![]() You can choose to sacrifice a newly found luck stone for experience, without saving, to help you further improve your party. ![]() Save games are done manually at “luck stones” which will make it so that you can come back to that location if you die or have to reload, obviously, but the most interesting part of the “luck stones” is the sacrifice mechanic. I f I didn’t talk about the save system I wouldn’t be doing this game justice. It isn’t just a quest hub though as the same adventurers guild is the entity that allows you to further increase your characters masteries of your chosen spec, they have to approve you moving onto higher tier abilities, kind of a strange mechanic but I could accept it. While Bards Tale IV is in the dungeon crawler genre the place I ended up crawling to the most was the adventurer’s guild as once I completed a quest I had to return to them and turn in and pick up another. Actions I take for granted in normal RPG games such as jumping and ducking to hide are also non-existent there is no constant rabbit jumping happening here or stealth mechanic. It didn’t take long to realize this design limits many actions such as sneaking free roaming to explore. It uses creative design with its lighting, free movement, lines of sight and map layouts to think you are traversing something of your own accord when in reality it’s a completely linear and you never had a choice in the matter. There was never an open world, just like there was never any cake. I say punishing because the ingredients to make potions are as rare as seeing someone selling it themselves.īards Tale IV: Barrows Deep at first glance appears to give you the freedom like titles such as “Skyrim” with its amazing open world adventuring but you’ll soon realize, it’s all a lie. Bards Tale IV has a pretty punishing crafting system. You also have to be careful not to use your supplies all willy-nilly you can’t just simply go buy a stack of potions from the next vendor you see. Spells and abilities in combat can really turn the tide and you can use them in creative ways such as using a levitate spell to fling an enemy onto a different grid space altogether and potentially interrupting the action he was about to use. You’ll get no bonuses until you replace them or realize there are penalties for mastering one ability over another. Character building is pretty intense, as there is no redoing your characters if you put points into something you don’t like or doesn’t benefit you such as specializing in heavy armor but using light armor. speaking of weapons and armor, don’t think that just because you found a great piece of armor you’ll be able to use it. ![]() You will of course outfit your bard, or other chosen class, with items you will find or buy throughout your travels with different sorts of weapons and armor and customize your party. Combat is not what you would expect from a game in 2018 but fits in well with the dungeon crawler aspect as it takes place in a grid of your party versus the enemy and you spend action points to either move or use attacks, different attacks can use varying amounts of points so while you may have a party of six fighting a party of four don’t just get to pulverize the enemy with sheer number. You also don’t do anything regarding stats such as intellect, strength of dexterity. Choices were very limited in regards to customization it was pretty much a choice of female, male and then a few voices regardless of which race I chose. I stuck with a bard just to keep things simple and keep to the aesthetic of the game. You’ll start your adventure with a default character you can keep for the rest of the game or create your own bard or other class with a choice of a few species of humanoids to continue. Full disclosure, Bards Tale III came out on my birth year so no, I have no idea on the history of Bards Tale the game aside from what I’ve uncovered researching some backstory. Another key note is that this was funded by Kickstarter with over 33,000 backers. Regardless, InXile has had to drastically revamp its gameplay from the previous installment and move to something slightly more in line with the 2004 release “The Bards Tale” which was released by them but in no way was tied to the IP that was owned by EA at the time. Bards Tale IV: Barrows Deep, developed and published by InXile Entertainment took a whopping 30 years to release and I can confirm it’s vastly different than Bards Tale III: Thief of Fate.
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