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    The Bard's Tale IV: Barrow's Deep

    Game » consists of 8 releases. Released Sep 18, 2018

    The Bard's Tale IV was funded through Kickstarter and developed by the original creator of the franchise, Brian Fargo.

    So The Bard's Tale IV is out. Anyone have impressions?

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    ArbitraryWater

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    #1  Edited By ArbitraryWater

    After something like 3 years, InXile's third and least financially successful CRPG crowdfunding revival has come out to what feels like a general reaction of "Oh hey, this finally came out." Well, at least that's how I felt when I got the email asking me if I wanted a Steam or a GOG key. That definitely seems like the case for me and crowdfunding recently, but to this game's credit it still managed to beat Bloodstained and Underworld Ascendant out and the door, which had their campaigns around the same time. You might be excused for not remembering this game exists (given that it's a series that hasn't been truly relevant since the early 90s, that 2004 diablo-esque action RPG starring Cary Elwes notwithstanding, but hey Bryan Fargo doesn't own the rights to Fallout or D&D, so he has to go for the other games made under his watch at Interplay) but it's essentially a first-person party-based dungeon crawler in the style of the original Bard's Tale RPGs, Wizardry, and Might and Magic. It's got environmental puzzles, exploration gated by bard songs (i.e. some light metroidvania elements) and a heavy focus on turn-based combat that seems decidedly minimalist and has a lot of emphasis around positioning.

    To be perfectly honest, I've been a little wary of this one after Torment: Tides of Numenera disappointed me, but I played through the first few hours (essentially the tutorial and introductory quest) and I think it might benefit from not trying to recreate one of the most singular and important installments in the genre. The combat seems like it could be pretty great once you start unlocking skills and I'm into the heavily Scottish/Celtic vibes everything is giving off. It's not much of a looker, but I'm getting some Might and Magic X, maybe some Grimrock vibes from it that I appreciate.

    That said... between my current playthrough of Divinity Original Sin II, my desire to go back and pick Pillars of Eternity II back up at some point, the release of Pathfinder Kingmaker next week, and most importantly the release of the "classic" Wizards and Warriors on GOG a few weeks ago I feel like this is the one in my depressing CRPG backlog that's going to get the shaft. It seems genuinely solid, but I don't feel like it has a killer hook in the way any of the above games do, and it currently has some serious optimization problems, with minute-long loading times for certain areas and frequent hitching. Maybe my mind will change, but for now I think I might go back to trying to get through Act 2 in Original Sin.

    If anyone else backed this or picked it up I'd be interested in hearing what you think.

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    Relkin

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    I've already seen quite a few complaints about various technical woes; FPS regularly dipping below 30, long loading times, some effects causing motion sickness, etc. I think I'll wait on this one, to see if they can iron some of that stuff out.

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    frytup

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    Yeah, that campaign was running back when I was throwing money at any crowd funded project that looked interesting. I got the minimum level and pretty much forgot about it.

    Installed and got far enough to mess around with character creation this morning. Haven't played enough to say if the frame rate is going to bother me, and I doubt I'm going to get deeply into it anytime soon. There's just too much other stuff I want to play right now, and I'm not sure a first person dungeon crawler is something I can convince myself to stick with anyway. Isometric is much more my thing.

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    sparky_buzzsaw

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    Good writeup, Arbitrary. This seems up my alley so I’ll give it a shot when I’ve knocked down the back catalog a bit.

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    soulcake

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    #5  Edited By soulcake

    Music is pretty good definitely some GOTY contender when it comes to the soundtrack. To bad nobody at GB plays CRPG's except for Rorie when he's not playing WoW :D.

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    John1912

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    Been playing most of the day. Im really enjoying it. I had a lot of trouble getting myself to stop playing. Seems like game is kinda mixed impression wise for a lot of people. Frame rate does get kinda hitchy, or stalls for second or two. Running GTX 1080. Does have some pretty long load times between areas as well. Otherwise is been great imo.

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    Harmanecha

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    I have about an hour in so far, not counting cinematics. I played a few of the original BT games in the 80's and enjoyed? them? This one feels really strange.. some elements of this game are super polished.. even above some AAA showings, while other elements feel like they were plucked from a late 90s activeworlds rp server. The music is great, the voice acting is passable, and most of the art and 3d models are amazing. However, the traversal is floaty with occasional collision problems or invisible walls, and the combat is basically what you'd expect from a turn based crpg. It just FEELS weird. Ok, I GOT IT - It feels like me and Tom Zito are using the game Myst to play the Legend of Grimrock.

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    chrjz

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    #8  Edited By chrjz

    What I thought this thread was about...

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