Bards Tale IV announced

I had that myself. They were fairly low level, was kind of odd.

Startled the crap out of me though.

I think “Pfft, it’s just John Walker” is my favorite spot on the Undeterred Game Fan Excuse bingo card…

I played for an hour and enjoyed what I saw. The game set everything at minimum for some reason (970gtx) and it looked horrible. I can easily bump everything up to high and maintain 50fps though.

I was worried about the save system, but I don’t mind it. But then I had a crash. Will come back after a patch or two. Really looking forward to it.

The multi-stage combats are not very well done. I think everything carries over to the start of the next combat as is as soon as you end the current one. Which means you wind up with weird amounts of opportunity/spell points/etc.

Maybe they haven’t patched the GoG version yet but I still don’t see an FOV slider.

In fairness, even with games I don’t like, my concerns with them are never Walker’s concerns with them. His priorities are thoroughly alien to me, and I’ve learned not to take him seriously. I think that’s the case for a lot of people.

I was interested in Bard’s Tale IV, but issues brought up in this thread are giving me far more pause than anything Walker says.

I can’t imagine anyone wanting to invoke Walker for any reason whatsoever.

I like John, especially on the RPS podcasts. My tastes don’t tend to align with his but I enjoy his work, and he is clearly influenced by the likes of Your Sinclair magazine which I grew up reading in the 1980s.

Hi I bought No Man’s Sky on GOG and I am so bitter.

Ahhh, I misread you. You’ll see some of those eventually. They aren’t super common. I don’t necessarily mind spell points or health levels carrying straight over but the Opportunity thing is a huge screwjob. Of course, it could be a bug.

Regular combat initiative is 100% determined by whether you land the charge (as it were) or get spotted. I’m not overly fond of the mechanic, although I’m not overly not fond of it. It is very rarely janky (you’ll charge into. . . something low on the ground and just sort of sit ther. Usually you can reposition and charge again but it’s not perfect).

I am reminded that I often stick to Steam for the same reasons. I love GoG, but for tuff like this it can be frustrating. I think there’s minimal chance this goes down the road of NMS, but I haven’t checked patch lag on other inXile titles on GoG to see how they typically do.

That GOG patch is out now, in case anyone is eager to play before patch 2, 3, and IV.

Man, both this game and Star Control Origins totally bombed, didn’t they? 2000 concurrent players peak. That’s translates to what, 20000 copies sold?

Shadow of the Tomb Raider has 38K concurrent, which is better, but probably also nothing to write home about, given its AAA cost.

If that’s a Steam figure, that doesn’t include SotTR sales to console platforms, numbers which if memory serves both Microsoft and Sony zealously guard.

Yeah of course I am talking purely PC here. Although I doubt Shadow is a huge seller even on consoles, it seems the hype around it is much smaller than it used to, plus…Spidey.

Spiritual followups to 20-year-old games that talk about how closely they hew to the originals are always going to be a tough sell. Did the new Wasteland games do that much better?

I’m planning to pick this up once people on this thread say the initial bugs are ironed out.

Wasteland 2 Director’s Cut says between 500,000 - 1,000,000 owners on steamspy (need to be a patreon to see accurate #). Question would be at what price did folks buy it.

This game did not sell itself on hewing to the originals, and in fact was very open about how different it was in terms of mechanics and gameplay.

At least 32,000 of 'em for $15 less Kickstarter fees!

Yeah I only meant to highlight/lament that none of the three recently released “big” core games seem to have been particularly successful on Steam, at least not immediately at launch. Meanwhile, yet another survival nonsense like SCUM sells bucketloads. It sucks.

PC Gamer likes it.

I was going to dive in for real last night, but the patch was 5GB for some reason, and it wasn’t ready before I had to go to bed.

Now that the ultrawide and FOV fixes are out, I dug into this for real last night. Created a 2H sword fighter, and picked up the first two companions. Thoughts:

  • It’s definitely rough from a technical point of view. Load times between areas are very high, and the framerate is all over the place on my 1070, even with the settings turned down. Lots of stutters when turning quickly or even in the levelup menu when mousing over a skill for the first time and it has to load the details.
  • Really like the atmosphere and everybody’s accents, and the bard recapping the current situation while the game loads is a great touch.
  • Very impressed with the combat system so far. The opportunity system seems like a nice abstract design choice that prioritizes game over simulation, which I thoroughly approve of. Many WRPGs go the other way, where the first question they ask is “what could this character realistically do?” rather than “what will give the player interesting tactical decisions as often as possible?”
  • With the lack of to-hit or damage rolls and emphasis on positioning and getting out of the way of big attacks, I’m getting an Into the Breach vibe, which I thoroughly approve of.