphics did more harm than good. It's one thing making that isometric game with weird mechanics. It's another to pretend that you can enter the same arena of Skyrim, FO4, etc. In fact, I would not be surprised if the FP aspect of gameplay attracted the wrong kind of reviewer. W2 got a positive review from RPS, but it was reviewed by Adam Smith, not John Walker.

BT4's getting hit a lot harder from Steam's userbase than game journalists.

 

[muds_animal_friend]

Oh i have a bard in my party,still i found it useless in actual battle.

It's probably the worse starting class, but great at higher levels. Falkentyne's Fury (preferably with Cornu equipped) + Grand Minstrel spell point bonus for practitioners + two Grand Conjurer practitioners spamming dragon's breath from the front row followed by slinking assault + Rain of Arrows from rogue= devastate the entire battlefield on turn one for the cost of 5 opportunity points (or 4 if the rogue is using a longbow).

Hahahaha it is interesting how we are bashing the game how simple the combat is,yet we all do find different combinations to kill enemies. I did go for one hit one kill skills for the rogue . I really like the whip you get from the pushing the hidden buttons around the green runes in the undercity. It is really good against undead. Also vampire dagger is good for strength based wizards. Shame that we don't have respecing ability.

Yeah, I had to drop the story characters due to lack of respec. They should have at least allowed specing them when they're first recruited. Also, I'd like a combat arena in the adventure's guild. It's hard to test out skill combos without one.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

BT4's getting hit a lot harder from Steam's userbase than game journalists.

But game journalists reviews are much more harsher than anyone could have expected. They can see players' negative reactions and this gives them the confidence to lambast the game even harder. It’s a vicious circle. If they smell defeat, they will add to it. It's human nature: cowardice and cruelty. The Codexers are known for being edgy, but game journalists are the same when they are not paid shills.

 

[fantadomat]

Hahahaha it is interesting how we are bashing the game how simple the combat is,yet we all do find different combinations to kill enemies. I did go for one hit one kill skills for the rogue . I really like the whip you get from the pushing the hidden buttons around the green runes in the undercity. It is really good against undead. Also vampire dagger is good for strength based wizards. Shame that we don't have respecing ability.

Apparently if you complete the holy book questline, you can get a whole new class. A cleric.

Edit:" The questline is, the holy path"

And it was a holy symbol, not a holy book.

You get a new skill tree, but you still keep your existing skill trees. Your class is changed, more like a prestige class I guess.

Yeah i know mate,i have it to two of my people and not single point spend on it. Apparently a rogue and priest make a monk .

 

[EnthalpyFlow]

How bad is the performance? I can put with all the other nuances, I've played PoE.

 

[Hobo Elf]

It's not horrible like it was on release. You can play it. Personally I'd still advise waiting for next Friday at the least, when they release the next patch.

 

[EnthalpyFlow]

Is it above 60? I'm too used to higher framerates now.

 

[Ulrox]

Is it above 60? I'm too used to higher framerates now.

Depends on your computer. You'd need a really high end computer to keep it around 60 fps.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

The combat is good. If you're struggling it's because you're old and senile so you can't adapt to any system that isn't a close derivative of another system that is already familiar.

 

[Morkar Left]

But game journalists reviews are much more harsher than anyone could have expected. They can see players' negative reactions and this gives them the confidence to lambast the game even harder. It’s a vicious circle. If they smell defeat, they will add to it. It's human nature: cowardice and cruelty. The Codexers are known for being edgy, but game journalists are the same when they are not paid shills.

So far that doesn't seem true. On metacritic the score is 78 while users give it 6.5. And the 6.5 is still higher than the Steam scores (and comparable with gogs ratings atm).

Steam scores at least managed to crawl over the 50%. BT Remastered has 96% btw. (with half the user reviews amount).

The metascore of 78% seems to be allright for me now if I ignore the technical issues. The game is fun but has some bad design decisions for an rpg as well.

 

[fantadomat]

Is it above 60? I'm too used to higher framerates now.

Depends on your computer. You'd need a really high end computer to keep it around 60 fps.

Not really,i can keep 60 on my 580. Most of the modern cards are having problems. Still some times dips.

 

[2house2fly]

Not much of a weekend peak then. Jokes aside, this is quite sad, unless there is a massive turnaround (v unlikely) this is not just a flop but heading into legendary disaster territory

The only reason it's not already a legendary disaster is because it's such a flop hardly anyone knows about it

 

[BEvers]

In fact, I would not be surprised if the FP aspect of gameplay attracted the wrong kind of reviewer. W2 got a positive review from RPS, but it was reviewed by Adam Smith, not John Walker.

I don't think it has anything to do with first person vs. isometric. Those RPS reviewers who generally gave positive RPG reviews have entered the RPG industry themselves and are now unavailable. Adam Smith became a senior writer at Larian, and Richard Cobbett is running a Kickstarter right now.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Any review penned by John Walker can be safely discarded as soy induced psychosis.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

I don't think it has anything to do with first person vs. isometric.

I disagree. If Fargo didn’t try to portrait the game with awesum graphics in his pitch video, people wouldn’t have big expectations about graphic fidelity. We should not kid ourselves: FP games have big budgets and graphics, and players/game journalists will expect the same from any FP games. Isometric games are different because they don’t generate any expectations in that regard.

The metascore of 78% seems to be allright for me now if I ignore the technical issues. The game is fun but has some bad design decisions for an rpg as well.

We need to wait a couple weeks. The tendency is that the score will become worse after more reviews, even after the patchs. You also need to pay attention to the tone and content of the negative reviews. Some seem more agressive than codexer's posts. That's a terrible sign for the way the studio will be received in the future.

 

[EnthalpyFlow]

Is it above 60? I'm too used to higher framerates now.

Depends on your computer. You'd need a really high end computer to keep it around 60 fps.

Not really,i can keep 60 on my 580. Most of the modern cards are having problems. Still some times dips.

I have an i7-4820K and a 1080 but I play on 1440p :/

 

[dragonul09]

Look at all these helpful reviews, another 1.99 mil of those and Fergies on his way to buy back Interplay and like someone else said, bad publicity is good publicity

 

[Ravn7]

So, it seems they rushed the release because of Kingmaker. Maybe they couldn't afford to wait for a few weeks more. Anyway, it's very unfortunate.

But TBH even more unfortunate was a choice of this genre for investing so much money in it. Turned out to be disastrous. Those games just don't sell well. And Grimrock 1 is not an exception because it's about completely different thing. That is the challenge and mistery. Like Darkest Dungeon. Grimrock 2 was different and sold much worse because of it. Devs just didn't get why the first one was successful. Neither did InXile. Among other things they didn't get.

 

[Shadenuat]

I doubt they rushed cause of Kingmaker, but if they did, then they secured Kingmaker's better future lol.

 

[StrongBelwas]

Even if Kingmaker would have clobbered them, the game is already doing horribly. If they released a few weeks later in a decent state they could have at least managed to save the review score, which would help a lot for the game's long tail. Now even if Brian snapped his fingers and fixed every issue its going to be an uphill battle to get enough people to review the game that it gets into the Positives by the next big sale. Most people see a Mixed score they won't even give it a second glance and just hit Ignore.

 

[ColCol]

Hahahaha it is interesting how we are bashing the game how simple the combat is,yet we all do find different combinations to kill enemies. I did go for one hit one kill skills for the rogue . I really like the whip you get from the pushing the hidden buttons around the green runes in the undercity. It is really good against undead. Also vampire dagger is good for strength based wizards. Shame that we don't have respecing ability.

Apparently if you complete the holy book questline, you can get a whole new class. A cleric.

Edit:" The questline is, the holy path"

And it was a holy symbol, not a holy book.

You get a new skill tree, but you still keep your existing skill trees. Your class is changed, more like a prestige class I guess.

There are unlockable prestige skill trees.

 

[Ravn7]

I agree it was a great mistake. Even if they had release it a few days after Kingmaker, at least the reviews would be much better. Now they will get nothing. No initial sales and poorer long-term sales.

Although, like I said earlier, this kind of game would never sell. I don't know what were they thinking. They should have made the market analysis. At least a simple one by themselves which would be enough. See which genres sell and which don't, what mechanics players prefer and so on.

BTW, the beginning of a game is always being made at the end of a development process. Maybe that explains why it makes such a poor first impression.

 

[Gregz]

I supported the game on kickstarter and finally got some time to play it this weekend. This game disappoints on all fronts: gameplay, graphics, combat, puzzles, story. Anyone hoping for a quality old school RPG will be disappointed. If you value your time, don't play this game even if it's free.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Another stupid mistake is the brand confusion with Bards Tale 2004. Which was a moderate success on launch, but somehow has an incredibly long tail and never stopped selling. It was a decent hit on mobile and now remastered version also seems to have moved a lot of units.