The Bard's Tale IV: Director's Cut - Deluxe Edition

This game is making me cry with joy, I have been looking for western RPGs just like this and its just........pure bliss.

This game is said to contain equal parts of puzzle, rpg and exploration elements. People who can't get tired of puzzles, love exploration games like walking simulators and have a soft spot for RPGs will generally agree that this game is the single best game that was ever released. Although this game is classified as a Role-Playing game, it is very heavy on the puzzles. In fact, even the non-puzzle elements in the game play like puzzles. The exploration has a lot of puzzle elements (finding hidden caches, secret doors, hidden switches, out-of-place chests and shrines). The combat has even more, as you do build characters individually, however you will often want to combine different skills on different characters in combat, especially since the "action points" (called Opportunty in the game) are shared between the characters of the team.

Review is based on only 8 hrs gameplay as Im not sure Im going to finish this one. Its not a bad game, though just now I saw the full price and had instant regret until I searched my history and saw I picked this up for 13 bucks on sale, so that made me feel much better. If I had bought at full price it would have been a downer. First the good: Soundtrack is very pleasant and runs throughout the game, fully done songs in the style of long ago bards, perhaps the soundtrac alone would be worth the full price. (tho sometimes it can intrude) Graphics are adequate. Nothing too detailed but they serve. Puzzles, I enjoy a good puzzle game and this one is full of them. I enjoy the grid based fighting, its different and does allow you to strategize. I can save anywhere at any time based on my purchase copy. Its a slow grind to get gear, I like that in rpgs, makes becoming powerful rewarding. Crafting, there seems to be lots of cooking and stuff. Havent gotten to far in it but I like it. The irritating stuff: No handholding at all. Not a clue on skill tree progressions as the final tree layout is gated by levels. you have to buy armor abilities for each member and its important to know what you are going to do with each party member as you can build a very crappy team. its very unforgiving that way. No clue on what all the stuff found on landscape means and if its a puzzle for now or later. lots of time spent fiddling with inventory, searching aimlessly until I went to wiki to cheat spoilers. The bloody back tracking. This reminds me of those hidden object games where you are constantly going back to an item to interact with it later once you have found the item it needs. However, at least on those games there is a fast travel. might be one here but i havent found it. If you dont save often you may find yourself without necessary items found on one side of map to finish puzzles on the other. get it on deep sale and dont expect much.

It's an ok game, in itself. Pretty simplistic, but fun. Although, the one thing that really confuses me,... is what in the world did they do to the races?>?... Dwarves look like the Blue man group became body builders.... Elves look like ...uh... goblins?... and that other thing... I guess that's supposed to replace Hobbits?... I mean, they give you 5 different types of human.. (that all look the same btw) and then 3 strange alien races. With only 1 portrait each. I'm not saying i don't dig the creativity. Normally I love crazy strange races in a game. But I thought this game was supposed to be a successor to A Bard's Tale?... If you watch the making of videos, there's one in which they explain how they took the original intro scene, (with a bard playing to a rag tag group of dwarves and hobbits) and painstakingly recreated every detail of it, building an entire set, hiring actors, and producing costumes.. . just for a 2 min intro scene. ....But then when you play the game.. where are the dwarves..elves,,, hobbits? They look totally ridiculous. Like i said the game is ok. Just not really a Bards tale game.

Where to start? The game takes the 'Bard's Tale' name, a few races.. and that's about it. YOU start as a random selected character (choice of a few things not much, no link to the bard that I know). The weapons are generic for other games like diablo (*insert dropsound here*) or other dungeon crawler type games which is odd choice. The character interactions such as speech are kinda generic and bland (there's no humor, narky moments, woman lust or woes, no mentions of old bard failures, no tongue in cheek humor, animations, or quests/side-quests etc).. & there's no pub singing. Fights are now more D&D style but on an grid (swing/hit/miss) which although not a game killer takes time to get used to. Graphics are good (I'm not bothered about them in general). Gameplay is kinda bland.. do this, now this and this which isnt always fun & lacks replayability or freedom. Music n sound are great. Puzzles are kinda basic, nothing thought provoking really. Voice acting is ok tbh. Magic spells.. well.. not quite what was expected & not as useful or fun to use as with the original game sadly. The FP (First person) perspective is a nice feature but doesn't add much other than a different view, places seem frozen (basically noone really moves or changes or says new stuff.. reminds me of old PS2 RPG games, although not bad or game killing it's nice to see 'real' people behaviour sometimes). ....So The game if taken as nothing to do with 'BardsTale' is not to bad, it's got a questline, good music n sound, it can be fun (I like looking for stuff and some battling at times), I like the puzzles but I also wish they were a little more thought provoking, some of the spells are useful around places and sometimes reveal hidden stuff (nice idea), graphic look good (I'm not to fussed about graphics so you may have other opinions).. atmosphere of the town's is nice. Basically.. I was expecting more from inXile studio tbh as they have released some ace games in the past.