Bard's Tale The Bard's Tale IV Pre-Release Thread [RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[V_K]

The guy who said you have to play for hours before making your own character was high.

I suspect the confusion here maybe between when you get to create your main character vs. when you get to create other party members.

 

[Zombra]

The guy who said you have to play for hours before making your own character was high.

I suspect the confusion here maybe between when you get to create your main character vs. when you get to create other party members.

Eh? There is no main character. But maybe he did mean how long it means to create the whole party, that makes sense.

 

[Theldaran]

Sorry, no time to look for it... so, is this game first-person party-based?

 

[Nyast]

too few party members

IIRC there are up to 6 party members and 2 summons, how is that too few ? What were you expecting ?

Characters can be customized. The beta gives the false impression that it's all premade, and I haven't completley figured it out, but it seems like you can manage your party at the adventurer's guild and replace all premades with your own ( the character creation interface is freely accessible at the AG ). That's an hour or two into the game, though.

 

[theSavant]

IIRC there are up to 6 party members and 2 summons

I wonder if we can have 4 summons in battle? In some video clip I've seen that a Summoner can summon 2 skeletons at once. But if I have a second Summoner, can he do as well? Or is the amount of total party summons restricted by 2?

 

[Spiky]

First person dungeon crawler with turn based combat and free walking. I think this is the closest a modern game can get to W8. I had high hopes for MMX, I hope this ends better.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.gameinformer.com/preview/2018/07/15/four-things-you-should-know

The Bard's Tale IV
Four Things You Should Know

InXile Entertainment’s The Bard’s Tale IV wears its heart on its sleeve: Starting a new game throws you into a full-motion video cutscene of four actual human people – two of them equipped with obviously fake elf ears – sitting in front of what looks like the interior of a hand-painted inn. Three of the actors listen intently as the fourth plays a small harp, introducing them to the story of the game you’re about to play. The whole thing is drenched in a warm sepia tone, and at the cutscene’s close, the actors tense up as if they’re turning back into a still image. It’s weird and awkward, but charming.

Given the series’ old-school roots, it makes sense that The Bard’s Tale IV feels deeply nostalgic. It reminds me of the old computer games I used to play on the chunky Windows PC in my family’s basement work room. Its presentation may be sub-par, but below the surface lies an interesting battle system and intriguing world.

Here are four things I learned from playing the game’s first two and a half hours.

1. The World Is Interesting, Even If You’re New To The Series
Before you reach the main menu (and before the glorious FMV “elves”), a cutscene provides you with a primer on The Bard’s Tale’s world: Some gigantic plant-Cthulu gods called the Famhair turned apes into humans, who went to war with the elves and dwarves. The plant-Cthulus were eventually defeated and sealed away by a song, sung by a human woman cursed to sing it for eternity.

I’m not sure how the humans continued to exist peacefully with the rest of the races despite being constructed by evil gods, but hopefully that gets explained in the lore somewhere else in the game. As someone who’s never played a Bard’s Tale game before, I appreciated how the game opened with a story that established some interesting tension for the world and introduced the power of song. It made me hope I was about to participate in something similarly epic.

Once you’re in-game, the story you’re greeted with is different. A group of religious zealots called the Fatherites has been executing non-humans and magic users, which puts the multicultural, magic-using adventurers guild you’re a part of on the chopping block. The guild is attacked, and you’re forced to flee underground to the ruins of the old guild.

You soon begin to find out that a mysterious group has been sending agents disguised as members of the non-human races to harass humans in order to incite more persecution from the Fatherites. The Bard’s Tale IV left me legitimately interested to find out more about how the in-game story and the opening cutscene are connected.

2. There’s A Potentially Deep Combat System
The Bard’s Tale IV’s combat takes place in on a four-by-four grid. Your party has access to the eight spaces directly in front of you, and your enemies occupy the eight opposing spaces. Your positioning determines whether or not you can reach enemies with your attacks, and whether the enemies can reach you. There are directional attacks that do damage to all enemies within a certain column, as well as attacks that push or pull enemies within their grid. This means you can set up interesting combos like throwing caltrops onto the field in front of enemies with your rogue, then pulling them closer with your fighter’s taunt, ensuring that they take damage as they move over the spikes.

Positioning your party also affects the outcome of the battle. It’s probably a bad idea to put your rogue and your magic-user in front, so you have the ability to move your fighter or your bard to the front lines between battles. Even the best-laid plans can go awry, though. If your enemies get the drop on you, your party’s positioning will flip, putting your squishiest members in harm’s way.

3. There Are Some Cool Exploration Elements
I had fun with the game’s systems. As you gain party members, you gain access to Songs of Exploration, spells that can be used to open secret doors and solve puzzles. In the opening hours, it was obvious which song I was supposed to use. For example, an ability called “Hidey-Bide” reveals hidden item caches, and “Jarnel’s Eyes” reveals hidden corruption in the environment, such as shadowy figures disguised as villagers, as well as a large area of the map. These abilities made me feel a little more connected to the fantasy of being a bard.

Locked doors around the world sometimes require short puzzles where you move gears around to create a working mechanism. These puzzles are a simple addition that could usually be completed by just moving the gears back and forth until I found the solution, but they were more interesting than traditional “find the key” doors (though I found some of those, too).

4. The Presentation Is ... Mixed
The Bard’s Tale IV’s voice acting isn’t half bad, but everything else is sub-par. There are several types of cutscenes: the hand-drawn/painted cinematic that introduced the world’s lore, the FMV intro, and in-game animated scenes where characters walk around and talk to each other.

Most bizarrely, the game’s major scenes are constructed with flat, blurry images of the character models, cut out and plastered in front of pre-rendered backgrounds. These images don’t move (no lip-synching) apart from being warped and stretched slowly to create the illusion of life. If you need help picturing this, imagine the Hearthstone cinematic trailers, but made with flattened 3D assets ... and also bad.

The game’s in-game visuals aren’t the best, either. Lighting is okay, textures are muddy, and character models are chunky and lack variety.

It also wasn’t as funny as I expected given the series’ reputation as one that attempts to make players laugh with all kinds of drunken debauchery. There were a couple eye-roll inducing jokes, like a pocket-picking skill for the rogue called “cavity search,” but I generally didn’t hear or read much that seemed like it was trying to make me laugh. Oh, except for when your enemies turn around and wave their asses at you. That happens sometimes. Yeah...

The Bard’s Tale IV’s opening hours felt a little rough around the edges, but there were enough interesting ideas to leave me curious about the final game. We’ll see if InXile Entertainment will take full advantage of The Bard's Tale IV's potential when the game releases on PC on September 18.

One thing's for sure: I'm looking forward to more of the fake-elf-eared guy. Let’s get more campy FMV in video games, please.

 

[Zombra]

Just opened the beta. First thing I notice, quest markers can be turned off in the options menu. Boom, one problem solved.

Only if they designed the journal/quest text with that in mind.

I guess I'll find out, I turned it off immediately.

Game definitely not designed to be played without quest markers. No one gives any kind of verbal directions to anything, even when they should know exactly where you should go. "Go save my shop from bandits", "We have to go to my friend's house", either use markers or blunder around completely blind.

 

[V_K]

Gasp.

 

[imweasel]

That sounds like oldfag old-school and not newfag old-school. Whatever shall we do?

Snort.

 

[Zombra]

I haven't read many reviews, but I'm surprised that I haven't seen any mention of how dynamic the maps are. Impossible to beat high level enemies will be roaming through an area, preventing my traversal; then I'll go complete a task somewhere else, return, and they'll be gone, allowing me to explore. More recently, authorities searching for criminals cordoned off an area that was previously accessible. Keeps things fresh and I'm paying attention to my surroundings in a new way.

 

[Strange Fellow]

Full list of archetype "Subclasses" in the beta

Are you rolling with a full custom party or do you use the companions?

Due to the "tiers" system, it takes a lot longer to master a subclass. It will take at least 16 points spent to access the "outer ring" where most "ultimate", subclass-defining abilities reside. After that, grabbing more "ultimates" will be relatively cheap, depending on build.

So like Witcher 3, then. Presumably, the idea is to create an incentive to invest heavily in a single category, thereby making two same-archetype characters have less overlap in skills. However I think this will be completely undermined by the unlimited respec, which, in games I've played that have had it, has made leveling up not so much an opportunity for character building as simply amassing skill points for the points pool. One possibility is that they've implemented respec in the beta as a way to let players try out a variety of builds and combinations without having to play through the game from the beginning over and over again. That would make sense, and I hope that's what it is.

I haven't read many reviews, but I'm surprised that I haven't seen any mention of how dynamic the maps are. Impossible to beat high level enemies will be roaming through an area, preventing my traversal; then I'll go complete a task somewhere else, return, and they'll be gone, allowing me to explore.

Scripted, or random? Either way, that sounds cool.


And oh look, Infinitron has dug up another preview from a professional gaming site which tells me absolutely nothing new about the game.

 

[Shackleton]

I haven't read many reviews, but I'm surprised that I haven't seen any mention of how dynamic the maps are. Impossible to beat high level enemies will be roaming through an area, preventing my traversal; then I'll go complete a task somewhere else, return, and they'll be gone, allowing me to explore. More recently, authorities searching for criminals cordoned off an area that was previously accessible. Keeps things fresh and I'm paying attention to my surroundings in a new way.

I await hordes of unwashed morons crying how 'devs are retarded and game is shit because XXX mob is impossible to beat!'

Followed by 'balancing' so mobs either become easier or a text box pops up saying 'why don't you come back later when you've levelled up?'

 

[frajaq]

I haven't read many reviews, but I'm surprised that I haven't seen any mention of how dynamic the maps are. Impossible to beat high level enemies will be roaming through an area, preventing my traversal; then I'll go complete a task somewhere else, return, and they'll be gone, allowing me to explore. More recently, authorities searching for criminals cordoned off an area that was previously accessible. Keeps things fresh and I'm paying attention to my surroundings in a new way.

Can you escape battles?

 

[Zombra]

Are you rolling with a full custom party or do you use the companions?

I still don't have access to "mercenary tokens". V_K was correct earlier. You start off creating a single character, then you go through the paces with "narrative PCs" for a while. I actually like the premade characters well enough, but I'm looking forward to writing them out of the story. I already sent one off to take a message to another city, which was cool. Geez, I have 7 hours clocked, though a good deal of that time was spent trying to record that stupid video so it's not solid playtime. No idea how long it takes to get merc tokens in a normal playthrough.

One possibility is that they've implemented respec in the beta as a way to let players try out a variety of builds and combinations without having to play through the game from the beginning over and over again. That would make sense, and I hope that's what it is.

That would make sense, but I doubt it. The respec UI is slick. I definitely complained loudly about it in the feedback form and I haven't seen anyone praise it so far.

I haven't read many reviews, but I'm surprised that I haven't seen any mention of how dynamic the maps are. Impossible to beat high level enemies will be roaming through an area, preventing my traversal; then I'll go complete a task somewhere else, return, and they'll be gone, allowing me to explore.

Scripted, or random? Either way, that sounds cool.

Scripted. It's a cool way of gating content in my opinion. Helps to make sure you get a few critical things out of the way at the beginning of the game, then lets it open up without something dumb like a lever that makes earthquakes open up passages everywhere.

I await hordes of unwashed morons crying how 'devs are retarded and game is shit because XXX mob is impossible to beat!'
Followed by 'balancing' so mobs either become easier or a text box pops up saying 'why don't you come back later when you've levelled up?'

It would actually suck if mobs were unexpectedly super strong and just killed you, because of the (incline) limited save system. There are a few signals that let you know if something looks tough: first, there's MMO-style color coding on the map; if you see red skulls you should probably back off. Also, the party banter may give you hints. My wizard often says, "That looks rather ... fatal." But there have been times when I got warned off and went on to win the fight anyway. I don't feel I'm having my hand held, nor do I feel like I just have to fight everything and die and reload just to see whether I can go somewhere.

Can you escape battles?

Nope. [decline] Once you see you're in a hopeless battle, might as well reload last checkpoint. This happened to me once or twice until I learned how to interpret the signals detailed above.

 

[Nyast]

I haven't read many reviews, but I'm surprised that I haven't seen any mention of how dynamic the maps are. Impossible to beat high level enemies will be roaming through an area, preventing my traversal; then I'll go complete a task somewhere else, return, and they'll be gone, allowing me to explore. More recently, authorities searching for criminals cordoned off an area that was previously accessible. Keeps things fresh and I'm paying attention to my surroundings in a new way.

Can you escape battles?

You can't, but there's an assertion system when you're getting close to enemies. Your characters speak out loud commenting on how easy or hard the fight will be.

 

[Strange Fellow]

There are a few signals that let you know if something looks tough: first, there's MMO-style color coding on the map; if you see red skulls you should probably back off.

Also, the party banter may give you hints. My wizard often says, "That looks rather ... fatal."

I still don't have access to "mercenary tokens". V_K was correct earlier. You start off creating a single character, then you go through the paces with "narrative PCs" for a while.

That's disappointing, I was hoping that you'd recieve a token every time a companion becomes available. I actually like the concept of having a roster of companions from which you can choose who and how many you want to take alongside your own characters at any given time. It's a shame that the companions sound very much like the default. More Pillars than Wiz 8. Oh well.

It would actually suck if mobs were unexpectedly super strong and just killed you, because of the (incline) limited save system.

Wait, how is it limited? I thought you just respawned indefinitely at those stones whenever you suffered a TPK. Are they single-use save points?

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Zombra]

Wait, how is it limited? I thought you just respawned indefinitely at those stones whenever you suffered a TPK. Are they single-use save points?

Well, you don't "respawn" like with Vita Chambers; you load your last save. And there isn't a convenient Luck Stone 3 inches before every encounter. So if you spend 15 minutes exploring an area, then see a goblin and he turns out to be level 60 and kills you with no warning, that would suck. It's nice that the party is aware of danger levels.

Also, as I mentioned before, if you want to you can essentially destroy Luck Stones for xp instead of saving at them, so a harder core player can make the choice to do that and his save points will be farther apart. If random unforseeable death was around every corner no one sane would make that choice.

That's disappointing, I was hoping that you'd recieve a token every time a companion becomes available. I actually like the concept of having a roster of companions from which you can choose who and how many you want to take alongside your own characters at any given time. It's a shame that the companions sound very much like the default. More Pillars than Wiz 8. Oh well.

Yeah. Not only am I stuck with the "narrative" PCs for a long time, it actually makes sense in the story for them to hang around. Really hoping that after my current quest they'll be satisfied and I can let them go live their lives.

 

[Strange Fellow]

Well, you don't "respawn" like with Vita Chambers;

See, that's what I thought they were. Glad I'm wrong. You can still go back and save your game multiple times at the same stone though, right? I can't wait to run back and forth from a stone to an area I'm underleveled for, saving after each successful encounter. I'm not even kidding.

And oh look, Infinitron has dug up another preview from a professional gaming site which tells me absolutely nothing new about the game.

I'm not quite with it in terms of the connotations of different ratings on this site Infinitron, but I didn't mean this as a slight against you. It's the journos I take issue with. The prolificacy of your news coverage is pretty damn unbelievable to be honest, and criminally unappreciated. So

to you too.

 

[Nekot-The-Brave]

Yeah, also each save point only saves the game once (at least from what I can tell), once you 'bind' yourself to a save stone, that's it for that save stone as you can't ever interact with it again. There's two save stones in the adventurer's hub that don't allow you to do this, and appear to be infinite use.

Edit: There also appears to be save points near the 'story' areas that are similar to the adventurer's hub ones.

My video that I made earlier, at 01:18:20 and 01:29:40 show how I was able to bind, and then afterwards not be able to interact with the 'luck stone' afterwards.

 

[aweigh]

ok, can you farm an encounter or not? I still don't know the answer to this question.

are there at least areas with optional encounters to provide combat to those who want more of it?

poe doesn't have random encounters either but they made sure to provide tons of optional combat.

 

[Grauken]

destroying save points for xp reminds me of all things of Shovel Knight

also a pretty incline element, nice

 

[Nekot-The-Brave]

From what I've experienced, I believe that the loot is random, so yes, you would be able to 'farm' an encounter.

 

[Strange Fellow]

But not for XP.

Yeah, also each save point only saves the game once (at least from what I can tell), once you 'bind' yourself to a save stone, that's it for that save stone as you can't ever interact with it again.

That's unexpected, and raises the stakes quite a bit, I'd imagine. Sounds like a good move.