In 1988, I was 4 years old when my 12 year old brother got a Commodore 64 for his birthday. I sat next to him while he played through The Bard's Tale. I asked him when it was my turn to play. He looked at me and laughed. Flashforward 30 years. Tonight, when my brother comes home from his fulfilling and well paying job, he has to kiss his wonderful kids goodnight, and then gets to have sex with his beautiful wife, while I'm playing The Bard's Tale IV. Who's laughing now, huh? WHO'S LAUGHING NOW, IDIOT?!?

This is actually a really cool game. The ambience, music, setting, etc. is beautiful. There are some performance issues but nothing that can't be dealt with. In 20 or so hours of play I encountered one incident of having to reload a save due to a bug and 1 fatal error (resulting in again, reloading a save.). Not great, not unplayably bad. The main reason I can't recommend this game is, despite its unique combat system and beauty and depth and storyline and and the rest of it, and the glorious feeling of nostalgia, after a while, it feels like you're playing Frustrating Puzzle Simulator. Now don't get me wrong. I like puzzles. And some of the puzzles in this are quite clever, and good. Unfortunately, it seems that they decided to just use the same ones over and over and over and OVER Ragequit #1: There's a puzzle involving a flying wisp and turning totems. You are introduced to this puzzle gradually and it becomes increasingly complex. It was very satisfying working through th...

I really don't get why all the negativity here. This games has lots of atmosphere and personality with fairly deep RPG mechanics. I'm really enjoying it so far. I've seen bad reviews solely because the game didn't have 21:9 monitor support WTF?! You're going to thumb a game down solely on that?!?! Or because the game crashed - fair enough but I'm guessing that will be fixed soon (hasn't been a problem for me at all - game runs perfectly on my GTX 970 on ultra settings). Go ahead and buy the game and if it won't load - get a refund and try again in couple weeks. The game's a bit different from the old Bard's Tale. I think that's a good thing. I recently played Bard's Tale I, and it's an ok game and brought back memories of when I played it in the 80's (I'm 44) but guess what - the game mechanics are DATED. Whoda thunkit, a 30 year old game with rough game mechanics? There are less attribute stats this time around, but there are many new skills that the old games never had. I like the s...

I rarely post reviews but for whatever reason I find myself compelled to put one here. I only have a mere 4.2 hours played as I write this, but I have played enough games to know that it is a bit rare that a game will drastically change your mind after initial impressions, although It does happen especially if a game degrades in later phases or has a terrible ending. Lord help us if that is the case with Barrows Deep. I played the original Bards Tale, but not to completion nor I am I by any stretch a die hard fan of the original or am I writing this from the view point of wanting to re-capture nostalgia. I do however greatly long for a modern day Wizardy 8 style which at first I hope maybe this could be but I already knew going in that it probably was not going to be. I will first summarize my gut feel for this game in my limited experience thus far. It is one of those games where whomever decided to go through a list of features and check them off. But really never had a complete vi...

I am 21 hours in.And I must say I absolutely love this games.Yes the game had its issues on release day.(Crashing,Framerate Drops Etc...)However I was able to over look all of those thing and enjoy the game.The game is fully voice acted for one.It tells a wonderful fanastical story.Its paced very well.It boost it self with an aray of very Colorful and animated characters.Each with there own hidden agendas and circumstances.I will write another review in about a week.But this game isn't one to miss.It is a hidden jewel that must not be forgotten.

This game is sadly a shadow of itself and what it could be. I was really excited for it but after playing the starting part of it I realized that it is really shallow. The game allways teases what it could have been but the excecution is just mediocre. My main negativ points are: 1) Puzzles. The game is more of a puzzle game instead of a dungeon crawler with secrets. There are plenty of puzzles, but these are done very poorly. They are way to simple or can be brute forced (cog locks). I don't mind puzzles if they are done good. See "The Talos Principle" for a very well made puzzle game. 2) Exploration and finding secrets: The game is very linear, at least for the beginning. There aren't really that much hidden secrets to find and if you find a secret chest, it often contains underwhelming loot. This is a problem with the randomized loot system. In a game like Legend of Grimrock you could find some cool gear and stuff and it was allways helpfull, but not randomized. Here you find a c...

Such obvious love and care poured into this. The environments and music cavort together to produce a quirky, unique and totally absorbing hideaway to gawk at and listen to. Loadsa secrets, skills, spells, drunk Scots, tartan and potatoes. Beasties abound and combat is a madcat explosion of skills and effects of real variety. I've laughed, run away, hidden, been stumped, stopped to listen (how often does that happen in a game?), passed out, nearly died, actually died, and made a lot of sandwhiches. With cabbage (really devs?) Released a little early, it has a few bugs and missing features. Running like the morning after 8 pints and a deep-fried kebab, it staggers but has a head full of great memories and good times. A wee beauty.

This is the first RPG I've played through to the end in...I don't know how long. Perhaps it's the nostalgia factor since I played Bard's Tale 1 and 2 on the Commodore 64 decades ago; but I enjoyed this story, the turn-based combat was fun, and crafting the "A-Team" with a perfect set of skills for epic combat interaction was a blast! Voice acting and music I thought were both great. I usually despise puzzles in games, and this one could have used at least 50% fewer puzzles, but even that didn't spoil it for me. (Though, really, who would put puzzles in every corner of the world???) I only had to cheat (look online) for the answers to a few. It's not really an "open world" game, so I don't think I'll be doing any replays to see what I might have missed. The story is linear and the guardrails are visible clearly. Maybe it wouldn't be worth the full price for anyone who didn't play the old Bard's Tale games; but I don't regret parting with the money.

**Now 14 hours into the game and loving it even more, left the first area, now I am in a big forest area with cool houses, great game! Also the last 2 updates have been fantastic, fixed almost all of the fps issues** ***3 awesome patches later and the game is even better than ever, now is a perfect time to try the game!** Only a few hours in so far but I am having a very good time. Here are some of my early thoughts The Positives: - The Music is fantastic, one of my favorite soundtracks in years. Might have the best main menu music around to! - The atmosphere is great, I really feel pulled into this adventure - The graphics are nice, from the textures, to the effects during combat, very pretty to look at for a dungeon crawler - The voice acting is fantastic, very good so far - Combat is fun, despite it being different than what I am use to for a dungeon crawler, I am having a good time. At first it might seem basic, but the more you play the more you see the depth it has. I end u...

I love this game, its got a fair load of bugs and technical issues (which are mostly getting resolved by the day) and character models and textures may be ugly as sin but that doesnt detract from the rest, even though i'm playing it on low settings. This game has something not a lot of other rpgs i played have, and that is a heart and soul, you can tell the devs really poured it all on to the making of this and it shows in the level design, the puzzles, the music, atmosphere and overall feel of the game. I felt like i should drop a positive review because this game absolutely does not deserve its current mixed reviews, thanks inXile for the adventure.