I bought this game based on other positive reviews, however it is essentially unplayable under Windows 10. Mouse clicks simply do not work properly, leading to multiple impossible-to-get-around roadblocks where you cannot interact with on-screen items. There is a thread with out-of-date workarounds here: https://www.gog.com/forum/the_longest_journeydreamfall_series/the_longest_journey_mouse_only_responds_half_the_time_at_best Workarounds from that thread; 1. Set ForceSingleBuffer=On: doesn't work 2. Editing the tweak.ini file: partially works. Some areas still remained impassable. Find the part that says: [FloatingMenu] int_MouseOutsideDelay=500 ; milliseconds before the menu is hidden and change it to: [FloatingMenu] int_MouseOutsideDelay=50000 ; milliseconds before the menu is hidden The first click is still bad but after that the menu comes up immediately. 3. Use the latest daily build of ResidualVM to play the game. Partially worked. Subtitles and ToolTips displayed with missing characters. The solution that worked for me: 1. Install using GOG installer 2. Play the game with the latest daily build of ScummVM. Bonus: it upscales beautifully with ScummVM and looks much better than when using the GOG executable. Frankly, this game should be removed from GOG and fixed as in its current form it is simply unplayable.
Beautiful to look at, but gets really bogged down in the middle by really hard to find hidden objects in a large area, which means a lot of tedious trudging back and forth until you finally find the objects.
This is a review of just the 2004 Bard's Tale, not the classic Bard's Tale I, II & III also included in this package which I haven't played through yet. Overall, I was nonplussed with Bard's Tale. It wasn't as funny as it thought it was and it suffered very badly with horribly clunky controls due to being a direct console port. Playing this with a mouse and keyboard was just plain irritating (eg point and hold right mouse button down to walk somewhere, and summoning companions was just painful in execution). I'd suggest this would play much better with a GamePad. Another issue I had with the game was how short it actually was, with heaps of areas added in purely to pad out the paltry main quest length. For example - you battle up a tower to beat a tower boss, and then you battle a different set of enemies all the way back down again just to lengthen the game. Another example - having to get to the next tower via multiple other areas just added in for padding. My first play-through was done in less than 20 hours, and I'd say there's probably 10 hours or less if you didn't take your time. It's not all bad. I did like some of the game mechanics, such as automatically converting treasure to cash and automatically upgrading to best available equipment and selling off the old equipment. That saved tedium. I also always appreciate auto-mapping - I must be getting lazy in my old age. Overall, I'd say worth it when on special, but don't expect too much and do expect to be annoyed by the game's clunky controls.
