SpectralShade
1,259 products in account
7 reviews
Not Recommended
11.6 hrs on record
This review may not accurately reflect the state of the released version." PRE-RELEASE REVIEW
POSTED: 18 SEPTEMBER
This game can be reviewed in 2 ways:
1) as a random stand alone game and it is called "Barrows deep"
2) as a sequel to a trilogy of previous games and it is called "Bards tale 4"
1) Barrows Deep
You start out with a pregenerated character. Later, after some walking around where you are basicly walking a script with zero variety you get the chance to change your starting character into something else. Additional characters can only be recruited by spending "mercenary tokens", and you don't get any of those until later, so you are stuck for quite a while with pre-scripted characters you get one at a time.
Attributes are simplistic. Strength is litterally the 'damage attribute', meaning all 4 classes use strength as a direct conversion of how much damage they do with an attack (regardless of which weapon is used or if a spell is used.) Constitution is your health attribute. your hitpoints (damage you can take before dying) is directly affected by this attribute. Get +1 constitution and you get +1 hit points.
Intelligence is some weird attribute that governs the likelyhood of maintaining a channelling ability if you are hit by an attack while chanelling. And that is basicly it. Then you got the 2 combat attributes of armor class and spell points. Armorclass is a raw deduction in damage taken from an attack and spell points start at zero each combat (but mages can spec into starting with one) and any spell cast removes those spellpoints. In order to get spellpoints during combat you need to channel a turn or more (note: Bards get spellpoints by drinking a consumable resource called alcohol).
Equipment affects the above by being simple 'stat sticks'. in other words, a dagger that gives +2 strength is the exact same as a sword that gives +2 strength in most cases. "armor" also merely applies attributes and the most common way for armor to give survivability to the user is to just have some +constitution on it (which in turn just gives a lfat addition to hit points). There's no real visible indication while playing of what equipment your characters are using, except for on the 'dress up doll' wher eyou drag and drop your equipment to. In this regard the backpack, or inventory, should be mentioned. It is artificially limiting in size, and you often need to click back and forth between deffirent 'pages' in your inventory to get a clear view of what you are actually carrying around. This also impacted shops, who couldn't purchase anything more if you filled up their inventory (which happened really fast).
Skill trees are like any random modern game, really. Except that the interaction with combat masteries (more on that later) means that the player often ends up feeling he have to choose between pointless skill A or pointless skill B just to progress along the skilltree. Every level-up, a character receives a skill point to place in the skill tree. Some of the "skills" are such fascinating choices as '+1 intelligence', '+1 strength', '+1 constitution' and so on. There are actually some 'real' skill choices along the way, where you get additional skill choices to use by a character. Oh, and every crafting item is skill required, so if you want to be able to use the crafting system, one of your characters will be 'that guy' that stands in the corner without participating in combat because all his skill points where used on crafting and the mastry system means he's not going to do anything in combat anyway when you have combat dedicated characters that need the actionpoints. Basicly the skill system feels unrewarding and leveling up a character gives you a 'meh' feeling instead of you feeling good that one of your characters leveled up.
Races are... well... there are different races, but at the time I was playing there was really no point to not make every character a trow. the racial benefit of getting extra actionpoints just outweighs any other racial, so there might as well just have been a single race cause the Trow race is just flat out the best. Nothing else to add.
Combat is.... crap... There, I said it. The thing is, it is turn based, but of the kind where one side do all its actions first with immediate resolvement and then the next side does its actions. Whoever initiates combat goes first. Now, instead of giving orders to each character and having everything do something, inXile looked at games like hearthstone and felt inspired by that (they specifically mentioned hearthstone as an inspiration). What this means is that each character have a limited set of masteries (active skills) they can use. Want the option to attack? that's a mastery. Want the option to move? that's a mastery slot. and so on. Some are fixed for all characters (move and trinket use is hardlocked for all characters as 2 of their masteries) and the rest 3 or 4 choices are choosable by the hero while you are NOT engaged in combat. once you are in combat you are locked into using whatever abilities you had set in the mastery slots before combat. I am guessing inXile thought this would be akin to deckbuilding or something like that. Add to this that you have a shared pool of 'action points' to use on your turn. Most mastery skills cost a single action point to use, but some cost more than one. And usually you have less actino points than you have characters in your party, so remember that guy I mentioned you put in the corner doing nothing during combat?
The whole combat system feels extremely restricting and claustrophobic. Add that there are no hit chances (everything hits) and no damage variables (you make an attack, you hit for... how much strength did you say you had?) and combat stops feeling like combat, but more like a low level puzzle in a meeple placement boardgame.
Finally add to this that the setup of the grid area only allows a small handfull of monsters at a time, and in addition to needing to spend along time doing basic combat because of the artificial system, they have included 'waves' to make it appear that combat can actually deal with larger groups of monsters. So an example could be you facing off against 4 monsters, then as you kill them one by one, the last monster stands alone. Then you kill it, and wave 2 appears and 4 new monsters appear. Kill them in the same way and the last wave 3 might appear with 2 more monsters. A sure sign of a simplistic combat system that can't really handle the combats even the devs thought would be a minimum to evoke any feelings of acomplishments. Most battles seem to be of a single wave, but I experienced at least one 3 wave combat in the 10 or 11 hours of playtime before writing this review. I'm guessing more will appear as you progress through the game.
Puzzles are simplistic 'push the blocks around the game world until it stands on the switch' type. there are quite a few of them and they feel more like padding than they feel interesting. Since they are all scripted, they don't exactly add to replayability either, merely becoming a chore you need to do to progress.
So overall for barrows deep I can't really endorse the gameplay or design and I would not waste my time on it unless you can get it on a good sale.
2) Bards tale 4
So as a sequel to a previous trilogy of games, there should be some connections to those, right? Well appearantly the developers thought that just slapping the name "bards tale 4" and then namesdropping a few npcs and locations would do the trick, because that is ALL there is of connection. Everything else have been changed. Those expecting a bards tale experience should look elsewhere. Everything was changed and you wouldn't know it was a bards tale game if it hadn't been named as one. Even the lore was changed.
Basicly, avoid this game unless it is on a good sale.
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