Game News The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep Released

[toro]

Patch 1 is available now. It is supposed to fix some major issues.

The game is still in the Steam inventory therefore the patch didn't work.

 

[Rpguy]

Patch 1 is available now. It is supposed to fix some major issues.

The game is still in the Steam inventory therefore the patch didn't work.

I don't understand what you mean, the patch downloaded, and there are patch notes, are you saying it did not apply?

 

[Darkzone]

Patch 1 is available now. It is supposed to fix some major issues.

The game is still in the Steam inventory therefore the patch didn't work.

I don't understand what you mean, the patch downloaded, and there are patch notes, are you saying it did not apply?

I think he meant that the patch didn't erased BTIV from the inventory ( existence ), so that you don't need to play it again.

 

[Cadmus]

so do I wait or play? If there is some edition like WL2 that actually made the game good I think Ishould wait

 

[Morkar Left]

so do I wait or play? If there is some edition like WL2 that actually made the game good I think Ishould wait

Dunno if there will be a complete remaster (maybe when they go consoles) but you should still wait for the 3 patches coming along (the first is out on Steam). Besides the performance there seem to be gamebreaking bugs around. Maybe play The BT Remastered until then. I will probably read the novels and wait till next week till I continue.

 

[Darkzone]

so do I wait or play? If there is some edition like WL2 that actually made the game good I think Ishould wait

I play it on GOG therefore i don't even know when inXile is going to figure out, how to patch it through galaxy. Only a Steam BTIV player can tell if the patch has brought major improvements. So from me you have a : Wait one month then the 3 patches should be through for the BTIV and in the mean time play the BT remastered version.

Dunno if there will be a complete remaster (maybe when they go consoles) but you should still wait for the 3 patches coming along (the first is out on Steam). Besides the performance there seem to be gamebreaking bugs around. Maybe play The BT Remastered until then. I will probably read the novels and wait till next week till I continue.

I want to play it through but sadly the bugs are killing it for me therefore i will also read now the novels until BTIV is properly patched.

 

[Rpguy]

As a steam player I can tell you there are still tons of bugs, some of them are really bad, I had crashes, inventory suddenly disappearing completely including quest items ( had to reload to an older save ) , you can get stuck, exploit to get xp and items, etc. there is still a crapload of stuff to fix.

That still haven't caused me to ditch it though, I am having a lot of fun.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Played for 14 hours, some impressions:

The character system is uninspiring and bloated. You need a special armor skill for pretty much everything. I found officer's armor but I can't use it because I don't have officer's armor skill. I can wear leather armor but not reinforced leather because that's a whole new ball game. You need a proper licensee and safety training before you get to handle this particular piece of equipment.

The item system is borrowed from Diablo, but what made the Diablo system work is that you get tons of random equipment coming your way and can easily find something that fits your build better. Here I found 3 swords in 14 hours: a slightly better sword than the starting axe, a very nice but nothing special sword that added an extra strike in a certain attack (which is good design), and an exactly the same sword as the first one. Found two helmets, one I can wear, the other requires an armor skill I don't have. Loot distribution in general is absolutely atrocious. Had a particularly tough fight, opened a sparking chest in the room and found a grappling hook. Now I have 6 grappling hooks. Yay.

On the plus side, the combat system is pretty good; positioning and moving during fights matter a lot. Different attack types fit in well. It's certainly very engaging and so far different enemies have different attacks and tactics. That's the strongest part of the game and the reason I played it for 14 hours.

The level design is pretty good too. While the game is linear, the levels are huge (so far) and encourage exploration, especially once you have all the songs that break walls, make bridges, clear passages. So the foundation of the game (combat and levels) is very solid and enjoyable, which is good as it's not something that can be fixed after the game is released. Character system and item distribution should be very easy to tweak.

I didn't have any technical issues (no crushes or freezes) and the game runs fine on Ultra on my 2 year old PC.

 

[*-*/\--/\~]

So... just rename the thread to September Sadness?

 

[Darkzone]

You need a special armor skill for pretty much everything. I found officer's armor but I can't use it because I don't have officer's armor skill. I can wear leather armor but not reinforced leather because that's a whole new ball game. You need a proper licensee and safety training before you get to handle this particular piece of equipment.

Let me put it straight, because this can be misleading. Yes you got to have the ability to wear certain armor.
At the top is the Padded Baedish Garb from the Leather Armor skill it is separated into leather / skin armors (Reinforced Leather) with its culmination in Elven Armor (gives the most STR bonus) and metal armors. The metal armors beginning with the Chain Mail then fall into the Armor points giving Full Plate armors (ending at Ancestral Plate Armor) and into the most CON giving armors, that end at the Officer Armor.
Each branch represents and results in 3 development choices: The Damage Dealer, The Protector and the Tank. Therefore you got to choose and know which role the Fighter or Bard or Rogue (can only go for the elven and berserker armor ) will fill in you group.

 

[Vault Dweller]

You need a special armor skill for pretty much everything. I found officer's armor but I can't use it because I don't have officer's armor skill. I can wear leather armor but not reinforced leather because that's a whole new ball game. You need a proper licensee and safety training before you get to handle this particular piece of equipment.

Let me put it straight, because this can be misleading. Yes you got to have the ability to wear certain armor.
At the top is the Padded Baedish Garb from the Leather Armor skill it is separated into leather / skin armors (Reinforced Leather) with its culmination in Elven Armor (gives the most STR bonus) and metal armors. The metal armors beginning with the Chain Mail then fall into the Armor points giving Full Plate armors (ending at Ancestral Plate Armor) and into the most CON giving armors, that end at the Officer Armor.
Each branch represents and results in 3 development choices: The Damage Dealer, The Protector and the Tank. Therefore you got to choose and know which role the Fighter or Bard or Rogue (can only go for the elven and berserker armor ) will fill in you group.

Sure, there's a certain kinda logic there but it should have been done via the skills alone without restricting what you can wear as it's silly and counter-intuitive. A player can accept that he needs training to fight better (i.e. unlock special bonuses) in a specific armor type. Asking him to accept that he can't wear reinforced leather or armor reserved for officers because he doesn't have the right skill is a bit too much. Considering that most loot is garbage and finding a new armor piece is a very rare occasion, restricting it is bad design, plain and simple. Restricting anything is bad design. Let the player wear it or use it but slap penalties which would make the weapons and armor less effective without the right skill. That's the time-honored way of doing it, no?

 

[Hoaxmetal]

Inxile can't afford someone refunding their game just because wearing heavy armor slows them down or something

 

[Vault Dweller]

To illustrate:

 

[entr0py]

I have put quite a few hours already into the game and I have to tell you guys I have a lot of fun with it so far.

My thoughts about the game:
- Right off the bat I have to admit I found the game butt ugly, which was quite offputting. But after a few hours in, the design started to grow on me and once you leave Skara Brae, the forest area doesn't look half as bad
- Some people might find the linearity a bit of a problem. However here level gating is comprised of two elements:
1) Paths are magically sealed: you can't get further on that path until you unlock the right song or get the required item, meaning you have to advance the story in order to get ahead
2) Paths are blocked by enemies way above your level: I love this approach. It happened already that I took on some monsters/guards who should have been above my paygrade, but after I was able to defeat them, the path was open and I usually got some nice item from a chest nearby And this makes picking challenging fights really rewarding imo.
- Others criticized the skill requirement for wearing armor. While I get the point from a simulationist point of view I think here it works quite fine. First of all you need to specialize in a branch of armor that would make the most sense for your character or which you prefer from a roleplaying standpoint. Once you made up your mind, you can actually use your precious skill points to get to the journeyman/master level quickly, thus being able to equip the best tier of a given armor branch. These things can be bought right next to the place you started the game, but they cost a lot of money. So basically if you chose so and you sacrifice skill points and resources you can go out of your way and could have the option to outfit your company (or at least 1-2 of them) with the highest tier armor pretty quickly thanks to this system, while in other games best in class equipment is usually only found during mid-to-endgame content. I like this added layer of early specialization option. And again, you don't have to do it, its up to the player
- I love the puzzle weapons, such a great idea, I find it a really nice touch, and their models look pretty as well
- Being able to use weapon skills without that specific weapon equipped is a very interesting design choice but I'm okay with it. For example: at least I don't have to change to two-handed swords (and thus losing armor rating) to rend armor of the enemies - this wouldn't be even possible with the rogue who also has this ability. So picking your skills becomes completely separated from picking your weapons, which makes skill and weapon management independent of each other and as they both give different bonuses I find this kind of liberty quite refreshing.
- The number of action points is a bit on the lower side, but certain skills can expand that, so that seems to be well balanced in the end.
- I like the distinction between magical and physical actions, which use different resources, basically doubling the number of moves available for you in a given round
- The stats: constitution/intelligence/strength is pretty retardedly implemented, this should have been improved a lot. Strength governing all damage done is a letdown. I would have added 2-3 more stats governing different aspects of character progression so you could build characters very differently instead of pumping strength on every damage dealer and con on frontliners
- The puzzles are not especially hard, I think they found a good balance between being tedious/fun/hard so its a big plus in my book.
- On the technical aspects: the game runs smoothly on Ultra on my rig (CPU: i7 4790K; GPU: Nvidia GTX 970; 16GB RAM)
- I have only came across bugs once. My whole inventory pulled a Houdini and disappeared completely, loading a save from a few minutes earlier fixed the problem. Save often and check your inventory every now and then guys.

All-in-all I have tremendous fun with the game so far even though it's very far from being perfect. It's rewarding to find great combos and win fights that should be above your level. It also brings back some old-school vibes with things like the code wheel and for the first time in years I have to use pen and paper to make some notes where each of the elven artifact pillars are in the world and what rhyme they represent instead of a journal force-feeding everything.

 

[theSavant]

restricting what you can wear is silly and counter-intuitive. A player can accept that he needs training to fight better (i.e. unlock special bonuses) in a specific armor type. Asking him to accept that he can't wear reinforced leather or armor reserved for officers because he doesn't have the right skill is a bit too much. Considering that most loot is garbage and finding a new armor piece is a very rare occasion, restricting it is bad design, plain and simple. Restricting anything is bad design. Let the player wear it or use it but slap penalties which would make the weapons and armor less effective without the right skill. That's the time-honored way of doing it, no?

To illustrate:

Totally agree with that. And thanks for the reminder why I hate skilltrees: because then suddenly every trivial thing becomes a skill to develop. So you want to put on an armor? Develop the armorskill first. So you want to put on a shoe? Develop the shoebinding skill first. So you want to put on a sock? Develop the sockskill first. Sock it, man!

Or it happens when you run out of ideas and then frantically try to make the skilltree fuller. Which obviously happened here. Fuck them skilltrees, give me points to spend. I hope they remove this shit in one of the future patches or at least replace it with something meaningful, because it's...

 

[Vault Dweller]

Totally agree with that. And thanks for the reminder why I hate skilltrees: because then suddenly every trivial thing becomes a skill to develop. So you want to put on an armor? Develop the armorskill first.

And if you want to wear heavy armor, you need to invest in light and medium armor first.

 

[Morkar Left]

Totally agree with that. And thanks for the reminder why I hate skilltrees: because then suddenly every trivial thing becomes a skill to develop. So you want to put on an armor? Develop the armorskill first.

And if you want to wear heavy armor, you need to invest in light and medium armor first.

Which actually makes sense again. But it's strange that you can't wear light armor when you're already used to wear a heavy load.

 

[Darkzone]

Asking him to accept that he can't wear reinforced leather or armor reserved for officers because he doesn't have the right skill is a bit too much.

Yes it is not the most realistic design decision and it could been have caught by caps for the utilization of the attributes gained through the armor (as you have also stated). People are retarded and newcomers could have a problem with the fact that they gain less on the attributes as it is stated if they had the proper skill. And then try to explain to them that this is a feature not a bug. Technical this form of restriction is also in DnD and Pathfinder where you have to take either the class or feat to open up the possibility to wear a armor like light, medium or heavy.

Considering that most loot is garbage and finding a new armor piece is a very rare occasion, restricting it is bad design, plain and simple. Restricting anything is bad design.

No. Not necessary. Quite the opposite in most cases. It is about how and why you restrict something and how you show the restriction that you place upon the system. I know that by writing the following i will get many retarded tags from retards, that have utterly no understanding in systems and system theory, and therefore i place this sentence before the core point, so that some retards may reconsider the tag:
Each rule, law and etc is per se a restiction of the space of possibilites. Traffic regualtion are restrictions, Court and Law system are restrictions etc.etc. Every systems begins to function properly, because of the placed restriction on its work space. Restrictions are the form of mass eliminating of relations of variables (parts of the system) within a system, for the sake of desired relations. When you are born your neurons are extremely high connected between each other and you learn and get smarter by restricting the amount of "unnecessary" connections within your brain while strengthening the other connections. Yes naturally you brain grows new interneuronal connections, but overall as a grown up you have lost around 70%-80% of the amount of connections that you were born with. So yes restrictions are a valid part of most of the systems and every system designer has to think not only what a system should do, but what it also should not do. But we are talking here about a specific system and a generalisation is a fault, therefore:
So the question should be is this case if the Armor restriction is "good" or "bad" for the BTIV combat-characters-system, but for this you have to look at the entire game system and there it is corresponding to other skills.
You appeal to the argument of realism, i concur with you that it is not realistic, because technically you should be able to wear any armor (as long as it fits your measurement and size), but you should not be able to utilize its full potential without proper training. I have not the problem with the armor restriction, because it is also done in DnD and it fits the design of the other skills and skill trees in BTIV.
So perhaps you think that it is bad, because you didn't found a "good" armor in the chests. But i on the other side think: Why don't you buy a "good fitting" armor? There are two sellers who sell armor in Skara Brae.

 

[Invictus]

The Steam score for this has been steadily rising; it started around 40 and now it is on 56% plus most of the mainstream sites like Eurogamer and PC Gamer have given it decent scores
The latest patch seems to have some good improvements on performance... I might start playing it after the Legacy mode is added