![]() There’s quite a variety to be had, with options opening up further as the Bard finds instruments that allows for more simultaneous summons. One who forgets about the parry button can summon a healing crone, or a wasp that transfers enemy health to the player’s team. A player that likes to fight from a distance can summon a mercenary to act as the tank. The Bard appears to have a quiver filled with copulating arrows as he never runs out, is an expert swordsman, and can use musical instruments to summon warriors and monsters to round out the group to the player’s liking. Instead of focusing on grinding for experience and loot, the gameplay is focused on using the tools available to defeat the groups of enemies. In fact, none of the stores have a sell function. It’s a rare occasion that improved gear is found, anyways. Anytime a better piece of equipment is purchased or found, it is immediately equipped and the old item converted to cash. While other titles were about collecting and equipping from a continuing pool of better equipment found on the slain enemies, this InXile decided to forego all that in favor of a streamlined experience. Suffice it to say, the script still lands with consistency, with only a few clunkers overall.Īgainst its action/RPG contemporaries, such as Diablo 2 or Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance, The Bard’s Tale might not feel as rewarding. Attempting to describe humor without ruining the jokes by robbing them of their context is difficult. Unfortunately, others have to pay the price, as well. About the Bard’s careless stupidity biting him in the ass in more elaborate and destructive ways. Whether or not they are referring to the corpse or the Bard is left ambiguous. Each discovery yields some new equipment for the Bard and is punctuated by a song from a trio of Oompa-Loompa by way of goblins, called Trow, decrying the terrible fortune beheld. There’s this running gag where the Bard constantly finds the rotting corpses of previous “Chosen Ones,” gullible saps who were convinced to take on the very task that the Bard is undergoing. It’s possible that I’m in the minority, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Now, the fear with this type of title would be that the humor hasn’t aged as well as it could have. The constant bickering between himself and the disembodied voice of the narrator goads him along, though not without copious amounts of complaining and destruction of the fourth wall. All of these actions are taken with great hesitation from the Bard, as he is driven primarily by greed and maybe a little bit of lust. An old man takes notice and teaches him a song to summon a lightening spider, which kicks off a quest to learn new songs, which leads to a princess rescue. He soon finds himself the butt of the classic “Giant Fire Breathing Rat” prank. The Bard enters a bar one evening, hoping to use his rat summoning song to trick the proprietor into giving up some cash, or at least a free drink. The story doesn’t truly follow the normal beats of an epic fantasy narrative. Fortunately, it was recent enough that a review could still be considered timely. Instead, InXile released The Bard’s Tale: Remastered and Resnarkled, and didn’t really tell anyone. ![]() ![]() ![]() So it was, with nostalgia for a reboot, I decided to check to see if anybody bothered to port the PlayStation 2 version to the PS4, in a manner similar to Red Faction or Dark Cloud. Cary Elwes played the eponymous Bard with a consistent wink and the action was challenging in a way isometric action/RPGs tend to avoid. Being an overhead hack and slash with voice acting and humor, it had little to do with the original creation. That’s why InXile’s 2004 reboot was confounding to the existing fans. The ’80s trilogy was a favorite of PC gamers in the know, with complex role playing, deep dungeon-crawling mechanics and a flexible construction set that allowed fans to follow up on the originals with their own creations. The dungeon crawler series The Bard’s Tale is one with a storied history.
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