The Bard's Tale IV: Director's Cut - Xbox One

Not like the old Bards Tale from the Commodore Amiga days. But brings a whole new level of the game into play.

The is an awesome game that is a great update to the games from the 80's.

I grew up playing the classic Bards Tales' games on a C64 at my friend's house.This reboot definitely borrows sentiment form those games as well as throwbacks to other RPG 's of the 80's.I'm currently about 20 hours in and enjoying the game.The game does have a lot of puzzles and riddles, but most RPG's of the 80's did rely on this mechanic, and you might even need to write down some notes to remember it all, just like you did in the older games.There is an option to play the game without all the puzzles, so you can just focus on story and combat.You also can adjust settings to have a map or not as well as combat difficulty.You start game with a pre-made character, but within an hour of gameplay you are allowed to create your own avatar and can acquire means to create other party members as well.Graphics are a mixed bag, character models look pretty good, and facial animations are nice when talking to npc's but the environments and textures can be rather lackluster.Sound is fantastic, mainly the soundtrack as you walk through town , you will hear various songs being sung and or played on medieval instruments. The voice acting is top notch as well.The combat portion of the game is reminiscent of older rpg's with a modern twist. Your party is positioned on a 2×4 grid versus the enemies on a grid as well.You use strategy to position your party and utilize attacks to your best advantage. I like the combat system, it takes a bit to get used to, but becomes more and more complex as game continues.Oddly, your characters don't progress with stats like most rpgs do, when you level, you get to choose one new skill.Hitpoints, strength, and intelligence modifiers are determined by what gear you are using.The game does have some issues and is by no means perfect, I've come across a few bugs, mostly sounds if doors opening/closing while walking over a threshold, or one bug where a gate I had opened with a key was locked again after I opened it but no longer had the key, so I needed to load an earlier save and replay the section.This was a crowdfunded game produced by a small company, it's going to have some issues. Other than some bugs there are a few questionable gameplay choices. Crafting food to heal your party seems like a good time until you realize you heal yourself at the plentiful save points.All and all I'm having a great time with the game, because I grew up with a lot of these mechanics, but I'd rate the game about a 6 or 7 on a 10 point scale.

Almost total trash. This is NOT the Bard's Tale as you might know it (the classic computer / NES role playing series). You can't create a party like before. There are NO RANDOM ENCOUNTERS. There are TONS or highly repetitive puzzles, so much so that this is better described as a puzzle-solving game than an RPG. You will spend more time wandering about looking at things and solving riddles than role playing or in combat. Everything is pre-planned, so there's no real exploration- it's like an "RPG" on rails, or a theme-park ride. You absolutely have to stay on script 100% of the time. The graphics would be good if this was a game that came out in 2001. They're very PS2-ish. Game crashes causing to to have to play parts over and over. It can't even keep track of time right- by my third time playing it, the game told me I had sunk 65 hours into it when the number was actually around 7. I eventually couldn't take the monotony of it any more and threw in the towel even though I wanted to be able to say I played through all 4 Bard's Tales.

Greatest game ever