The original Bard's Tale games

There actually is a legacy mode you can enable, if you want to go really old school. Turns off all these modern contrivances that helped me get through the game fairly quickly. Also uses the old, un-accelerated level XP gaps. So while I did beat the game on its terms, I am not trying to convince myself (or anyone else) that I did it the “right” way, if such a thing exists.

Life’s too short for Bards Tale 1.0.

So I moved on up to the second Bard’s Tale game in the trilogy, the Destiny Knight. I had never played the original version so this is my first exposure and it’s pretty cool. For one thing, there’s an overworld! I didn’t expect that. It’s got multiple cities, a few tombs and crypts to explore, a few abandoned shacks.

Upon loading my characters into the game the first time, I was given a choice: go in at the level they had attained in the first game along with all accumulated equipment, or let the game scale my characters and gear back to an “appropriate” level for this game. Look, I didn’t trudge through all those dungeons murdering creatures for XP and gear just to give it all back, so I went in as I left the first game. I was warned I would be overpowered and they weren’t kidding - game is piss easy so far. But I’m sure the bad guys will catch up.

And once again, my magic users are offered the chance to switch classes and start over, this time as an Archmage. Which I of course did. And I found an immediate downside - spells like Mangar’s Mind Jab deal damage on a per-level basis, and those spells are useless to me now. Sad face.

Also discovered that attributes can rise above 18 in this game, where quite a few characters had maxed out last game. I’m going to end up with some freakin’ demigods by the time I’m done.

Having gotten a bit farther - actually a good deal farther, I now have 4 of the 7 pieces of the Destiny Wand - I’m feeling a bit worn down. Man, there is so much freakin’ combat in this game! Which I know, that’s just how RPGs worked in the 80s. But there are encounters with dozens of bad guys and you can blow through a bunch of them with spells but the best ones eat up your spell points, so you’re stuck beating up tons of enemies with your warrior types. And if you carried a party forward from the first game that’s still piss easy, but takes forever just because there are so many!

Anyway Bard’s Tale 2 is much more puzzley, in that most dungeons have what they call a “death snare” before you can grab the dungeon’s wand piece, and they’re kind of crazy. There are hints strewn about, but in order to get all the info you need you’re going to need to cover just about every square of eery dungeon, which means - all that ombat. But my guys are crazy high level, getting into the 60s, so I’ve started just running from some combats. Especially if they involve magic users starting out 70, 80 meters from me. Because who has time to close that distance while they’re slinging spells at you?!

Destiny Knight: beaten!

Finally wrapped up the second game and, man, kind of a slog. Lots more dungeons in this game, and they’re mostly much bigger and definitely much trickier than the first game’s. Also, the introduction of those ‘death snares’ or the timed puzzles required to retrieve each dungeon’s wand piece, are a serious piece of work. They usually involve figuring out a sequence of events and then repeating them several times until the game says ‘ok, enough, I give up’ and sends you on your way. Once you’ve got all seven pieces, it’s just a matter of getting to the temple to assemble into the wand, choosing one of your archmages to assume the mantle of Destiny Knight (which doesn’t seem to change anything except a cool title on their bio page) and then move on to beat the foozle. Who despite having 60 minions to take against you, is not much of a challenge at this point. Mangar’s Mallet FTW!

Speaking of challenge, while I definitely pushed the easy mode button by importing my party just as they were at completion of the first game, I am totally glad I did it. There is SO MUCH combat in the dungeons, both of the fixed location encounters and the wandering bad guys. Using a new bard song in combination with the new batchspell (which itself is just a single spell that casts a bunch of super-helpful but already existing party spells) I could get my party AC down to around -30, which is darn near untouchable. Which is really helpful because you’ve got a lot of high-level enemies that can drain levels or stone a character on hitting them, and if that happens you’ve got to abandon your mission to find a temple to heal them. No party spells can cure those status ailments.

So, anyway, one more game to go. Two I guess, if we count Bard’s Tale IV but I guess I can’t import my guys to that game. Would be cool if I could though! At this point, my fighter and paladin have nearly 1600 hit points, and my lowest HP character (the rogue) has over 900. Each is a walking arsenal; together they’re just a goddamn wrecking crew. You better believe I’m going to import them unaltered into Bard’s Tale 3.

And it’s done! All three original Bard’s Tales games, beaten! I was kind of surprised by now quickly the third game went by - in its own way it’s much larger than the other two, spanning multiple game worlds, but the dungeons in each world were relatively small, and each world was pretty easy to beat. Most of the tricks came near the end - when you have to portal between several war worlds, getting the name of the god you need to awaken. And then the last dungeon was kind of a crazy maze. The combat was generally more challenging in BT3 than 2 as well, I came across multiple enemies that could do a critical attack that could one shot my guys, but once I found some good offensive spells that balanced out pretty well.

Some new stuff introduced in this game, a couple new classes. The Chronomancer makes for a tough choice - only one of your magic users can switch to this, but they have to give up all their accumulated spells to get this new class. I had two archmages, so this wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but I couldn’t do the whole backup mage thing like in BT2. Still, the Chronomancer can learn some pretty devastating spells (and all spell users can eventually learn NUKE, which is just nuts) so it does work out.

Then there was the Geomancer class, which I’m a bit more ambivalent about. I switched my paladin over to geomancer and just about immediately regretted it. My paladin, like my warrior, had achieved the ability to hit 8 times in a round, so their weapon damage was multiplied x8, which can get quite powerful by this point. Losing that multiplier was tough - my geomancer could still use the same equipment, armor, shields and most weapons, but could never achieve the same damage output once I switched. Geomancers have some interesting skills, to be sure, but I’m not sure it’s worth it.

Ran into the occasional weirdness, like my party characters spontaneously un-equipping items during combat. Not sure if that’s a bug or a weird ability some enemies have, but occasionally I’d notice their AC dropping and then I’d notice they just dropped their shield. Annoying. Almost as annoying are the sticky ground effects, where you would land on a spot and then hitting the forward key would do nothing but show a ‘Stuck!’ on the screen, sometimes upward or 10, 12 times before you come unstuck and can move forward. This gets super tedious if there are a bunch of these, and toward the end you will run into a lot.

Another thing that intrigued me, I mentioned the war worlds you have to portal between near the end, and one of those worlds is the wasteland! Your Bard’s Tale characters get the opportunity to cross to another EA/InXile franchise and beat up on bikers and mutants for a bit. I thought that was amusing. The end boss, as I’ve noticed in the two earlier games, is kind of an anticlimax, much easier than I would expect. The overlooked rogue class usually cuts the legs out from under any boss.

But I feel good, this was quite the undertaking. Like I mentioned way back, I had only ever played the first game, and never beaten it, so this is a chance to reclaim some territory teenage me had ceded. I had to get a little online help - the death snares in BT2 and the final maze of BT3 were tricky. But I enjoyed the trip, and I’m glad I did it. I can certainly recommend dipping your toes back in, if you’re curious.

I never understood why this class was designed the way it was. As you note, they only get one attack per round which ruins them as a martial character. There are some interesting spells but IIRC they ultimately can’t do anything another caster can’t do better.

Michael Cranford returned to gaming with Centauri Alliance in 1990. I loved it. It’s basically Bard’s Tale all over again, in space, but with some interesting changes. You can class hop some and combining certain classes unlocks advanced classes, granting more abilities/etc to characters. Combat was a tactical hex grid where the party was represented by one icon and groups of enemyes by others. Combat was still menu based but this was the ultimate extension of the abstract distances added in BT2. Enemy groups acted independently which could reduce some aoe effectiveness (for stuff that would normally affect more than one group). And you got to go around and visit a bunch of different planets.

That included a planet that essentially contained Bard’s Tale! It had magic monsters, magic weapons, and everything else you might expect. It was kind of cool to show up with your weird party made of different alien races using crazy technology.

Hey that sounds cool! I don’t think I ever played it, have to see if I can dig it up.

It never made it to GOG :(

But I really liked it. My local computer game store let me write a review of it (also Dark Heart of Uukrul) and they had both displayed out for people to read. It had some cool ideas, for sure.

Looks like it was C64 and Apple II only, so we’ll need some emulation options to try this. On the bright side, the actual game itself is quite easy to find and download. Assuming you’re ethically ok with abandonware.

Crit weapons overshadow multiple attacks at higher levels. Equip a Stoneblade on the geomancer and that one attack is an automatic kill.

That’s exactly what I ended up doing. Still don’t feel like the frequency of crit occurrence compensates for what I gave up.

I just wanted to pop in and congratulate divedivedive for completing the original games. I have fond memories of playing these games in the 80’s and 90’s, and actually remember finishing the original Bard’s Tale in December of 1992. I remember it thanks to notes I kept in the hint guide… the hint guide I’ve referred to when replaying the original trilogy.

I love the work that Krome put into these remakes. The quality of life improvements in the inventory, graphics, and gameplay are way more than I expected. I love being able to go in, tinker around a bit, and then save wherever I am and move on with life. I’m currently at Mangar’s Tower in my Bard’s Tale play though, but I have a lot more grinding to do before I’m ready to finish the game. I’m not looking forward to Destiny Knight as I thought that was way too difficult, but maybe the same QoL improvements I’ve noticed in the first game will help me over the hump. I’m really looking forward to Thief of Fate as that was one of my favorite games. I actually finished Thief of Fate before I finished Tales of the Unknown.

Anyway, it was nice following your progress and I appreciate the updates.

Seconded. While I played and loved all three of these back in the day, I never was able to make much progress. The remaster does a lot for playability; I’ve restarted part 1 and have already gotten farther than I had back in the 80s.

Thanks folks! It was a lot of fun revisiting these games, and Krome did a great job updating them with some really helpful modern tools.

You may already know this, but when you reach the end of one of the games and start the next, there are three ways to progress your party: as they are, so current level and equipment; bumped down to a level appropriate to the game with some equipment intact; or dropped to level 1 and no equipment carried forward. I went with the first option for the second and third games and it made playing pretty darn easy, especially the second game. If you want some challenge you may not want to keep all your levels and gear.

In fact, I found the third game marginally more difficult just because there seemed to be more enemies capable of critical attacks who could instantly kill a party member. Also, by the time I was getting near the end of the last game I was kind of ready to be done so I started running from most combat. Maybe I should have spaced out playing the games a little more.

This is what I end up doing in a lot of games where I can and then come to the same conclusion you did.

Welp, it only took like 35 years! On to Cincinnati — Er, Destiny Knight.

Internet fist bump!

Congratulations! You also seemed to do it with the stock party, and I think that’s cool as hell.

So I’m making good progress on Bards Tale IV (via the Xbox Game Pass) and my interest in picking up the Remastered Trilogy is piqued. What’s the cheapest way to pick this up at the moment - the steam sale? I thought I read that this was a free pack in if you buy something else but can’t seem to find the post