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The Bard's Tale ( 2004 )
PC (Steam)
Snark Not, Lest Thou Be Snarked.
3/5 stars
Way back in yon olden days before the Nintendo Entertainment System had a chance to revitalize console gaming after Atari’s Crash, and before console developers (located mostly in Japan) began to refine user interfaces and gameplay paradigms into something resembling “user friendly,” PC gaming was a thing. And it was a terrible thing. In 1985, spurred by the popularity of the Dungeons & Dragons tabletop Role-Playing Game, a right-place-right-time individual by the name of Michael Cranford took an idea to Interplay – then still under the rule of founder Brian Fargo, of ‘Fallout’ fame. The result of Cranford’s and Fargo’s collaboration was a D&D-inspired CRPG called “The Bard’s Tale: Tales of the Unknown,” which was later followed by two sequels, “The Destiny Knight” and “The Thief of Fate.” The first two of these received NES ports, but due to their generalized ugliness, clunkiness, and user hostility, never gained much of a reputation amongst the growing console gaming crowd.
In 2004, after the implosion of Interplay, the sale of its assets, and the scattering of its staff to the four winds, Brian Fargo attempted to reignite his own personal game developer/publisher flame and formed inXile Entertainment (as a tongue-in-cheek pun on how he had been ‘exiled’ his own company, Interplay). InXile managed to procure the rights to some old, unloved PC games of the forgotten past. The most recent productions to come out of inXile portfolio of IPs, “Torment: Tides of Numenera” and “Wasteland 2,” belie a relatively unimpressive starting slate of games produced by the crowd-funded company between its founding in 2004 and the present. The first of these titles, however, was a reimagining of the original ‘Bard’s Tale,’ simply dubbed “The Bard’s Tale” (“BT04”), which was a rather dismal little title pushed onto the popular console of the time, the PlayStation 2 (and the Xbox for some reason), and later ported to PC. I didn’t even realize there was such a title as “BT04” in 2004, or I probably would have played it on PS2. Instead, I only heard about this game when it hit GOG.com somewhere around 2012, as a package deal with all three of its archaic predecessors coming along for the ride.
Presentation
“BT04” comes across as incredibly half-assed. While it was built in the Snowblind Engine, which was created for and primarily used in the misbegotten Hack ‘n Slash spinoff ‘Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance’ titles, inXile adapted it for use in “BT04,” with decidedly uninspired results. The camera is too close to the action, sniping enemies who are off-screen is a very real occurrence, and the general look and feel of the game is something like a ‘Babby’s Furst Asset Flip’ one would expect to find flowing through the gaping orifice of Steam Direct. The environments are bland and poorly hedged-in with out-of-place walls, while the textures are generally muddy and hideous. Of course, as a PlayStation 2 era game, polygonal graphics weren’t up to modern standards, but that doesn’t excuse how underwhelming the titular Bard’s world looks. Not everything about the game’s visuals is equally odious, however, as the character animations are well-done, lip synch is good, and character models have actual fully-animated hands with fingers instead of the horrible mitten-fists which were commonplace at the time.
“BT04” is, at its heart, a musical comedy. Yet it has one of the blandest, most unassuming soundtracks of 2004. While the actual musical interludes are great, featuring such (karaoke-ready) titles as “The Ballad of Charlie Mops” (the man who invented beer) and the recurring earworm (which infected my mind enough to affect my sleep) “It’s Bad Luck to Be You,” performed by a trio of goblin-like Trow who appear out of nowhere at the damnedest times, the actual music that accompanies gameplay is mostly… not music at all. “BT04” is generally a very quiet game, accompanied by the sound of footsteps or combat alone. To go along with the excellent musical interludes, “BT04” features full voiceacting, all of which is incredibly well-done and truly evokes the Fantasy Scotland setting. Only two voice-actors of note were on the cast of “BT04”: Cary Elwes as the titular Bard (better known for equally snarky, disreputable characters from “The Princess Bride” and “Robin Hood: Men in Tights”), and the late Tony Jay as the spiteful narrator (known for numerous voiceovers and narrations throughout his long career). Unfortunately, there is a bit more half-assery in the recording of the VA, as numerous dialog clips have extra noises at the end where they weren’t edited quite right, leaving the entire experience feeling rather unpolished and sloppy.
Technically, “BT04” isn’t the greatest. While I will give it credit for having native controller support in 2004, I will take that credit right back by pointing out that it was ORIGINALLY released on PS2 and Xbox, so controller support would be essential and removing it from the PC version (which came out a year later) would be idiotic. However, this controller support isn’t true Xinput support, nor is it particularly good. Instead of showing the ABXY, Start, Back, and Bumper buttons, it just shows generic Dinput buttons 1-12 and expects the player to either know or guess (or do like me and push every button to see what it does) which button is which on their controller of choice. This unfortunate UI oversight leads to some rather odd button placements, such as putting the game’s Inventory and Main Menu on the L3 and R3 (analog stick click) buttons, respectively. Outside of the half-assed controller support, “BT04” is a bit tricky to get running. The options to set resolution and whatnot are hidden in a separate executable, while the main game itself insists upon being Run as Administrator in order to not lock-up the system with a black screen.
Story
“BT04” is, ostensibly, a reimagining of the original “Bard’s Tale: Tales of the Unknown,” but I honestly find that very difficult to believe, considering the original game was a party-based, turn-based Dungeon Crawler, while “BT04” is a solo, lightweight Hack ‘n Slash that is so light on the Hacking, Slashing, and looting that it borders on a straight Action/Adventure.
Regardless, “BT04” is, as mentioned earlier, a snarky musical comedy that aims to spoof on all of the tropes and stereotypes of generic Fantasy stories, all against a background of medieval Scotland, portrayed in a way very reminiscent of British comedy legends, Monty Python. Our hero, the Bard, who is never given any other name, is a wandering ne’er-do-well in search of wine, women, and song, who stumbles into a small Scottish village and makes a name for himself by first summoning (using his magical lute), then banishing a rat at the local tavern. The regular barflies and the barmaid send the Bard into the cellar to deal with the rest of their rat problem, with predictably ridiculous results.
Having established himself as something of an adventurer, the Bard soon crosses paths with a one-armed Scottsman who sends him on a wild goose chase in search of additional magical tunes which will allow the Bard to summon more useful allies to his side. This Scottsman turns out to be the servant of a Princess Caleigh, who promises to shower the Bard with riches and sexual favors if he defeats a group of crazed druids who have imprisoned her in a tower.
Thus the Bard sets off to extinguish the lights of three towers which are tied to the life forces of the monstrous rulers of each tower. Along the way, the Bard leaves a trail of misunderstandings and inadvertent disasters in his wake. All of this is narrated by the sardonic Tony Jay, whose contempt for the Bard drips off every word, with frequent banter between the hero and the narrator breaking the Fourth Wall in silly ways.
In general, the writing and humor in “BT04” takes a certain mindset to enjoy. As mentioned above, if you like Monty Python, “BT04” will tickle your funny bone. If you don’t like Monty Python, this game’s jokes and sense of humor will grate on your sensibilities something awful. Clocking in at a mere 15 hours, with tons of point of no return preventing the player from wandering off-course, “BT04” doesn’t stick around long enough to become insufferable, even if weird British humor and the mockery of the Scottish isn’t your thing.
Gameplay
Awww, isn’t that cute! “BT04” thinks it’s an RPG… specifically, it thinks it’s an Action/RPG, which is really just the uninformed trying to describe a Hack ‘n Slash RPG, a category for which “BT04” just barely qualifies. The game primarily plays out from a slightly isometric perspective with a fully rotatable camera (which is rotated with the LR triggers instead of the right analog stick… damn, haven’t see that in a while). No other camera controls are possible, giving the game a rather near-sighted feel.
The Bard is a man of many talents, and the player is free to build him up however they see fit. He can wield melee weapons, bows, and summoning magic. I greatly appreciated the ability to summon disposable AI minions, as that is my preferred method of playing any Hack ‘n Slash, even lightweight ones. The Bard has a character sheet with 6 stats: Strength (for melee), Luck (for ?), Dexterity (for ranged), Charisma (for shop prices), and Rhythm (for summons). Each of these stats cap out at 20, but the Bard can break the cap by finding ‘Tokens’ scattered around the game that provide small permanent boosts or by drinking various kinds of booze that provide temporary boosts/penalties. Each time the Bard gains a level, he gets two stat points to distribute, and every other level he has the opportunity to pick a Talent, which range from new weapon proficiencies (flails, dual-wield, two-handed) to improving extant weapon stills or adding other bonuses like critical hits or allowing his (optional) canine companion to participate (poorly) in battles.
Aside from the dog the Bard can recruit in the first town, all of his traveling companions are magically-summoned beings that are fully expendable (the dog is actually immortal and is only knocked-out temporarily when ‘killed’). These summons all have a basic form as well as an improved form which can only be accessed by finding the upgraded tune used to summon them. These summons range from the basic rat (who becomes a horrifying Vorpal Rat once improved) to a huntress with a crossbow to a knight in shining armor to an old hag who casts healing spells to an undead triceratops that is on fire. I generally stuck with melee-centric summons plus Nick’s Mom (the healing hag), since I preferred to keep the Bard out of direct contact with the enemy while riddling them with arrows.
Unfortunately, “BT04” has a rather uneven difficulty curve. The early and mid-game are fairly manageable, and I never ended up using the special spells granted for beating the game’s bosses (these particular spells consume crystals, which are a finite resource found in treasure chests). However, I would randomly end up with a dead Bard simply due to misfortune and the huge amount of hitstun in the game. If my summons hit the enemy first, everything was good. If the enemy got in the first hit, and there were enough of them, my summons could get wiped out faster than the Bard could replace them, then the Bard would get hit, surrounded, and dead. The late game becomes pathetically easy with amazing equipment and powered-up summons. However the final boss is literally impossible without the crystal-powered special spells, so a player who struggled with the early game and blew through their crystals will literally hit a dead end and have to restart from the beginning, being careful to be more frugal with their crystals.
No Hack ‘n Slash would be a Hack ‘n Slash without loot, and this is where “BT04” generally fails at being a Hack ‘n Slash. While enemies do drop loot, it is very rare for them to drop anything that is actually useful to the Bard. Most loot dropped by slain foes is instantly auto-converted into silver, the game’s currency. Actual useful loot must be bought in the game’s handful of shops (almost all of which end up permanently closed at some point) or by finding it in treasure chests. As someone who generally dislikes randomized loot, I was okay with the fact that specific weapons, armor, and other goodies are in specific, set locations, however, hardcore Hack ‘n Slash fans definitely would not, hence “BT04” feels a bit more like an Action/Adventure game where the player simply progresses and finds character upgrades as the developers saw fit to hand them out instead of grinding for hundreds of hours to get an extra +1% on some meaningless stat.
Overall
“The Bard’s Tale (2004)” is a rather uninspired reimagining of a so-called ‘classic’ that was forgotten for a reason. While this remake does include emulations of the original trilogy, I have no plans to touch ancient PC RPGs that require reams of graph paper or Hint Books (sold separately) to be playable. Even the ‘modern’ game in the bundle dates back to an awkward time when PC and console gaming were just beginning to overlap. The result is a bland-looking game that’s very light on the RPG elements to the point of feeling more like a basic linear Action/Adventure. While the occasional funny musical interludes and the Monty Python-esque humor prevent it from being a complete dud, most gamers could easily skip this game and not feel like they’ve missed out on anything.
Presentation: 2.5/5
Story: 3.5/5
Gameplay: 3/5
Overall (not an average): 3/5
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