Bard's Tale The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep - Director's Cut

[Deleted Member 22431]

Damn, sounds like these guys are working really hard to bury the renaissance of crpgs ten feet deep. Stuff I'm reading about character/party building, combat and loot (three most important things in crpgs) gives the impression of total shit.

My thoughts exactly. I have been saying this for two (three?) years now. The kickstarter renascence brought more and more isometric and "oldschool" games with shallow mechanics. This is becoming the standard for new players that don't know better. They are presenting the shell of oldschool games without the content and some people, even here, are going along with this lie because they are imposters, posers.

The "middle class game" gets squeezed out of the market in all sorts of ways. This is just another.

I surely hope so, because they are doing all they can to dumb down the genre. Indies or bust.

 

[Curratum]

So I played it for about half an hour and I'm pasting what I put up as my Steam review, for your consideration.

==
Ugly graphics, hideous performance, especially considering the subpar visuals, not even for a UE4 game, but for any game that came out in the last decade. Vsync hurts framerates further and without it the game tears a lot. I cannot overstate how bad performance is in general.

Horrendous loading times, let's say 4x, maybe 5x the loading time for Witcher 3's main Velen map, to load a medium-sized dungeon interior in BT4.

Idiotic font choices, ingame and in-combat text so small, it can make your eyes bleed.

Text over the heads of speaking NPCs sways left and right with their body movement, creating horrible jaggies as letters don't move as a single entity but get shuffled about in individual lines of pixels. It just hurts the eyes.

Transparent noclip NPCs, literally feet from the start of the game. This just 30 minutes. I hate to think how much more hot garbage I will run into as I attempt to actually play the game properly.

To top it all off, I preordered the game largely because a dev on the Steam hub told me there would be grid-based movement. The option for it is inactive at launch.

Never again, Fargo. Never again.
==

 

[Roguey]

Alas, ineptile finally descends into becoming a shovelware developer. Now the question is, will they drop dead before or right after Wasteland 3?

Combat is.... crap... There, I said it. The thing is, it is turn based, but of the kind where one side do all its actions first with immediate resolvement and then the next side does its actions. Whoever initiates combat goes first. Now, instead of giving orders to each character and having everything do something, inXile looked at games like hearthstone and felt inspired by that (they specifically mentioned hearthstone as an inspiration). What this means is that each character have a limited set of masteries (active skills) they can use. Want the option to attack? that's a mastery. Want the option to move? that's a mastery slot. and so on. Some are fixed for all characters (move and trinket use is hardlocked for all characters as 2 of their masteries) and the rest 3 or 4 choices are choosable by the hero while you are NOT engaged in combat. once you are in combat you are locked into using whatever abilities you had set in the mastery slots before combat. I am guessing inXile thought this would be akin to deckbuilding or something like that. Add to this that you have a shared pool of 'action points' to use on your turn. Most mastery skills cost a single action point to use, but some cost more than one. And usually you have less actino points than you have characters in your party, so remember that guy I mentioned you put in the corner doing nothing during combat? The whole combat system feels extremely restricting and claustrophobic. Add that there are no hit chances (everything hits) and no damage variables (you make an attack, you hit for... how much strength did you say you had?) and combat stops feeling like combat, but more like a low level puzzle in a meeple placement boardgame.

Oh wow.

How something as simple as turn-based, blobber, pop-up-encounter combat already mastered in the Apple ][ days could be fucked up so much?

luka ought to be pleased

 

[Gord]

Played it for about one hour.
I'd say it has potential, but the talk about performance issues is not exaggerated, unfortunately.
I played around a bit with graphic settings, but that actually doesn't help too much. All the while CPU usage stays suspiciously low, so I wouldn't be surprised if there's an issue with CPU utilization right now.
Graphics are a mixed bag. Many environments look good, as do some of the NPCs, (most) other NPCs however look strangely amateurish.
Load times are ok-ish for me, however. Not super fast, but I definitely had worse. Installed it on a HDD, by the way.

Can't say too much about combat yet, since I only had a few early in the game, with a small party of low-level guys.
Is it choke-full of intricate complexity? Maybe not. But it does offer some (from using skills and spells in the right way) and it looks like it could be fun enough, so I'm cautiously optimistic. Also - did anyone expect huge complexity in a Bard's Tale game's combat? Really? If so, did they play the original trilogy at all?

So, since I'm anyway still playing some other games I'd like to finish currently, I guess I'll wait for a couple of patches which will hopefully solve the worst performance issues.
Music is nice, though.

 

[Curratum]

Holy fucking shit what, combat is fixed damage = STR and there is no hit chance? Come the fucking fuck on, even Darkest Dungeon has deeper combat than that...

Fucking Fargo, man...

 

[Mazisky]

This and Divinity Sins are the only RPGs in history (over 20 years and like 5.000 games) that have no day\night cycle.

 

[Brancaleone]

Every game I look forward to ends up being shit. I should stop...

There is this god-awful game called Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones, it's really not worth your attention, I would ignore it completely if I were you.

 

[BEvers]

Fargo says that Bard's Tale 4 is "an ambitious game, probably the most expensive one we've done" at 36:55 here:

https://www.usgamer.net/articles/a-...rgo-plus-where-the-heck-is-final-fantasy-viii

After 49:00 he talks about BT4's budget and says "we're over 10 (million)."

 

[Jimmious]

Yes, pretty much how everyone says, performance is all over the place.
Runs "OK" at High with a couple of tweaks for me but the quality of the graphics doesn't excuse all these hiccups. Hopefully it will be ironed out soon, but the question of how much this was tested is a valid one.
The game itself seems promising to be honest. Only played 1.5 hours so far but I think I will like the combat and the game definitely rewards exploring etc

Generally it feels like a low budget, fun game. For the 20 bucks I kickstarted it with, it will be more than fine I believe

 

[Dodo1610]

The Bards Tale 4 backers shouldn't be so upset unlike the Wasteland 3 backers they will actually get something for their money.

 

[Jimmious]

Also I have to add that without noticing, apparently my character is Fargo. One of the models/portraits is clearly him..

 

[BEvers]

If a budget "over 10 million" only means 10 million and some pocket change, then inXile would need to sell at minimum 432,000 copies of BT4 at full price (in Europe or the US) to break even.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

yikes

 

[Filthy Sauce]

I do not own the game.

Questions about party creation. How far into the game can you create your own party? I also heard that you have to spend special currency to do so? Does that add into the time for full party creation options?

This type of shit pissed me off in POE. Just let me create my own dudes please.

 

[cruelio]

Alas, ineptile finally descends into becoming a shovelware developer. Now the question is, will they drop dead before or right after Wasteland 3?

Combat is.... crap... There, I said it. The thing is, it is turn based, but of the kind where one side do all its actions first with immediate resolvement and then the next side does its actions. Whoever initiates combat goes first. Now, instead of giving orders to each character and having everything do something, inXile looked at games like hearthstone and felt inspired by that (they specifically mentioned hearthstone as an inspiration). What this means is that each character have a limited set of masteries (active skills) they can use. Want the option to attack? that's a mastery. Want the option to move? that's a mastery slot. and so on. Some are fixed for all characters (move and trinket use is hardlocked for all characters as 2 of their masteries) and the rest 3 or 4 choices are choosable by the hero while you are NOT engaged in combat. once you are in combat you are locked into using whatever abilities you had set in the mastery slots before combat. I am guessing inXile thought this would be akin to deckbuilding or something like that. Add to this that you have a shared pool of 'action points' to use on your turn. Most mastery skills cost a single action point to use, but some cost more than one. And usually you have less actino points than you have characters in your party, so remember that guy I mentioned you put in the corner doing nothing during combat? The whole combat system feels extremely restricting and claustrophobic. Add that there are no hit chances (everything hits) and no damage variables (you make an attack, you hit for... how much strength did you say you had?) and combat stops feeling like combat, but more like a low level puzzle in a meeple placement boardgame.

Oh wow.

How something as simple as turn-based, blobber, pop-up-encounter combat already mastered in the Apple ][ days could be fucked up so much?

luka ought to be pleased

After Brian Fargo helped kill the old style rpgs this forum claims to like by a) riding the early wave of ~cinematic~ and ~art games~ and b) driving Interplay into the ground, what did his next company Inxile develop before Kickstarter? Literally cell phone shovelware and figurative shovelware in a truly terrible 2004 Bard's Tale game. If you bought this game, you gave money to the guy who destroyed a company through terrible decisions, who then went on to make shovelware, who then went on to scam kickstarter twice with truly terrible games that couldn't possibly have required the millions raised to alllegly fund them.

Basically you haven't to be the most stupid person in any room you walk into to, with Brian Fargo's history, spend time and/or money on this game. Or you just have to be a very stable genius member of this forum which had multiple crowdfunding campaigns to enable this crap.

 

[Gregz]

Alas, ineptile finally descends into becoming a shovelware developer. Now the question is, will they drop dead before or right after Wasteland 3?

Combat is.... crap... There, I said it. The thing is, it is turn based, but of the kind where one side do all its actions first with immediate resolvement and then the next side does its actions. Whoever initiates combat goes first. Now, instead of giving orders to each character and having everything do something, inXile looked at games like hearthstone and felt inspired by that (they specifically mentioned hearthstone as an inspiration). What this means is that each character have a limited set of masteries (active skills) they can use. Want the option to attack? that's a mastery. Want the option to move? that's a mastery slot. and so on. Some are fixed for all characters (move and trinket use is hardlocked for all characters as 2 of their masteries) and the rest 3 or 4 choices are choosable by the hero while you are NOT engaged in combat. once you are in combat you are locked into using whatever abilities you had set in the mastery slots before combat. I am guessing inXile thought this would be akin to deckbuilding or something like that. Add to this that you have a shared pool of 'action points' to use on your turn. Most mastery skills cost a single action point to use, but some cost more than one. And usually you have less actino points than you have characters in your party, so remember that guy I mentioned you put in the corner doing nothing during combat? The whole combat system feels extremely restricting and claustrophobic. Add that there are no hit chances (everything hits) and no damage variables (you make an attack, you hit for... how much strength did you say you had?) and combat stops feeling like combat, but more like a low level puzzle in a meeple placement boardgame.

Oh wow.

How something as simple as turn-based, blobber, pop-up-encounter combat already mastered in the Apple ][ days could be fucked up so much?

luka ought to be pleased

After Brian Fargo helped kill the old style rpgs this forum claims to like by a) riding the early wave of ~cinematic~ and ~art games~ and b) driving Interplay into the ground, what did his next company Inxile develop before Kickstarter? Literally cell phone shovelware and figurative shovelware in a truly terrible 2004 Bard's Tale game. If you bought this game, you gave money to the guy who destroyed a company through terrible decisions, who then went on to make shovelware, who then went on to scam kickstarter twice with truly terrible games that couldn't possibly have required the millions raised to alllegly fund them.

Basically you haven't to be the most stupid person in any room you walk into to, with Brian Fargo's history, spend time and/or money on this game. Or you just have to be a very stable genius member of this forum which had multiple crowdfunding campaigns to enable this crap.

Unfortunately inXile is very hit or miss. Fargo himself doesn't seem able to predict what's a good product and what isn't.

Wasteland 2 DC and the recent Bard's Tale Trilogy Remaster were quality games. They can make games worth playing, the statistical odds against that are about 2 in 3 however.

 

[felipepepe]

Questions about party creation. How far into the game can you create your own party? I also heard that you have to spend special currency to do so? Does that add into the time for full party creation options?

You start the game with a premade character, then can create your dude like 10 minutes in. After that you do quests and slowly earn tokens to hire "mercenaries" that you can customize.

 

[Bohr]

If a budget "over 10 million" only means 10 million and some pocket change, then inXile would need to sell at minimum 432,000 copies of BT4 at full price (in Europe or the US) to break even.

Will be tough to achieve without a massive publicity boost, if only Bubbles was still around to do the Codex review.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

What is weird is that ToN seemed much better than W2, but it ended up being worse, and BT4 seemed an improvement over ToN, but is also worse. Yet W2 was the cheapest, quicker to develop, and sold better than the other two. What the hell happened?

 

[Bohr]

At least it's not just Beekers faxing out the keys

 

[cruelio]

Alas, ineptile finally descends into becoming a shovelware developer. Now the question is, will they drop dead before or right after Wasteland 3?

Combat is.... crap... There, I said it. The thing is, it is turn based, but of the kind where one side do all its actions first with immediate resolvement and then the next side does its actions. Whoever initiates combat goes first. Now, instead of giving orders to each character and having everything do something, inXile looked at games like hearthstone and felt inspired by that (they specifically mentioned hearthstone as an inspiration). What this means is that each character have a limited set of masteries (active skills) they can use. Want the option to attack? that's a mastery. Want the option to move? that's a mastery slot. and so on. Some are fixed for all characters (move and trinket use is hardlocked for all characters as 2 of their masteries) and the rest 3 or 4 choices are choosable by the hero while you are NOT engaged in combat. once you are in combat you are locked into using whatever abilities you had set in the mastery slots before combat. I am guessing inXile thought this would be akin to deckbuilding or something like that. Add to this that you have a shared pool of 'action points' to use on your turn. Most mastery skills cost a single action point to use, but some cost more than one. And usually you have less actino points than you have characters in your party, so remember that guy I mentioned you put in the corner doing nothing during combat? The whole combat system feels extremely restricting and claustrophobic. Add that there are no hit chances (everything hits) and no damage variables (you make an attack, you hit for... how much strength did you say you had?) and combat stops feeling like combat, but more like a low level puzzle in a meeple placement boardgame.

Oh wow.

How something as simple as turn-based, blobber, pop-up-encounter combat already mastered in the Apple ][ days could be fucked up so much?

luka ought to be pleased

After Brian Fargo helped kill the old style rpgs this forum claims to like by a) riding the early wave of ~cinematic~ and ~art games~ and b) driving Interplay into the ground, what did his next company Inxile develop before Kickstarter? Literally cell phone shovelware and figurative shovelware in a truly terrible 2004 Bard's Tale game. If you bought this game, you gave money to the guy who destroyed a company through terrible decisions, who then went on to make shovelware, who then went on to scam kickstarter twice with truly terrible games that couldn't possibly have required the millions raised to alllegly fund them.

Basically you haven't to be the most stupid person in any room you walk into to, with Brian Fargo's history, spend time and/or money on this game. Or you just have to be a very stable genius member of this forum which had multiple crowdfunding campaigns to enable this crap.

Unfortunately inXile is very hit or miss. Fargo himself doesn't seem able to predict what's a good product and what isn't.

Wasteland 2 DC and the recent Bard's Tale Trilogy Remaster were quality games. They can make games worth playing, the statistical odds are about 2 in 3 against however.

Wasteland 2 DC is not a "quality" game. They had to rework the terrible combat system after realizing they had shuttled all the money into Brian Fargo's offshore tax havens and not into playtesting, and the end result was still a broken mess in which you had no incentive to use weapons that weren't assault rifles to mow down endless trash mob encounters. The graphics remain on par with hit Russian 2007 game 7.62, which is not a compliment. The quicksave abuse skill system would make the morons behind Fallout 3 at Bethesda blush. I cannot comment on the writing, as I cannot remember a single memorable character, line of dialogue, or what the story was even about. To say that Wasteland 2, even with the revamp that was supposed to fix it, is a "quality" game makes me wonder how you maintain the motor functions necessary to type that statement out.

 

[BEvers]

If Fargo's numbers are true, then inXile invested ~$8.2 million in the game in addition to Kickstarter. Where did they get that much money? Wasteland 2 has been their only big release, and did it make that much of a profit? They don't even have a publisher this time.

Please don't say "back catalogue sales"

 

[Bester]

If you're such a dumbfuck manager that you can't even hire a competent tech specialist to deliver keys, then no fucking wonder you couldn't hire a single competent person to make the game, which is a million times more complicated endeavor.

Not surprised, motherfucker. What surprises me is that he was able to release good games in the past. But I guess there were more passionate people back in the day, and if left unsupervised, they could deliver. This formula doesn't work anymore.

 

[Shadenuat]

Boy, if people thought Might and Magic X was popamole and "bad" blobber, you gotta check this game.

Not even sure what to think about it for now. But if you like "blobbers", it's not that.

 

[DeepOcean]

The impression I have by the trailers is that this is some sort of low budget linear walking simulator with light puzzle based combat encounters with very weak RPG elements, man, fixed damage with strength modifier being the damage you do is worse than even some popamole RPG games. I would expect this sort of stuff from as phone game.