![]() ![]() However, as I stated before, these are mechanics-driven games. While the original game has you trudging through a samey looking city between dungeon-delves, the sequels take you to far more diverse and interesting places (or at least as diverse as they can make it with limited assets). Multiple quest givers will send you to different regions, and even different realms, gearing you up for the final confrontation. You’ll explore the ruins of Skara Brae and the surrounding region, attempting to thwart the plans of the Mad God. ![]() ![]() The final chapter, Thief of Fate, is the best of the bunch, deviating from the “fetch X number of items” formula, or at least doing a better job of hiding it. Next up, The Destiny Knight has you explore a wilderness with six mini-cities, collecting seven pieces of the Destiny Wand before facing off against an evil archmage. Tales of the Unknown has you explore and clear five dungeons in the town of Skara Brae to defeat the evil mage Mangar, and free the citizens from the spell of Eternal Winter. The overall goal in every game is straight forward – save the world from some menace by collecting important items in dungeons. The Bard’s Tale Trilogy is a gameplay-focused, dungeon-crawler of yore your primary motivation is going to be developing your party into a diverse, high-level, well-equipped, monster-slaying force. If you’re looking for a narrative-driven RPG, turn back now. Rather, it’s the so-bad-its-good bardic poetry, entertaining character descriptions and flavour text, and the barely-animated yet expressive portraits that’ll sell the experience. The sequels spruced things up with greater environment and enemy diversity, some expanded combat and puzzle mechanics, and even rudimentary cutscenes for the second game, The Destiny Knight (before going back to walls of text the third game, Thief of Fate).īehold - 1986 RPG cutscenes! If modern developers and publishers spent less time and money on flashy marketing material, and more time on engaging RPG gameplay, maybe we’d be debating our favourite quest outcomes, rather than the impact of loot-boxes on gameplay.Įvents across the trilogy form a continuous story arc but there’s not all that much depth to the narrative - outside of a lengthy introductory and closing scrawl to each chapter. Irrespective of where you start, each game in The Bard’s Tale Trilogy was built on the same engine, utilising the same underlying traversal, combat, and progression mechanics. I figured with The Bard's Tale IV: Director's Cut finally arriving on consoles this month, it was time to tackle the remastered classic trilogy and see what the fuss was/is about. That said, the first game in the trilogy, Tales of the Unknown, came out in the year of my birth, so maybe I should be less critical. Gameplay in The Bard’s Tale Trilogy is both good and timeless, however, despite sporting remastered visuals, a new control scheme, faster levelling, and unified gameplay mechanics across the trilogy, there’s no getting over how old it all feels in action. Normally when looking to promote a “good old game”, I’ll pick something I feel has (relatively) timeless gameplay. Taking the former name of GOG – who have become instrumental in preserving many classic titles – the "Good Old Games" feature aims to highlight some of the most influential, interesting, or unique titles that you can still play today. However, it’s still worth remembering the games that served as the foundation for many modern IPs, prequels that set the scene for future narratives, or unique games that have never been surpassed. ![]() We also have more games coming out than ever before, so just keeping up with current releases is a challenge. Games are progressing at one hell of a rate - the complexity of gameplay mechanics and the audio-visual experience improves with every generation. ![]()
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