I played the hell out of Enchanted Arms back in the day. Turning on the Japanese voices fixed the awful voice acting for the flamboyantly gay character.
The game was a lot of fun but the tactical battles were horribly broken once you got a certain character combo. It’s a little fuzzy with age but you could use one character to fill everyone’s super attack meter. Then use a second character to attack all enemies. Rinse, repeat.
In remastered news, the original trilogy was supposed to go EA this week or very soon. Instead, they have scrapped that plan. They think BT 1 will be complete by mid august, where it will hit Steam and GoG simultaneously. 2 and 3 will come out in the next few months (no specifics given). Pretty cool.
So they’ve offered up some commentary on what will be changing based on feedback received so far:
This is a good change, although I still wonder if it will be too limiting. But I’m a bit curious about this since it was tied to weapons anyway. It suggests there were no weapons with 4 slots. I wonder if they un-tethered mastery slots from weapons in one of the updates since I played.
This still feels weird to me, that we need tokens to make characters. And it felt like I got some fairly early. Still, overall positive.
If this was possible in Beta. . . I missed some stuff. Not a bad thing to have happen.
I, uh, thought this was a bug (even entered it as such). This was fairly obnoxious. I wasn’t selling that much (just gear I didn’t need) but I was already needing to visit multiple merchants to sell stuff. I Was kind of hoping merchants would just grow pages as needed.
No idea what this means. I didn’t mention this previously, not directly anyway, bu t it did feel like there weren’t a ton of options. With some characters having so little health getting +con seemed paramount. But e.g. the best caster chests I got were +4 and +3 respect ively. I sold one other at +3, and maybe a handful of +1 or +2 con caster chests. More options would be great, especially if it’s found gear.
Pretty sure I asked for this too.
There was already a separate one for Quest Items, or so I thought. But this will be welcome.
Courtesy of feedback from users such as lemiarty, starting inventory will be larger.
I didn’t have a problem with this and I picked up everything I could and sold probably less than 10-20% of what I found. Although I did do a bit of food crafting. May be I (1) just prioritized inventory expansions where possible and (2) just didn’t find as much stuff early. I don’t think this is a bad thing by any stretch. I never felt inventory pinched in the beta.
Oh yeah, there was a SHITLOAD of bitching about the waypointing. From a smallish group. It didn’t bother me. I’ve seen much worse.
This makes sense from a gameplay/thematic perspective. I have no thoughts, except that I was susprised respeccing was free to begin with.
I remember this thread. So, dying in combast sends you back to the nearest5 save stone and I can’t recall what the downside is. Playing out combats to their inevitable, failed, conclusions can be tedious. But if you jus2t quit the gam e, you lose progress. Whatever you did beteween the last save stone and the failed combat. But if you lose (or surrender), you’ll keep that progress.
I’m really looking forward to the remastered original trilogy, which I believe will be ready a week from Wednesday. Will be fun delving back into Skara Brae while we wait for the new one.
Be aware that the 8/14 launch will only include BT 1 at first. The other two games will come later this year.
That’s what they had announced a bit but it seemed like they were saying the full trilogy would be good to go on 8/14. Either way, I’m happy the first will be ready as that’s the one I’m most familiar with.
Finally, thank you for all the support we received regarding the change in date for The Bard’s Tale Trilogy remasters. We’re on target for a release next week on Tuesday, August 14th.
Wait… what?
I’m kind of interested in where they go with BT4, but the idea of playing the originals again and remastered is very appealing to me.
Edit: It’s on Steam? Fucking sold. Also with automapping? Double sold.
I’m actually kind of excited for this, it looks incredible. I can’t wait to face Death Itself in the form of something.
Anyone fired up remastered yet? Just got the key, but putting daughter to bed so can’t play yet.
For others that might run into the issue of not getting an email with your key, you might need to go to your crowdox survey and make sure you’ve set it for a steam or gog key.
I still have my old grid paper maps of BT1. Should still work!
I played the first game to death when I was a kid - I actually completed the whole game two or three times. But looking back the gameplay was pretty brutal - lots and lots of grinding random encounters that could wipe your party if you went in the wrong area. Which meant losing whatever progress you made since you could only save by going all the way back to the guild.
I’ve been playing it for a bit - made it to 4th level so far. The map is kind of annoying. I have no idea why they made it so almost painfully difficult to read. There’s a little triangle that represents your party (though it disappeared for me for a little bit in town) but it’s tough to tell which direction it’s facing. Just a weird, almost half-assed implementation of it.
The graphics look great and everything else is humming along though. I somehow missed the Review Board so I explored almost the entire city before popping up. Death is expensive as hell for my characters but I’ve only lost one a few times now. Probably cheaper to just have a total wipe but I’m not sure if you just reload or what at that point.
I thought about picking it up and then thought back to playing it back then. I don’t think I ever finished it, way too much grinding. I remember it being fun for awhile and then burning out at the difficulty. Plus I was firmly in the “Ultima’s combat is a lot more fun” camp.
I might pick it up out of pure nostalgia at some point, but playing it again doesn’t really sound like fun. I really can’t imagine the gameplay holds up that well today, either.
I do remember 3 being a better game, but burning out on the mapping. They did everything they could to make it difficult. Blackness, teleports, reversing your direction, etc. Half the game was mapping, so it would be much easier with an auto map. Too easy.
Oops, yeah I should have mentioned my major map annoyance was with the mini version. Overall I’d definitely recommend picking it up if you loved the originals though. I’m having a great time reliving the old days!
Also, the way they spell halberd (halbard) is really rubbing me the wrong way. Maybe it was intentional but it’s bugging me!
It was “halbard” in the originals as well.
It took me a long time to realise the maps looped back around on themselves so when you walked off one edge you teleported to the opposite edge. I would wander for hours hoping to hit a stairwell by luck.
Thats because you get teleported. A lot. When you’re teleported or otherwise not sure where you are, you disappear off the map. You can find yourself with a spell (or after wandering in an known area for a bit in my experience the marker will come back).
Personally, I think it’s kind of genius. I was wondering how they’d handle teleporters and spinners and whatnot with an automap.
Also for people afraid of the grind, the default setting cuts the grind down to almost nothing. I’m already near the end of Harkyn’s Castle and levelling has been pretty darned easy. Heck, I’ve barely even died much at all.
And of course if you really miss the originals, there is Legacy mode that you can customize.
I was able to play for an hour or so last night. I played this one from '88 - 92 off and on and it took me four years to finish. It’s amazing to realize how much muscle memory I have as far as getting around the city. Anyway, my quick impressions are that the developers changed just enough to make it worth a replay. It looks great while still adhering to the original art design. It plays exactly the same, grind and all, with enough improvements from later games to make it more enjoyable (rogues can hide in shadows/sneak attack, back row bards/rogues can equip bows to be combat-viable). I also notice the difficulty is not as punishing, but I’m losing guys and the cellar kicked my butt. I finally got to second level characters so maybe it’ll go better for me, but for now I’ll hang in town until level 3 or 4.
Yep, and what it did to your map! You didn’t know you were teleported and kept drawing, only to realize later something wasn’t right. I remember my map making fondly, but I also know that is why I quit playing.
Still, it sounds like they took this into account with the auto map, so it won’t show you where you are when teleported. The couple of impressions so far are certainly making me want to give it a go.
Legacy mode - which I doubt anyone here wants to play - won’t be available for a ways yet. Here’s the improvements that I noticed, though:
Good mouse support.
An ok auto map. This needs some tweaking IMO because it rotates with you as you turn (I don’t like this) and there’s no way to get a larger view.
Instead of just typing spell names you can select from a list. Although there’s limited type-ahead filtering (I think it’s actually doing the spell short names in the type ahead). It’s nice.
XP (and gold?) gain is enhanced.
Save anywhere, anytime. Also save slots.
Group inventory (40 slots) and items equipped on individuals don’t count to wards this. This is a HUGE upgrade over the original series (which had 6x8 slots iirc, but equipped items counted).
Lastly you can run 7 PCs if you chose (in lieu of the dedicated summon/friendly monster slot).
When legacy mode debuts, it will offer the ability to toggle all of these things (sans direct UI improvements) off (and save anywhere becomes save and quit, I think, or maybe it goes away). Also graphic improvements IIRC. They’ve also half-imported features from later games back into the first. You’ll see monster group distances and some ranged weapons but none of that is properly implemented (I’ve never had my melee characters not be able to attack foes).
I’ve got my party up to level 10 or so. Already looking to remake a caster (I was in a hurry so I accepted a too-low int score and her SP sucks) and poking around in Catacombs 1.
I want to play legacy mode.
Reading all these reports about how people are at level 10 already with minimal character losses… do you guys even want to play Bard’s Tale? :) Sounds like it plays like Diablo now.
Yes.
No it doesn’t.
I’m not clear on how the XP gain stuff works. The original marketing suggested it would be faster in non legacy but I don’t know if that’s true or not, or if Legacy mode is just adding some sort of penalty. The thing is, making level 10 in the original wasn’t that hard (contra what anyone claims).
Incidentally, I have had a few losses.