The Bard's Tale ARPG: Remastered and Resnarkled

I cannot share the enthusiams most of the other reviews describe when handling this game. I was so disappointed when I got this game on it's release: the graphics were mediocre at best, the hero was a loud moud of the worst kind and I could not laugh about anything he came up with. The engine was bad and no, its was no serious RPG which I expected from my genre defining experince with it's "predecessors". It was everything I did not wanted it to be, if it utilizes the Bard's Tale name. For me it ist much more a silly spinoff than something I want to spend time on. High praised writing? First class voice actors? Seems I missed these top notch features alltogether. Bad stereotypes and voice actors that actually did their job - wow, if that's top notch, then I would not want to play a mediocre or even bad game -.- Maybe I am spoiled by the expectation of another Bard's Tale episode, but I wouldn't even take this one for free.

Ok, after 4 hours I'm not sure I wantt to go back into the game, the dry humor is ok, it works to set up the main character as a cynical vagrant that is looking for fortune and the world is fantastic, the idea of who knows how many "chosen" have been is nice, and the voice acting is great, I párticularly like how the main character delibers his sarcasm with the utmost apathy That said, the game suffers on other departments, specially in the combat, melee combat is too dangerous for the bard, even if you time well your blocks. The ranged combat is dreadful, the bow is slow and sometimes the character get "stuck" pulling the string without firing. the minios sometimes stand there doing nothing even if you order them to attack and the damage they do is minimal, the dog is a great companion, but he tends to get KOed with a single hit, it is obvious that the combat is centered in having your companions distract the enemy while you take shots at them, but the aforementioned problems with the bow turn the whole thing into an exercise in frustration the controls are also a mixed bag, it's good that you can press a button to access a ring of commands to quickly change weapons and summons, is even better when the game pauses so you don't have to worry about being ganked while doing so, but I believe this mechanic would have been even better if you could select things with your mouse too, and talking about the mouse, why are the camera controls not tied to a mouse button? Oh and before I forget, if I try to skip the intro movies the game crashes leaving me with a locked screen where I cannot access any other program except the start menu and the only solution is to reboot the PC, the game also crashes upon quitting, fortunately without the annoying screen issue The voice acting and the writing make the want to love it, but it has too many issues for my liking

Based on the Linux port: My first thought was "Looks, feels and controls like a PS2 game" and guess what: It is a PS2 game indeed that was ported to all kinds of platforms by now. I've finished it in about 14,5 hours with all three endings although had to spend more time due to unacceptable bugs (see further below). It's meant as a satire to all RPGs and falls flat in most regards. Although some short passages are funny, it's too much impersonating what it's trying to mock in a quite repetitive way and is trying too hard to be funny in a mostly sarcastical and cynical way. It would need a bit deeper characters and more kinds of humour to work. Questing is linear, grinding is not too bad although there often isn't much else besides grinding. Gamepad support is there (not only XBox), but there is no button mapping and the Y- and X-axis of the right stick was mixed up on my pad. The save system relies on checkpoints which was a particularly bad idea as seen below. The Linux port has [b]massive technical problems[/b]. 1. The old games simply won't start at all. If you choose them from the menu, you only get the "help" tab. You have to hack in the password protected and disguised archives in the games folder containing the games and then run them in an emulator if you want to play them. 2. There are a few bugs in the game where a script doesn't work and you have to try over and over again in order to be able to make the story go on. 3. There's a really mean lighting bug causing to randomly spread one color over a whole area, slowing down the game to about 0,5 - 2 frames per second and forcing you to reload from the last checkpoint. I had to do this over and over again in order to finish this game. After all those years of updates, I expected it to be at least free of the worst bugs... I'll never touch this game again and wouldn't recommend it to most people, if you're in the mood for cheap satire and a hardcore fan of Brian Fargo, you could try it though.

I have never played a game so hilarious. It is filled up to the brim with memorable genious and witty moments. There hasn't been a game since The Bards Tale that has made me cry laughing. That is only one aspect of the game of course. But the story and the gameplay is really well made. Love the mechanics and there is no bullshit. The narrator, the bard and the old man are such memorable characters. Have played through it 4 times.

DO NOT BUY THIS I bought this so I could enjoy the nostalgia of playing the original three Bard's Tale games. However, the emulator used to run them is built into the executable of the main game so that you cannot tweak its settings ... and it doesn't respect the constant frame rate and CPU speed that the games were built for, so the animations in the games jerk spastically through their motions, the text flies off the screen faster than a human can possibly see it, and most infuriating of all, the music that plays constantly while using bard spells is totally without rhythm. Although, theoretically you may be able to get to the end of this game if you already know what all the text says and can progress without reading it ... the godawful anti-music will have you jabbing a pencil into your brain long before you can actually finish the game.