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The Bard's Tale Review - Page Two |
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Now, some games have gotten away with simple control schemes like that -- heck, the original
Diablo was famous for it -- but those games usually gave you other reasons to keep playing,
such as building up your character or finding new equipment. The Bard’s Tale offers neither
pastime because, again, both areas are very basic. Consider the equipment. There are weapons,
musical instruments, and suits of armor in the game, but there are only about 50 of them in total,
and they’re so straightforward that the game can manage your inventory for you, automatically
equipping items that are more powerful than what you’re using, and selling the rest.
Upgrading your character is no more interesting. All you get to do is add points to attributes and
choose new skills. That probably doesn’t sound so bad, but the game allows you to max out most of
the six attributes and choose way more skills than you could possibly use. Really, after making a
decision early in the game about whether you’d rather dual wield weapons, use a two-handed weapon,
or use a weapon and a shield, you don’t have to make another decision for the rest of the game, and
that’s just bizarrely boring.
Finally, I played The Bard’s Tale on a PC, and inXile didn’t do a great job of porting the
game from its console origins. The resolution is fixed at 640x480, the interface goes out of its
way to avoid hotkeys and instead forces you to use some clunky menu systems, and you’re only
allowed to save your game at special save points. Yuck, yuck, and triple yuck.
And so, overall, I’m giving The Bard’s Tale a dubious recommendation. It’s a funny game
(there’s even a joke on the game’s CDs), and I think people will find it entertaining enough as
they make their way through its 20 hour campaign, but the game uses a fairly basic and uninteresting
engine, it doesn’t give you any reason to play through multiple times, and it probably won’t leave
a lasting impression on your memory. Fans of Fable and Diablo will probably get more
out of The Bard's Tale than fans of Fallout and Morrowind.
| GameBanshee Rating |
Overall
7.2
How We Score |
Gameplay (50%) |
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| Graphics (25%) |
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| Sound & Music (15%) |
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| Lasting Value (10%) |
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| Article Details |
| Reviewed The Bard's Tale
Reviewer Steven Carter
Published 01.05.06
Pros Smart, funny, well acted
Cons Basic mechanics, few choices, short |
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