The Bard's Tale strikes a sour note.
When your first impression of a game can be summed up as: "Thank goodness I borrowed this and didn't spend any money on it," you know that you're in trouble. InXile's The Bard's Tale takes its name from the classic PC RPG series of the 1980's, re-imagining it as a top-down hack 'n slash. While it attempts to be a satire of the genre, The Bard's Tale fails to be anything different than the games it lampoons. In fact, it manages to be a lot worse than any of its cliched ancestors.
You play as the Bard, a ragamuffin rogue that uses his limited magic abilities to get some free room and board, as well as a little female companionship to keep the cot warm. While Cary Elwes did a memorable job with the character, it's difficult to like him. You can choose to be either nice or snarky, though either attitudes bear little impact on the game's progression. Also, while some of the humor works at the beginning of the game, it quickly devolved into ill-mannered jokes and stupid, unfunny ballads. Fortunately, the narrator does a good job of ripping on the Bard throughout the adventure. It's very apparent that the developers loved their own jokes, even though they aren't that funny, but ran out of them about half way through.
Graphically, this game is serviceable, but not very noteworthy. It uses the same game engine as Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance and Champions of Norrath, but doesn't do much with it. The enemies are generally dull-looking, stock RPG creatures, and the various NPCs look plain ugly. While the locales are similar to the rest of the genre (e.g. forests, caves, graveyards) they manage to not look as good as the games The Bard's Tale is based on.
Combat is changed in a few notable ways from BG:DA, in which you would just block an enemy's attack, counter with your own combo, and repeat. The Bard cannot just sit and block all day, wait for an opening, and button mash. Blocking is a timed event, requiring you to read your enemy and anticipate its attacks. Once you block, you can then parry and counter enemy attacks. You'll quickly learn that wading in, swinging wildly at the enemy will only serve to get you wiped out. I applaud InXile for attempting to mix up combat, but all this does is slow down the pace dramatically, especially at the beginning of the game. The magic system is also quite a bit different, as the only ability that you have is to summon creatures. Some summons are more useful than others, but all have a particular function whether it be to block magic, disarm traps, or fight alongside you. Over time, you can summon multiple creatures.
Ultimately, The Bard's Tale is definitely not worth your time, and is certainly not worth your money. It's ugly, boring, slow, and unfunny. Given that there are so many more Diablo clones out there that actually are good, I can't recommend this game to anyone. Stay away. Stay far away.
