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

[IHaveHugeNick]

Anyway. Economically, there's really no way back from such an awful launch.

Yup. It's already out of Top 10 sellers and it's been what, 5 hours?

It's dead Jim.

 

[Jenkem]

But there's always a weird dynamic with these Kickstarter games where people bitch about weirdest shit that has little to none corelation with actual quality of the product. Box got damaged in the shipping, cat ate my homework, developer liked a Trump tweet, 0/10 worst game ever, 0.1 hours played.

I assume all games have stuff like this but with certain Kickstarted game the problem seems worse, because:

1) There aren't enough other reviews drowning that stuff out, because you're not an AAA.

2) You're not an indie either, so people are more aggressive with nitpicking you. This wouldn't happen to Jeff Vogel.

The "middle class game" gets squeezed out of the market in all sorts of ways. This is just another.

I don't think it's any of that, honestly. It's the public nature of development. AAA guys work on stuff in secret for 3 years and the first thing you see is a pimped out trailer with Holywood style montage and Patrick Stewart voiceover. Kickstarter guys on the other hand are under 24/7 scrutiny, there's always various camps in the fanbase fighting for this and that, and it just snowballs.

Is this a kickstarter problem or an InXile problem? Between this, Wasteland 2, and Tides of NumaNuma you are correct.. But I don't recall as much shit over other kickstarted games like KCD (aside from fairly bitching about bugged quests) and even DUMPSTERFIRE is relatively unscathed compared to every inxile game... I know in the case of KCD and Dumpsterfire, even though people had criticisms of the delivered product, no one was complaining about the devs not being transparent.. compare that to how Tides had several promised things not in the release of the game and people were told a few days before release.

 

[Ulrox]

41% steam approval rating now.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

I was reading the reviews while downloading the game. Stopped reading, deleted the torrent. GG WP.

Is Infinitron shilling for it or not? Just curious.

 

[Jenkem]

Come on, do you actually believe this?

you'd be amazed at the powers that a gift basket of halva and bamba can bring

 

[fantadomat]

innovative mechanics

Come on, do you actually believe this?

Hey Infinitron ,what was the last RPG you finished? Didn't knew that you played games.

 

[fantadomat]

It can't even beat the retarded diablo clone game.

 

[Mark Richard]

The standard round of negative user reviews for optimisation issues and bugs was expected. Playing any modern game on day 1 is a dubious proposition at best, and that goes double for RPGs. What caught me off guard were the staunch defenders of The Bard's Tale III who were apparently horrified that the design of Barrows Deep doesn't mimic a 30 year old game.

 

[BEvers]

Sounds like they're tearing their butts off at inXile HQ

 

[RNGsus]

What a waste of time.

 

[Jacob]

I was reading the reviews while downloading the game. Stopped reading, deleted the torrent. GG WP.

Is Infinitron shilling for it or not? Just curious.

Did you think that mfkdngrlgf is shilling or not? Because Infinitron's opinions are just as outrageous as that guy.

 

[Jimmious]

There's a 200 mb download for me already

 

[Infinitron]

Sounds like they're tearing their butts off at inXile HQ

You know, you sound like somebody who might be good at writing reviews.

 

[Mortmal]

Zep Zepo why citation needed ? can stream it on steam if you dont believe me, i have no performance trouble...
Anyway if you are looking for a classic blobber, its absolutely nothing like it so far. They keep the name to draw backers in to make a game that doesn't play the same as classics at all. I am not sure it's even a RPG, as i just spent 2 hours into the game, i did not create any characters and their development is so minimalistic even bioware games would look sophisticated.
Luckily for me i enjoy all kind of games, its 3D exploration like wiz 8, with combat similar to heartstone with global action points pool for all characters.Even if its not what i expected , it has some charm and quite fun so far, keeping in mind i paid like 20 euros as backer only. Not much fan of the saving system either its console check points.Well its a console(xbox era) game with massive hand holding, the hand firmly grasping your arm forcing you into one direction, aimed at the mainstream for sure.

 

[Lyre Mors]

Gotta be a pretty depressing day at the inXile studios today. I don't understand how they could have possibly thought they wouldn't receive huge backlash due to the optimization issues. Getting 40-60fps with my Ryzen 2700x and GTX 1060 6gb DDR3, which is fine by me, but absolutely preposterous considering the actual visuals being presented.

Game seems like it could be pretty fun in the level design/exploration department. The character building and combat are indeed mechanically oversimplified, which is a shame considering that battles actually could have been pretty magnificent with some more complexity. I like the movement system and the basic foundations of it well enough.

As of right now, I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to wait and see if this get's patched up in the next little while. Having a hard time seeing how inXile is going to come back from this blow. Bad decisions, man, bad decisions.

 

[Bohr]

I can't help wondering what range of machines they actually tested this on.

 

[getter77]

Hmm...seems like Fargo has quite a situation to traverse from here---I'm inclined to agree that the raw potential is there for this to have a solid niche, but so maligned by baffling design decisions and needless concessions as to waste all manner of goodwill and confidence. With as many projects as they've released and desperately had to have remastered by now---it boggles the mind. What in the world is going on with WL 3 at this rate? One can't just coast uphill...

The real underdogs will continue to run their race, hopefully at least side-eyeing the lot of this---the likes of Charles-cgr, Aeon of Sands, Dungeon Kingdom, Aledorn, etc

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Damn, sounds like these guys are working really hard to bury the renaissance of crpgs ten feet deep. Stuff I'm reading about character/party building, combat and loot (three most important things in crpgs) gives the impression of total shit.

 

[BEvers]

 

[Urthor]

Who would have thought, game from people who pissed everyone's Torment money up the wall is garbage

 

[Shadenuat]

The loading times make me want to hang myself. Pretty sure it took like 10 minutes to load the level after chargen, and I'm not exaggerating.

or 10 seconds with SSD.

Game looks like garbage though.

Since I missed on how do you actually change gender, I am playing female conjurer elf with angriest scottish voice set possible. She hates everything and wants to beat faces. Can recommend.

Music is cool tho.

 

[santino27]

The loading times make me want to hang myself. Pretty sure it took like 10 minutes to load the level after chargen, and I'm not exaggerating.

or 10 seconds with SSD.

Game looks like garbage though.

I installed to an hdd, and it takes less than a min for the initial load (and ~10-20 seconds when zoning after). That's still unacceptable, but I don't know how someone gets 10 minutes.

 

[SophosTheWise]

I'm a bit confused. I did all the quests I got and gathered my first party member - but literally every combat encounter after that is too high (as in "red") for my party level? Why?

Edit: Nevermind, after restarting the game and loading the 200mb patch, the problem was resolved.

 

[Efe]

long loading screens, spasming shadows/lighting, huge disk space, low fps...
nobody play this in beta?

 

[Zombra]

Damn, sounds like these guys are working really hard to bury the renaissance of crpgs ten feet deep. Stuff I'm reading about character/party building, combat and loot (three most important things in crpgs) gives the impression of total shit.

FWIW, based on my beta experience, combat is good and fun, it's just nothing like the classics. Party building is disappointing at first, may get interesting mid-late game with skill trees, I don't know. (The classics of course had lots of party building options up front ... and then that was it, you just ground up your numbers over time.) Loot and itemization are good, I found myself interested in what my doods equipped.

What? Did they not fix the tunnel vision FOV?

Wouldn't a bigger FoV tank performance even more? Maybe this was deliberate to make the game runnable.

That would result in even lower fps

Maybe. I had no performance issues in beta but the lack of FOV was annoying.

People give negative Steam reviews bc their boxed copies came in damaged or bc of a missing FOV slider. Everyone who thinks Steam ranking has any value or weight whatsoever should apply for a brain cell replacement therapy.

FOV slider is important. The beta had a slight feeling of watching the whole thing through a telescope. Maybe not a gamebreaker but it is a thing for sure.

I'm a bit confused. I did all the quests I got and gathered my first party member - but literally every combat encounter after that is too high (as in "red") for my party level? Why?

This is how they gated content. Instead of having "there's another locked door here" they have unwinnable fights. Like the guys inspecting the courtyard, that's how you know you're not supposed to go there yet. Come back later and they won't be there any more. Check around in some of the places you saw dragons before, they may be gone now.