The Bard's Tale ARPG: Remastered and Resnarkled

I never played any of the Bard's Tale games before, and didn't quite know what to expect. The game starts out in a promising way, and after the introductory adventure, I had got my hopes up; the quest, the banter between the Bard and the unimpressed narrator and the effort put into the songs created a fun and enjoyable little world. However, the further I ventured out from the starting villlage of Houton, the bad level design, repetitive combat and bad controls took its toll on my enjoyment. One level had me fighting about 20 set fights without much variation in enemies or difficulty. The repetitiveness was made much worse by several unnecessary deaths as the Bard repeatedly got stuck in a power-shot mode with his bow and couldn't move away from enemy attacks. Another had me fighting through three levels of unvaried enemies (though there were the ocasional fun traps) only to have to fight my way down three levels again through one recurring mix of other enemies. Another design choice that added to the repetitiveness was that all enemies respawn if you come back to a place you had visited before. I didn't mind that too much in the beginning, but since it also occured on visiting houses or shops in a city, it got tedious to have to fight the same enemies over and over again. The game does have a few good components though. I would have liked the rest of the world to be The tavern in Houton was immersive and fun, and it would have been great if the rest of the world and its interactions would have been as well developed. I also liked the summoning system and would have liked it to be developed even further to include more options than "attack" or "stay back". Without more varied enemies and fixing the twitchy combat controls, such development would probably not add much to the gameplay. In summary, the game has some good ideas and concepts and a world that has some good potential, but the gameplay and combat system takes away all the fun in the long run.

While the gameplay is outdated, the comedy isn't, and this is what this game is mainly about - comedy. this is a paradoy for all the fantasy cliches of fantasy, most of which is still prevelant today, two decades afte this game was published. Every once in a while I look if there is any new game like this one, alas these are rare and fewer made me laugh as much as the "chosen one" songs.

The Bard's Tale (2005) didn't age well. Graphic is just plain bad for today standard, but that is to be expected for an old game. Unlike the previous Bard's Tale titles, which are classic dungeons crawler. The Bard's Tale (2005) is an action RPG a la Diablo, however it is missing every single element, which makes an ARPG great. There is no loot nor skill/character progession at all, it is as bare bone as it can get. Monoton environment and lack of different enemy types makes it a literal snail paced ARPG. Oh what about the music or sound you might ask? Nope, no battle theme nor background music and maybe 3-4 different sound effects. Did I mention the glorious satisfaction of hitting an enemy (hit detection and feedback)? No? It is like hitting your enemy with a wet noodle. I could rant about the boring level design, which I will, because you are reading my review. Image an epic final battle, which the Bard's Tale won't deliver (joke is on you) , because you are too busy fighting in the same room 13 times interrupted by a long unskippable slow elevator animation and not so fancy panorama view of the freaking elevator until the final Boss, which also induce some serious RL rage in me (oh forgot to mention: SPOILER!) The only redeem factor in this game was the tongue-in-cheek humour, which wasn't LOL worthy,but mildly amusing and kept me going for 12 hours until I beat the game. Would I recommend this game? Serious: NO, but I will, because I want you to experience the not so epic final struggle eh I mean battle (real Rage included)

In my opinion, The Bard´s Tale is a mediocre game - I appreciate nice and well optimized graphics (playable on Intel HD Graphics smoothly) and well designed controls. But the core is not that good with average (too long locations, dull fights) gameplay and poor story. Do not expect too much of a humor too - Bard is more arrogant than witty and so are the dialogs - I found the goblin song the most enjoyable. For example, you will laugh more often playing Divinity 2 and its addon. My reccomendation - nice game for 4$ in sale, but rather get the Android version.

Many praise this game for it's satire, and I will agree that satire is definitely a real reason to play it. Unfortunately, it is also the only reason. It's not laugh-out-loud funny and often not even terribly inventive, yet it manages to amuse most of the time. The story is really just the backdrop to the Bard's snide comments and is (intentionally) a tongue-in-cheek version of the common save-the-world RPG theme. The gameplay itself, not to put too fine a point on it, is just plain boring though. Summon a tank and shoot with your bow, or summon a ranged unit and be the tank instead - this is about the only choice that you will have to make throughout the whole game until the very end. The repetitiveness of combat is only made worse by the fact that everything respawns the moment you leave that particular part of the map (something that I never minded in games like Diablo) and the enemies only come in two or three basic flavors. There is no inventory management, no real companions, only a hadfull of abilities that you will end up getting most of anyway even if half of them are useless for any particular style of play, no meaningful conversations... I could go on and on but I guess I'm making my point. This game is funny and can be kind of fun in a weird, boring way but it has very few of the things that make RPGs enjoyable for me. I went through the game once and I'm glad I did but I can't really see much value in replaying. If you have nothing much to do, for a few bucks, this game is worth it. If you're looking for a more serious RPG experience, look elsewhere...