I had both games for my C64 back in the day. Dragon Wars my buddy and I beat, but we didn't get very far in Centauri Alliance. Still loved the hex-shaped box it came in.

Also, would love to see a re-issue of the two Buck Rogers games from SSI, though licensing may be a bit rough considering the additional factor of the Dille Family Trust holding the license to the good Cap'n. :(

Flynn

I loved the first. Never got around to playing the second though.

Every new update from Inxile about Bards Tale 4 has reduced my interest in the game more and more. Scope creep from a dungeon crawler game with defined character classes to a mashup of extremely tweaked character builds modified from Tides of Numenera with Baldurs Gate 2 style party interactivity with real-time interactivity except when it's not, and combat that either is turn based/phase based/happens immediately(?) that is is also a dungeon crawler game, kinda.

Still waiting for the newBards Tale 4 gameplay trailer Inxile promised to release soon back in December 2017.

Pretty sad about what happened with the art in this game.

The original low resolution 32-color art is pretty awesome, and still enjoyable. It has a look of its own. The new art has no charm or character, and is hamstrung by trying to look like the old images.

Also kind of unfortunate that the layout and text was not updated from the early betas. Lots of strange whitespace etc.

I hope they at least fixed the levelling curve for the first game.

well I was a noob back but I recall wearing out two floppy isks runniong this gam on C64

What's the problem with the first game's leveling curve?

Just check Youtube for beta footage. It looks pretty good to me.

I wonder if I'm going to be able to press "Z" and get a stone elemental in the beginning. :)

I checked out beta footage Youtube videos of Bards Tale 4.
Ripped from the Witcher series city/dungeon visuals, the in-combat-gameplay of a freemium mobile game, and so many pop-up alerts I had to check if AdBlock was going beserk on the Youtube streamers computer or my internet browser.

At least Bards Tale 1-3 (the original unenhanced versions) were ported to modern 64bit code, so the Bards Tale 4 kickstarter project at least accomplished that.

Except that there's a spell called "Area Enchant", even in the original versions, so they are, in a way, enchanted.

(In case anyone unfamiliar with these games is curious, this spell (which has a duration outside of combat) will alert you if there are stairs within 3 squares of the direction you are facing. I don't remember whether this particular spell was broken in the DOS version of BT3, but I know many similar spells (like Second Sight) were.)

If you were referring to the tutorial popups, there was a big, friendly button there for turning them off completely. And as far I've understood, there is an option to turn off most, if not all, help functions.

You caught my spelling mistake seconds before I fixed it. Sadness.

I hope it's easier to get into than the originals...

Ahhh, backer keys to begin getting e-mailed out tomorrow. Nice.


BT1 was pretty brutal. I'll be curious to see if they've managed to make it a little more accessible.

BT2 was a great game... but also very difficult to get into, especially if you're a modern gamer.

BT3 had auto-mapping and far more ease-of-use features, however... and I highly, highly recommend it.

Nothing IMO, was wrong with the original game.

In the earlier betas of the remaster, Becky "unified" how characters are handled, allowing characters to move between games freely, without going through the awkward conversion code that changed your equipment around and dorked with level caps etc. A sensible idea to use one system for all three titles at first blush.

However, it used the Bard's Tale 3 experience point table, meaning a party finishing Bard's Tale 1 with notable grinding would be around level 15 and dying all the time to failed saving throws.

I'm hoping that got corrected.

Of course I know how to get to be arbitrary level fairly, but I would prefer the game work for new players. At least new players who are willing to play the game style presented.
BT2 had its own brutality, here and there, but yes it didn't have you dying all the time before you got to the shop to buy your starting equipment.

Solving all the death snares unspoiled is possible. I've done it. But it can take significant experimentation and guesswork.