Bards Tale IV announced

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.

Nice post @Thraeg and I agree with all of it.

I’ll go a step further, and add that I’m impressed how certain decisions were made pertaining to character creation/development. I love the options you have when leveling up, and I especially love how your equipment makes a huge difference to your stats. For example, you only get more HP from adding constitution, which can only be done via armor. Want a tank? Then specialize in armor tree, and throw heavier armor on. Now your front row fighter can go from 15 HP, to 45 or more.
Spell points work the same way for casters. It’s all equipment based.

Another massive patch dropped overnight, fixing numerous bugs and issues, and making another decent optimization pass. Still no QoL features added yet, like quick saves, or inventory sorting. They did finally fix the annoying bug that made gold sense continue to alert the player to chests that were already looted. Also lots of combat fixes to speed up animations and actions. I like their dedication to making this game better.

I’m currently debating if now is the time to give it another go or if I should wait for the QoL features. I dread losing a chunk of the game again due to a crash so nothing is more important than the ability to save anywhere. On the other hand, the timing of the release meant it was perfectly situated for actually playing the game right away as opposed to it sitting in my backlog. I just didn’t expect it to be so unpolished.

I love what I’ve played of this game so far, but I think I’m going to give up on it.

The game’s frame rate is just horrible on my computer, even on the lowest setting. I think I’m CPU deficient, not GPU deficient, so turning the settings down doesn’t help much, plus it makes the game look ugly, and I’m still looking at a 20fps, dipping down into a slideshow most of the time.

Maybe one day it will be ported to the consoles, or maybe one day I’ll get a new computer, who knows, but until then, this is shelved.

But a low frame rate is retro :)

I have similar problems on my 6 year old PC, it can run fine for a while then got horribly jumpy. I don’t mind putting up with it as it’s not a twitchy game, but it sounds like it’s even worse for you.

Yeah, my CPU is from 2009, so a 9 year old computer, but with a newer GPU. CPU inadequacy hasn’t been a problem for me before, thanks to consoles having low powered CPUs and most games following the money. But that appears to be changing in 2018.

I’m in exactly the same position, so I appreciate the warning. I was going to wait for some more patching on this anyway, but it sounds like I probably want to get a new rig before diving in.

Yeah I’m thinking of shelving it until I have a new computer too. With the graphics turned down the average framerate is fine, but there are frequent half second stutters between frames, especially when turning.

Is the previous Bard’s Tale worth a playthru?

Maybe? Which “previous Bard’s Tale” do you mean? BT 1-3 are 80s classics, good in their day but extremely clunky and obtuse for modern players (though the remastered version should remove at least some of the rough edges). Even if you’re in the mood for that genre, I’d have a hard time recommending them over the later Might & Magic or Wizardry games, though.

The 2000s revival was a top-down action-RPG. By all accounts it was mechanically competent but unremarkable, but salvaged by a funny script and Cary Elwes’ voice acting.