Game News The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep Released

[Darkzone]

BTIV is in my opinion a good game, because:
It has a tactical combat that requires more brain on hard (enemies have more HP) difficulty then the Goldbox series or Fallout 1-2 or ToEE or NMW 2 or Wasteland 2. The combat encounter ( yellow or orange or red ) becomes a puzzle itself, as long as it is not a green encounter.
The level advancement is not just for some HPs or SPs, because you have to choose between: doing more damage, ability to sustain more damage (deflect or more CON or etc) or a tactical ability that becomes a part of a combat strategy and gives you an edge over enemies. This becomes prevalent after the low tier (8 lv), which is more of a introduction.
The weapons can give you an ability or enhance a certain ability, therefore you do not necessary choose the weapon which gives you the highest bonus to STR or CON, but which weapon suits your encounter needs.
Music and voice acting are very good and have character.

My criticism towards BTIV:
It is buggy, like that my inventory is suddenly black and i cannot see what i have in the inventory.
Its loading times are atrocious for 2018 on the HDD. If i exit the AG i can start to my self make a tea and drink it out until the Under Brea is loaded.
It is not optimised. The Beta was running much more smooth, needed much less resources, had less bugs and the loading times were faster. That makes you think!

I blame the failure of its release on its early release in an not optimised state. They should have released BTIV in one month after at least investing one month into further optimisation. This bad decision to release it now has costed at least 2-3 million bucks.

So my hint to every one who is undecided towards buying or not buying: buy it later or wait with the game one month till some things are sorted out.

 

[Tacgnol]

I'm planning to revisit it in a couple of months.

Hopefully they will have the worst technical issues fixed by then.

 

[Oasis]

Haven't played it yet, but I'm a bit shocked at how bad it's selling. It's currently being outsold by Kingmaker, which is still 5 days out from release. What's doing more damage, the steam user reviews or perhaps people just don't care about this kind of game anymore. Either way, so much for this game being enough of a success that Ubisoft would remember Might & Magic is a thing.

 

[Zeriel]

What's doing more damage, the steam user reviews or perhaps people just don't care about this kind of game anymore

>Make sequel to blobber
>Tell fans its not for them
>Change all the mechanics
>Act surprised when reviews are bad

Spoiler

Really getting tired of the "it's the fans fault they fucked off when I told them to fuck off!" schtick.

 

[Rpguy]

The weapons can give you an ability or enhance a certain ability, therefore you do not necessary choose the weapon which gives you the highest bonus to STR or CON, but which weapon suits your encounter needs.

It is interesting to note that in fact the "weapon abilities" actually work with all weapons, if for example a skill is called "sword slash" or "shoot arrow" it works no matter which weapon you equip, in addition the passive enhancing skills like "your dagger skills crit 10% more" again do not affect physical daggers at all, they just enhance the skills that have dagger in their name... so you could have a 10% skill that enhances stun with mace skills and use a mace bash skill while using your sword to stun an enemy.

The only place that it actually matters is that sometimes the weapons themselves give you a bonus to skill that match their names. so a weapon that buff your "mace stun" ability will be found on maces only.

 

[thesheeep]

a tactical combat that requires more brain on hard (enemies have more HP)

Ugh. The idiot solution to difficulty, HP sponging.

The combat encounter ( yellow or orange or red ) becomes a puzzle itself, as long as it is not a green encounter.
The level advancement is not just for some HPs or SPs, because you have to choose between: doing more damage, ability to sustain more damage (deflect or more CON or etc) or a tactical ability that becomes a part of a combat strategy and gives you an edge over enemies. This becomes prevalent after the low tier (8 lv), which is more of a introduction.
The weapons can give you an ability or enhance a certain ability, therefore you do not necessary choose the weapon which gives you the highest bonus to STR or CON, but which weapon suits your encounter needs.

Yeah, I think the combat is what most agree on is actually not terrible.
Too bad it got buried under all the rest...

 

[tindrli]

im kind a late for comment but reading a post one thing is certain.
that rpgwatch reviewer truly didn't like the game.

i wonder when can we expect OUR review

 

[Theldaran]

This post deserves a brofist from me, because it is based on some thoughts that might be correct or not.
I don't necessarily agree on the premise of the first argument, but the conclusion of the implication still can be true: There is no adult audience left in Nihon, for an adult anime series. That the work ethic kills slowly the japanese people is also true, but not necessary the correct premise for the conclusion.
I have seen a video or read an article about the manga creators / drawing atists and the contained the statement was that the earnings are quite low even for outside of Tokyo area / Kantoo plain and nealry all of the profits are kept by the companies. And this could be also a valid reason for the lack of capable or experimental creators / artists. Companies on the other side want to make profits and sell what sells and maximise everything towards the sales. Therefore there is only a limited space for experimentation and everything that receives not the best reception or a limited audience will be discarded.
Either way the brain fuckery by intricate story and story telling seems to be an relict of a bygone era and the juvenilization / infantilization of adults and adult populations is increasingly proceeding as indicated by the SJW movement.

Oh, the mindfuck works are still there, but maybe in other forms than anime.

Anime, it certainly peaked in drama and seriousness with Evangelion, a pretty creepy show to watch if you were a troubled adolescent back in the late 90s. But it was high quality, and high impact (they are still producing Eva material up to now). Their creators point at past works like Space Battleship Yamato as previous shows that paved the way.

About the serious anime, mostly labeled Seinen (which designates more adult than the norm) it's still there, like the visual novel adaptations from 5pb's games (like S;G or Chaos;Head, but the latter anime lacks). Other than that I don't know what to recommend. It seems this kind of story has moved over to visual novels. Maybe Re;Zero? Some .hack?

I don't know if the Japanese are impervious to SJW fecal wave, but the truth is that the noteworthy stories are buried in a wave of fanservice shows, that sell without much effort.

 

[Tao]

Watch Made in Abyss, but it's not finished yet tho.

 

[Lyre Mors]

It is interesting to note that in fact the "weapon abilities" actually work with all weapons, if for example a skill is called "sword slash" or "shoot arrow" it works no matter which weapon you equip, in addition the passive enhancing skills like "your dagger skills crit 10% more" again do not affect physical daggers at all, they just enhance the skills that have dagger in their name... so you could have a 10% skill that enhances stun with mace skills and use a mace bash skill while using your sword to stun an enemy.

This is probably my biggest problem and annoyance with the character progression system. I heard it wasn't this way in the beta, so I'm hoping it's a bug, but I don't know. Super moronic if they don't fix it.

 

[Ocelot570]

Hopefully Fargo can realize that he can't continue shoddy practices forever. They should stick to Wasteland as that was their only semi decent game they have made. It actually was fairly fun.

 

[Invictus]

Jesus... between the “This is not what was promised” crowd and the people having technical issues with the game they are ripping it apart
Fargo and company are not looking very good here and honestly they have no one to blame but themselves, even if the design had its issues and detractors at least half the butthurt could have been avoided if the game didn’t have so many technical issues and people who apparently like the game could actually play it
I am still getting it tomorrow but looks like this could be the final nail in the coffin for Fargo’s credibility
Too bad I really wanted blobbers to come back but between Might & Magic X, Grimrock and now this mainstream successes are not going to happen for blobbers

 

[Zep Zepo]

The beta ran like complete and utter ass (For me).

32 GB ram on an I5 with an SLI video card setup.

I mean, it is was like playing a PowerPoint, slide by slide.

I made it to the "guild or whatever" but I quit it right then.

Horrible optimization = Horrible game in my book.

And I DON'T CARE IT WAS A BETA, if it runs like shit, it will be shit.

Zep--

 

[Zep Zepo]

And anyway, I thought this dupe Infiishill dupe thread was retardoed. What's it doing back on the main page?

Zep--

 

[hpstg]

I don't have the game, but since it sounds like a title that gpu companies wouldn't give a shit about, maybe the drivers don't auto create Shader Caches for it.

Try adding the game on your gpu control panel and set the Shader cache manually to on. Let it load at least once and check its subsequent behavior.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

So far my biggest problem lies in the combat mechanics. The pooled action point system isn't really my cup of tea but it's not as bad as you might think. Because abilities have cooldowns (standard attack is an ability), you can't just use one guy to do all the work. Abilities are limited to 5 slots per char (with standard attack and moving already taking away 2 slots) basically reducing your combat abilities to that amount in combat. I don't like that. Would have prefered to have access to all abilities and separate action points.

Overall I think the general idea with positioning and the various actions is good. Channeling your magic is a nice idea, too.

But - ofc there's a but - the fixed amount of damage you always do combined with the 100% hit "chance" is retarded. Really retarded. It kills every ambition of taking chances (because there are no chances) and excitement. Combat gets just too predictable. Maybe some accountants may like that. I'm only a half one at best though I don't know.

It's really, really hard for me to imagine any RPG which fits this description and is still any good

(THC determinism isn't a problem for me, just the entirety of that quoted bit as a whole)

It's really not that bad, chess is a game with no rng, does that means it is predictable and not fun or pose no thought/strategy?

You can actually replace your standard attack so the sentance above is kinda wrong , you have 4 abilities, 1 move, 1 trinket ( item ) ability and while your party is limited in "action points" ( opportunity points ), you have many passive abilities at work, some of them do have %chance - like a chance to get your cooldowns reset or stun an enemy not just crit damage - so there's your RNG fix, you also have spells and special abilities like taunt that do not use ability points at all. Even the "move" ability is not that simple, you have a variety of boots to wear , each one modifying your move ability - do you want a free move?, a double move? a move that gives you spell points or leave a trail of enhancement for your party members?
There is a lot going on.

actually chess to me is dry and dull which is why I play games like DAK (deutsche afrika korps) instead, but I realize chess has a lot of strategy and thinking, its just not the type of thing that is that enjoyable to me considering what else is out there..

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

Untamed bush is great

Yes it has this wild 80 porn vibe

any porn I saw in 80's the girls were already shaving their bush...I think the 70's porn may have had more 'natural' bush, but I was too young for 70's porn..and too young for most porn in 80's, so maybe it was just late 80's porn I am remembering

 

[Decado]

The weapons can give you an ability or enhance a certain ability, therefore you do not necessary choose the weapon which gives you the highest bonus to STR or CON, but which weapon suits your encounter needs.

It is interesting to note that in fact the "weapon abilities" actually work with all weapons, if for example a skill is called "sword slash" or "shoot arrow" it works no matter which weapon you equip, in addition the passive enhancing skills like "your dagger skills crit 10% more" again do not affect physical daggers at all, they just enhance the skills that have dagger in their name... so you could have a 10% skill that enhances stun with mace skills and use a mace bash skill while using your sword to stun an enemy.

The only place that it actually matters is that sometimes the weapons themselves give you a bonus to skill that match their names. so a weapon that buff your "mace stun" ability will be found on maces only.

I came here to make a post about this. RPS mentioned it in their review, and so I went into the game to see if this was the case, and it is. THIS IS SO FUCKING STUPID. It is enragingly stupid. Why did they do this? What the fuck were they thinking?

 

[Tramboi]

I don't have the game, but since it sounds like a title that gpu companies wouldn't give a shit about, maybe the drivers don't auto create Shader Caches for it.

Try adding the game on your gpu control panel and set the Shader cache manually to on. Let it load at least once and check its subsequent behavior.

Huge loading times indicate that there are not only rendering problems. Smells like slow naive code all over the place.

 

[Gylfi.Fenriz.Conquests]

So all the puzzles in this game are of the "7th Guest" (or Bioforge etc) type?

I don't even want to know what a combat puzzle is. I can imagine very boring examples.

 

[Darkzone]

Oh, the mindfuck works are still there, but maybe in other forms than anime. Anime, it certainly peaked in drama and seriousness with Evangelion, a pretty creepy show to watch if you were a troubled adolescent back in the late 90s. But it was high quality, and high impact (they are still producing Eva material up to now). Their creators point at past works like Space Battleship Yamato as previous shows that paved the way. About the serious anime, mostly labeled Seinen (which designates more adult than the norm) it's still there, like the visual novel adaptations from 5pb's games (like S;G or Chaos;Head, but the latter anime lacks). Other than that I don't know what to recommend. It seems this kind of story has moved over to visual novels. Maybe Re;Zero? Some .hack?
I don't know if the Japanese are impervious to SJW fecal wave, but the truth is that the noteworthy stories are buried in a wave of fanservice shows, that sell without much effort.

I will watch Steins;Gate definitely, since the time travel and timelines aspect is interesting. Chaos;Head seem to be with pink haired schoolgirls in uniforms and that is off turning, but if Steins;Gate is good i will give a try. Re;Zero or .hack don't seem to be mine kind of beer. I have watched Evangelion, but some how it didn't touched me. Battleship Yamato like Captain Harlock are 70s classics.
But i more of the Manime type wilth preferences towards Hokuto no Ken (Manga, Anime, Film), Akira (Manga, Film) and GitS (Film, SAC), Berserk (Manga, Anime) and etc.

 

[Tao]

Srly, drop Steins;Gate. Watch Made in Abyss.

 

[Awakened_Yeti]

 

[vazha]

Is it funny, at least? the 00-ies one at least had (very!) nice songs, what has this one going for it in humor department?

 

[Rpguy]

Patch 1 is available now. It is supposed to fix some major issues.