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

[Reinhardt]

Spend less money.

 

[felipepepe]

Ask the devs to play Bard's Tale I for at least 5 minutes.

 

[Country_Gravy]

The best deal I got from my $20 Kickstarter money was the remake of the first three. That first one was an amazing remake and I hope the next two are done just as well.

IV seems like it's not that good.

 

[newtmonkey]

IV is fun if you can get into its mix of cheap Myst clone puzzles and weird grid combat, and can stand extremely dumbed down stats. I prefer it to M&M10 as a modern blobber. The BT Trilogy remake is great (tho much easier than the original) and it's a true remake—the engine is apparently made from scratch, and they've basically attempted to unify BT1-3 in terms of mechanics (for example, they added range to combat in BT1, added the hide ability to rogues, and fixed the hunter's critical ability bug). My only worry is that they never get around to actually releasing BT 2&3, or that they end up releasing them at the last minute full of bugs and we never hear from them again.

 

[Nyast]

It's a shame it didn't have a more open world design and more depth in skills / stats. And of course, better performance, bug fixes and improvements, but I was talking more on the design side. Overall I'm not regretting backing it on KS, it was worth the money, but it's definitely not going to stay in my memory as a classic.

 

[fantadomat]

I managed to get to the last few levels of the game....and i deleted it. The game becomes boring and incredibly frustrating. All the puzzles are made not in a way to challenge you but to waste your time. The combat becomes a pointless repetition of the same tactic over and over again. I haven't seen a fight that lasted more than a single round in the last 50 battles. Also it waste around 2 minutes of my life because of shit animation and buggy animation that take up to 30 seconds to detect that something has happened two actions ago.

The level design also plummets to the ground,it is really bad and stupid,focused around wasting your time. The world/hub areas are linear and long with a lot of pointless zigzaging.The only good areas in the games are the undercity/the first area and the village after the undercity. All the rest are increasingly worst. Also the end phase locks you out of contend without even hinting at it. You are doing the main story,waiting for to send you back to the guild so you could finish all the side quests you just go the needed items,trying to minimize pointless loading screens. And then you endup in a boxed part of the map and forced in to the final ark.

The itimasation is maybe the worst i have seen in a long,long time. You can't unlock half the useless elven weapons because the game never dropped the needed gems,also no merchant is selling the rarer ones....like a the red,of which i found none in this playtrough. Two pages of my inventory are filed with useless crafting materials that i use only for the wheel offerings. It feels like cooking simulator with all the pointless ingredients. As for the equipment...well it is a vendor trash 95% of it. The other part is for equipping. The money are also useless,you sell vendor trash mainly to have more place in you inventory...for more vendor trash. In the whole game i literally bought one piece of equipment,because all the shop equipment is inferior to the one you have.

The combat is pretty shit because of the 4 actions/skills per character. Without it there is the possibility of a fun system. Sadly you end up having one or two possible skills because of the mostly useless skills that weapons add. The only good ones i saw were the whip and the vampiric dagger.

As a whole the game is garbage after the half and is not worth any money. The first time i played it i found it very charming and decent,after i hit the gamebreaking bug i decided to restarted and replay it. The game still was fun till the middle,after that point it became a frustrating downhill retardation. All the pointless timewasting puzzles run out any good will i had for the game. They made me just quit and delete the game.......and i hate leaving games unfinished.....even managed to finish dragon age inquisition on 100%,even collected all the shards. Yeah this game is more tedious than DAI!!!


Ahhh at this point i just hope that fargo and his band of incompetent retards just run out of business. I will go play Insomnia while waiting for "Warriors Orochi 4" and eventual fix of Kingmaker. Fargo you fat incompetent fuck,go fap in a corner and stop wasting people's time with your stupidity!!!

 

[theSavant]

I managed to get to the last few levels of the game....and i deleted it.

All the pointless timewasting puzzles run out any good will i had for the game. They made me just quit and delete the game.......and i hate leaving games unfinished.....

Nooooo! Why didn't you just use the Guidebook and get over it quickly? Now the unfinished playthrough will nag you forever. I hope you have at least kept the savegames, so you don't need to start from scratch again.

 

[Jimmious]

even managed to finish dragon age inquisition on 100%,even collected all the shards

 

[fantadomat]

I managed to get to the last few levels of the game....and i deleted it.

All the pointless timewasting puzzles run out any good will i had for the game. They made me just quit and delete the game.......and i hate leaving games unfinished.....

Nooooo! Why didn't you just use the Guidebook and get over it quickly? Now the unfinished playthrough will nag you forever. I hope you have at least kept the savegames, so you don't need to start from scratch again.

Nah mate,the puzzles were easy,no need for a guidebook. I just burned out from all the tedium that the game throws at you. It just the same 5 puzzles with different colouring,also the level design didn't make any sense,just a random maze like level with ton of pointless puzzles. Doubt that i will feel bad for not finishing it,it doesn't have anything interesting in it. The writing is shit and predictable,the exploration is dead at this level,and the puzzles....well i said it already. As for the combat.....well i watched the final boss get killed in a two turns with similar party composition,here is the video:



Oh and i still have the saves .

 

[Darth Canoli]

I hope playing the game wasn't half as boring as skipping through the first 8 minutes of the video ...

 

[theSavant]

Patch#3 coming within 24 hours!





(I'm probably trying it on my shit computer again)

 

[Gord]

Just as I thought...
It will be ready on Friday, so Gog can keep it from releasing until late Monday evening.

 

[Hamster]

at the very least i assume he would release it a month later

Nah, you can just place all the buggy and unfinished parts of the game in the second half. And jack up difficulty so it takes players longer to get there.

 

[theSavant]

Patch 3 is out now! (that was fast)


Unfortunately I do not find this one listed: "Ability to speed up combat animations"... So I guess they will only add it much later to the Legacy Mode

When I open the GOG client, it lists the (full game) download as Patch_3, but when I click on it, the text only shows the changelog of "Update 2".
So which version is it now? Patch_2 or Patch_3?

Spoiler

Why must everything in respect to BT4 be a mess???

 

[BEvers]

As expected, inventory sorting was stealth-delayed. Most noteworthy change is a sharpness slider in the options menu.

Message from inXile:

With Patch 3 done, please allow us a few personal words: Here at inXile, we are always committed to making quality RPGs, and we are totally devoted to what we are doing. The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrows Deep is a game that we poured our hearts into, and every single one of us is very sad that the release of the game we are so proud of was overshadowed by performance issues. Of course, we wish that we had caught these things at launch and have been working overtime to correct them as quickly as we can. For those of you affected, we are truly sorry for any bad experience that you might have had.

We hope you will enjoy the changes and if you do, we would be very grateful for a user review if you haven't written one yet. Of course, the same applies if you were forced to write a negative review in the past, but would be so kind to reconsider now if the issues that prevented you to enjoy the game were addressed in the meantime.

Thank you very much for your patience, and your ongoing support. It means the world to us.

With Patch 3 being released, we are now focusing on our original goal of enhancing the game by adding many additional features after launch. Legacy Mode, controller support, and grid movement will only be some of them and we will talk more about those items and more in the near future. Friends of Mac and Linux will also be happy to hear that we are working on those versions as well.

 

[Zombra]

Unrelated to today's patch: excellent supporting post for BT4's save system by Themadcow:

Old man: "Beware adventurers - many have tested this dungeon but most do not return..."

Party: "Nah, we'll be OK"

Old man: "You don't understand! There are Dragons and Wights! There are creatures who will touch you and it'll make you withered... like me! Oh, and it'll cost you a ton to get healed"

Party: "Yawn"

Party: "Hold on... they'll touch you? Yuck. You have issues"

Old man: "FOOLS! If you are lucky enough to find even one ancient treasure then flee to safety before your bones are crushed by the next Ogre you see!!!"

Party: "Not if we hit F5 every few steps"

Old Man: "WTF is this F5 you speak of?"

Party: "Get with it old dude. Danger is for losers. We have kids and stuff - our time is just MEGA precious and having to worry about death is a bummer. F5 means we don't have to worry about anything really."

Old Man: "So, you just want a loose story and block puzzles?"

Party: "Basically"

Old Man: " Get off my lawn!"

I don't want to get involved with the original thread but I wanted you to know I read and enjoyed this post very much.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Patch 3 is out now! (that was fast)

Bit suspicious since in their pre-notes blurb they mention working on improving the loading times but in the patch notes proper they don't mention it at all. The previous patch did improve gameplay performance and definitely combat speed (No longer have to sit there for 10 minutes while my wizard does his thing) but the loads feel even worse to me than in Kingmaker. But it could just be because I'm having more fun in Kingmaker so the loads bother me less.

 

[Gord]

In a sudden turn of events, even GoG released the patch already.
At least they uphold their time-honored tradition of releasing 26GB patches.

 

[getter77]

It seems the firefighting patches will continue for awhile at least as even this third one is still just all over the place without much of a central thrust beyond still trying to get tech fundamentals in order---this game needed far more than an additional month, more like another quarter or two at barest minimum to approach cohesiveness even before getting down to actual value and quality.

They are so far in the hole it must be all but impossible to even entertain the sort of notions that led to the WL2 DC despite the likes of that probably being their only hope to give this a second shot at life as even the console releases in the near'ish future would get torn apart at this rate without even a real chance at a semi-ironic following compared to the last time BT ventured to those parts.

 

[Zombra]

the run-on sentences, my eyes my eyes

 

[felipepepe]

BTW, I bet that grid-based movement will never come. I can't imagine InXile successfully adapting patrolling enemies and spike traps to grid movement.

 

[Infinitron]

Codex review by felipepepe: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/rpg-codex-review-the-bards-tale-iv.124278/

 

[2house2fly]

Ooh, I wonder if he likes it.

 

[Roguey]

Of course, we wish that we had caught these things at launch

How do you not catch performance issues?

 

[fantadomat]

The fuck!? I skimmed trough the review and found a downright lie.

The core stats are:
Strength, which increases damage (for melee AND spells);
Constitution, which is your HP;
Armor, which decreases physical damage;
Spell Points, which are used to cast spells;
Intelligence, which is almost useless.

I say useless because Intelligence does two things:

1- It makes your Bard able to drink more without being stunned.
2- It increases your focus, which means it's harder for the enemy to interrupt you if you cast a channeling spell or use a stance.

Reason 1 is class specific, and there are skills that do the same. Reason 2 isn't relevant because there are very few channeling spells/stances and they aren't that powerful.

Intel does affect the mind spellz,which are very few,yet pretty useful and ones of the most powerful. One of them is a six squares cleaning! This shit he is writing about is a downright lie. You have two different companion wizards,one is made to be str build while the other is centred around int build. I don't mind spicy or butthurt reviews,but downright lying is a typical journo trait!

PS:I read the review and i do agree with most of it.