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

[rusty_shackleford]

It's definitely not as terrible as I was led to believe, but I pretty much agree with that summary.

 

[cvv]

Just my last thought on the game since I just bumped into this beautiful, ethereal song from the OST.

Someone clearly had a vision here. It's almost as if BT4 was meant to be set in a much more delicate, mysterious, authentically Celtic environment, with druids performing their mystic rituals in misty forests, with torches flickering in the pre-modern dark, in a world where reality blends with low fantasy. I remember a Robin Hood TV show from my childhood with this sort of vibe. There are flashes like that throughout the game - the music, the authentic looking villages, other little details.

But then someone barged in and crammed DEEEMONS in there straight from Doom with ginormous Satanic citadels with huge goofy spikes protruding from them and jabbering goblins sounding like the characters from the Chin'n'Dale Rescue Rangers show.

Just listen and watch this and imagine what could've been.

 

[Jarpie]

Just my last thought on the game since I just bumped into this beautiful, ethereal song from the OST.

Someone clearly had a vision here. It's almost as if BT4 was meant to be set in a much more delicate, mysterious, authentically Celtic environment, with druids performing their mystic rituals in misty forests, with torches flickering in the pre-modern dark, in a world where reality blends with low fantasy. I remember a Robin Hood TV show from my childhood with this sort of vibe. There are flashes like that throughout the game - the music, the authentic looking villages, other little details.

But then someone barged in and crammed DEEEMONS in there straight from Doom with ginormous Satanic citadels with huge goofy spikes protruding from them and jabbering goblins sounding like the characters from the Chin'n'Dale Rescue Rangers show.

Just listen and watch this and imagine what could've been.

You mean this show?



It was great.

 

[Bohr]

Someone clearly had a vision here. It's almost as if BT4 was meant to be set in a much more delicate, mysterious, authentically Celtic environment, with druids performing their mystic rituals in misty forests, with torches flickering in the pre-modern dark, in a world where reality blends with low fantasy. I remember a Robin Hood TV show from my childhood with this sort of vibe. There are flashes like that throughout the game - the music, the authentic looking villages, other little details.

But then someone barged in and crammed DEEEMONS in there straight from Doom with ginormous Satanic citadels with huge goofy spikes protruding from them and jabbering goblins sounding like the characters from the Chin'n'Dale Rescue Rangers show.

BF: Before Interplay got too large I used to be heavily involved with all aspects of our games, from doing part of the designs myself to hands-on producing of every game. It's ironic that I became perceived as a "suit" when my background and love was in games. Needless to say I'm enjoying this a lot more, and I have been heavily involved with the design of the Bard's Tale. We split the design into thirds, and I personally designed my part of that.

Spoiler

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/brian-fargo-back-in-play/1100-6076237/

 

[newtmonkey]

I just completed Director's Cut last night, so now I've fully completed both BT4 and BT4DC. BT4DC is a massive improvement over BT4 imo. It really addresses all the problems I had with BT4.

I had three major issues with BT4:
- Too many samey logic puzzles in areas I just wanted to explore (specifically Forest of Inshriach)
- Total lack of interesting loot; other than armor I was using mostly the same equipment for much of the game
- Generally poor performance

The Director's Cut has addressed all three.

You can skip any of the mandatory puzzles at any time. I had already done all the puzzles during my run through BT4, so I skipped everything I could this time around. This made the dungeons boring, so I think the "best" way to play BT4 more like a traditional blobber would be to skip all the puzzles in the outdoor areas and just do the puzzles in the dungeons.

I suspect that equipment was rebalanced for the DC as I continued to find useful loot throughout the entire game. I remember the puzzle weapons (even when completely solved) were underwhelming in BT4; I maxed out several puzzle weapons in the DC and they were pretty amazing.

Finally, performance was pretty solid throughout the game, though I remember reading that they basically just solved the performance issues of BT4 by downgrading the graphics haha. At any rate, I got a solid 30-60fps on HIGH on my several years old gaming laptop, so I can't complain here.

With the DC, BT4 is now worth playing for any RPG fan imo, doubly so if you love turn-based blobbers.

 

[Soph]

I love this game, it's great on the highest difficulty. You just want to make it worse by devouring all those safe points for the extra juicy experience. After two and a half hours of acing fights you feel grandiose almost getting to that climax.

Then it hits you with a fucking jackhammer by crashing to your desktop randomly. What sort of idiot didn't save the whole time? You have to love the extra difficulty curves Brian throws at you.. classic CTD's. Loving it!

 

[Darkzone]

Just my last thought on the game since I just bumped into this beautiful, ethereal song from the OST.
Someone clearly had a vision here. It's almost as if BT4 was meant to be set in a much more delicate, mysterious, authentically Celtic environment, with druids performing their mystic rituals in misty forests, with torches flickering in the pre-modern dark, in a world where reality blends with low fantasy. I remember a Robin Hood TV show from my childhood with this sort of vibe. There are flashes like that throughout the game - the music, the authentic looking villages, other little details.
But then someone barged in and crammed DEEEMONS in there straight from Doom with ginormous Satanic citadels with huge goofy spikes protruding from them and jabbering goblins sounding like the characters from the Chin'n'Dale Rescue Rangers show.
Just listen and watch this and imagine what could've been.

Spoiler

You mean this show?

Spoiler

It was great.

The music for the Robin Hood series was made the irish folk Brennan family that are the band Clannad (Clann as Dobhair = family from Dobhair). Strange Land and Herne (the Hunter) are in my opinion the best pieces on the Legend album, but Robin (the hooded man) is also a very good piece.
If you like the atmosphere of the Robin Hood series then BM from Kris should be around your alley. Warning: It is an ARPG.
It will be soon in EA on Steam and he just needs to finish the Steam Shop presence. Despite my help it is prolonged due to his habit of smoking and drinking.

 

[onemananadhisdroid]

That soundtrack is fantastic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKMWpVFYnIM


I've just started to explore outside of Skara Brae -- to me there seems a sudden spike in difficulty, as enemies now start to nullify my armor and/or it seems I'm underleveled for that area still.

Does anybody have a hint as to the bell puzzle for the Sentry Tower? If the hint was in the dialogue with the guy standing there I can't trigger it anymore. Plus in the song referenced there doesn't seem to be anything either.

 

[cvv]

Does anybody have a hint as to the bell puzzle for the Sentry Tower? If the hint was in the dialogue with the guy standing there I can't trigger it anymore. Plus in the song referenced there doesn't seem to be anything either.

Gotta go down to the town, visit the pub and look around. CLOSELY.

 

[RuySan]

I was having loads of fun in the first 10 hours or something, but now, at the Innisrach forest or whatever it's called, the game really gets exhausting. The Puzzles are way too much, and don't make any sense. How can people travel in this world when they have to be stopped every single crossroad for fairy golf? And even when you skip the puzzles, you have samey, long fights every single corner. I feel like I should jump boat since there's still a lot to come in the game.

I really like the character system and combat. It feels clean, novel, and offers some depth. But technically the game is a mess.

 

[AliceAlcina]

I just play this DC again. Love the game, love the puzzles (fairy puzzles are shitty though), hate the characters and it's surrounding mechanics.

 

[vortex]

I liked inital visuals more. It looked next-gen, imo. Too bad you can't run such high fidelity graphics.

 

[AliceAlcina]

To be fair, this game could be much worse and much shitty, but unfortunately, it's decent. It also has some potential, and it could be much better.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

The same game released under the name Barrows Deep by Louisiana Softworks probably would have been regarded as a promising first RPG by a new developer. However, it failed to meet the expectations of a Bard's Tale IV by the successor to Interplay, and in any case InXile seems oddly not have considered what possible target audience this game was aiming for (e.g. advertisements likening the game to Skyrim), given its peculiar mix of combat and exploration mechanics, which ultimately doomed its chances of commercial success.

 

[onemananadhisdroid]

The combat certainly has been on the easier side if you don't run into the mobs marked in red. Now I'm at the end of Mangar's Reliquiary quest however and all of a sudden Fargo throws a dude named Soltach at me with 75 armor doing loads of damage with his focus ability and being able to stun my chars. I've got exactly one character in my party who could damage his armor too so...

Where the hell did that guy come from all of a sudden? He's got some company too. Bet he was included into the Director's Cut as the game was perceived to be too easy upon release. :D

I liked inital visuals more. It looked next-gen, imo. Too bad you can't run such high fidelity graphics.

I would have been pretty pissed would I have backed, as that visual downgrade is beyond Colonial Marines-Gate.​

 

[anvi]

Are there any mods or settings you can tweak to make it less bloated, more killer less filler? Also what difficult is best?

 

[V_K]

it failed to meet the expectations of a Bard's Tale IV

What expectations? It's not like the original series were anything more than a streamlined and dumbed down Wizardry clone.

by the successor to Interplay

That previously released a painfully mediocre Wasteland sequel and a crappy VN Torment sequel. Not to mention such gems as the 2005 BT or Hunted.
You'd have to be extremely retarded optimistic not to expect a trainwreck from this combination. If anything, that it's somewhat playable was a pleasant surprise.

 

[onemananadhisdroid]

DUDEs, what's up with the boss battles from about midway onwards through the game? There's like a total spike in difficulty. Apparently the original release was easy, the DC's later bosses make Kingmaker look like Mario RPG.

Currently battling that Mangar guy, he keeps on spamming spell totems (impossible to deal with 'em), and as soon as he has enough spell points for his very_special_attack, it's GG. From then on he can cast it over and over. I've alread switched to easy and the lowest I got him down to was roughly 1/4 of his health.

Fargo to the rescue!

edit: Got the sucker. Lowered his armor, summoned two skeletons and let them and my rogue rain arrows down upon him.

 

[anvi]

DUDEs, what's up with the boss battles from about midway onwards through the game? There's like a total spike in difficulty. Apparently the original release was easy, the DC's later bosses make Kingmaker look like Mario RPG.

Currently battling that Mangar guy, he keeps on spamming spell totems (impossible to deal with 'em), and as soon as he has enough spell points for his very_special_attack, it's GG. From then on he can cast it over and over. I've alread switched to easy and the lowest I got him down to was roughly 1/4 of his health.

Fargo to the rescue!

edit: Got the sucker. Lowered his armor, summoned two skeletons and let them and my rogue rain arrows down upon him.

What difficulty are you on? I'm just about to start.

 

[onemananadhisdroid]

What difficulty are you on? I'm just about to start.

Normal except for the aforementioned battles. For those I went down to easy.

I've lost a bit of a trust in the balancing. Early on things were a tad on the easish side, but consistently so. Aside of those spikes from out of nowhere, later on you meet enemies that respawn endlessly by the end of a round. So you need to kill them all by the end of a round. If you don't have various characters doing AOE damage, you're going to have a hard time. Aside of my rogue, luckily my practitioner can summon AOE dealers himself, but it depends on luck how many of them appear -- or whether any appear at all. You could go back and hire mercenaries, naturally.

 

[onemananadhisdroid]

Btw, I've since added another rogue to the list. Equally skilled him for AOE attacks (rain of arrows). The AOE seem really key in this game anyway and seem the most powerful attacks by far. It's what I fear in opponents the most too. After that, so far the back seems back to where it used to be before the boss battle "spike".

I really like this soundtrack, though how the game utilizes it seems sometimes a mixed bag.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9nmLWuG4gA

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

What difficulty are you on? I'm just about to start.

I recommend starting on normal difficulty but raising it to hard once you've become familiar with the combat system, as the ordinary mobs simply don't provide much challenge on normal difficulty to a competently-constructed party. There are difficulty spikes with the boss fights, but you can always temporarily lower the difficulty level if it seems impossible to win a particular boss fight on hard difficulty.

 

[onemananadhisdroid]

Yeah, changing difficulty on the fly is an option. You can actually also skip most of the puzzles, for which there is an option too.

Speaking of which, I hate these energy flow types of puzzles. They are completely trial&error to me (and not much fun). Luckily, the game has some better ones, still...

 

[anvi]

Yussss I've been playing this, at first I would have rated it is 'alright', now I am quite enjoying it. It does lots of things I really hate, and it is very amateurish in some ways ('UX' is very poor), but it does other things pretty well and it has kept me playing for however many hours it takes to reach level 10. Which I am happy with seeing as I didn't like it at first and now I'm kinda hooked.

I play like a completionist, explored all the underground, killed everything, solved all the puzzles. Done some stuff in the city above too. At level 10 I found myself doing Mangar's Tower which had some red enemies but I managed to get to the end and beat Mangar! It took me a few attempts but I have a pretty powerful trick that I figured out which changes everything. Combat is pretty interesting. Seems like it might be a bit too simple, even at the higher levels; there doesn't seem to be a whole lot left for me to unlock... But it works a bit different to most tactical RPGs so I am happy with it for now. Solving Mangar's puzzles and then kicking his ass with a relative noob no gear group made me feel good.

 

[Metro]

I played it for about two hours then stopped and started playing the remastered original trilogy.