The Bard's Tale ARPG: Remastered and Resnarkled Reviews

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I have an eternal soft spot in my heart for this game. Tony Jay's narration is totally unbeatable.

It's basic CRPG with many pluses but ...the savegame-points kill it, No, it's when you're playing easy and have to get thru this labyrith of ranged weaponeers when you're melee. It was great in its' time. Now, not so much -- the game ignores CPU speed and will kill you many times -- but the cut-scenes are entertaining and save time. No Inventory hassle, it's a good intro to RPG -- the responses are Evil/mad face or happy face. I can get down with that these days. But I still hate check-point saves. *Found a perma-bug. [b]Gotta thumbs-down now, :([/b] I cannot continue because the game doesn't go EASY when I'm playing on EASY through KNOWN/OLD BUGS; Highland Park was insurmountable and stopped my progress.

A fun & sassy game. Doesn't require I've a walkthrough that might be helpful.

An ok, fun Action RPG, with the particularity of being a parody of the medieval fantasy genere and RPG games. The voice acting and the hilarious writing are certainly the high point of this game. Sadly, the gameplay can a be a little monotonous over time and the controls and combat a little unresponsive. Anyway, the funny songs and the plot are well worth playing this unique gem.

This game has aged very poorly so keep that in mind if you plan to play it. First the good. The story, world, and characters are still really good, some of the humor may not stand the test of time for some folks but overall, I found the humor to landed more the missed. The bard as a character is also a huge POS so if you like playing more traditional heroes you might not like him as much, though Karma almost always hits back at the bard in all his encounters. Then the bad, sorry to say the worst part of the Bard's Tale is the gameplay though. This is one of the worse controlled action RPGs I've really played and least variety in terms of combat. First every map has you fight the same two to three enemy types over and over. Their models may change but their tactics largely don't with typically One ranged type and one melee type and rarely a healing enemy. Melee only goal is to surround you and they can stun lock you very easy if they succeed, ranged enemies barely matter, and healing are annoying as they constantly run away. You fight so many of these groups over and over with increasing numbers to the point you'd have to cheese them from afar as you can attack them off screen with a bow and they'll do nothing. Second your combat capabilities are very limited. You have a melee attack that is almost always blocked if you attack from the front against any melee enemy. A ranged weapon that takes so long to fire that if enemies are charging at you and get maybe one to two shots before they reach you if you don't attack while they are off screen in which case congrats you found the strategy to slowly and boringly win every fight. Summons who are either too weak to be helpful getting off one-two attacks maybe before immediately dying, are too utility based to do anything meaningful, or simply don't work as advertised 70% of the time. Grab the tank minion only for enemies to still prioritize you, grab the mercenary to attack only to suffer the same fate as the player when swarmed by melee enemies and immediately dying, grab the summon to remove traps only for him to stupidly run towards enemies and die, etc. and etc. If you do want to try this just play on the easiest setting for the story because I can pretty much guarantee the combat and gameplay aspects of this title will wear down any played who was just mildly interested in a new RPG.

Fantastic game, a truly hidden gem. Voice acting, jokes and songs are the highlight, but the gameplay itself is really solid too. Its still smooth and responsive and gives a lot of fun.

A mostly competent early ARPG. Fun enough, despite some rough patches, and while it does show its age when it comes to the menus and options, even as a remastered version, it still holds up well enough to play. The voice work is good, the songs are decent, but there is a strange lack of music overall.