I feel like of the Bard’s Tale games, the third is probably the easiest to do now. It has automapping, which doesn’t quite help with the annoying spinning/teleporting/dark squares, but at least you don’t have to bust out the graph paper. As mentioned, two has some potential but the death traps are annoying. One is old fashioned fun but with a bit too much old fashioned.
Another CRPG of that era that really enjoyed was Dungeon Master. I don’t think I ever managed to finish that game ever.
Beyond quite a few games that played quite similar, DM got a pretty faithful (mechanically) spiritual sequel with Legend of Grimrock, but I don’t think there was ever anything quite like it for Bard’s Tale.
The new BT was about as radically different from the original games as possible, Devil Whiskey felt outdated even when it was released … is there anything else?
I guess you can count Silversword, but it’s only available on iOS.
Other than that … there really isn’t much. Or is there?
rezaf
I’ve started playing the rereleased Bard’s Tale trilogy since it was put out on Game Pass. I owned the first game ages ago on my C64 but I never actually beat it, I think I just got lost in some dungeon at some point.
Anyway, I’m having fun so far though I’ve barely delved into the first dungeon. I do like the auto mapping they added - less robust than what’s in the Etrian Odyssey game’s, but probably better than I could do with a pen and notepad.
I’m going with the default crew since I don’t remember what the best composition is, and it seems fairly balanced. We’ll see how far I get this time.
I’ve been doing the same. I just got down into the sewers, I think I’m level 3.
I feel like I’m already doing better than the many times I started and stopped back in the day. It seems so much easier in this version, I don’t know why exactly but so far I’ve not had any deaths. I’ve been really cautious running away from tough fights so maybe that’s it.
Being able to save anywhere definitely helps with the difficulty.
Monks are double+ OP in the original Bard;s Tale but the Original only. It’s because their AC, damage, and # of attacks don’t stops scaling (like, ever, but xp to level eventually grinds you to a halt and I think there’s a max level of 255 or something). So they are the best melee attackers over the long haul. Magic is still more important overall but you need some melee attackers.
The inclusion of some Bard’s tale 2 spells made magic even more powerful than it was.
It’s kind of funny the way this game treats magic users. So I went with the default party just to get a feel for the game and ended up sticking with them. I’ve got two magic users, started as a conjuror and a magician.
I reached level 14 with both, then changed classes so they swapped. At this point it’s taken very little time to get nearly back to 13 - have to jump classes again.
But each time you level up, an attribute goes up by 1, and since I reclassify both magic users they’re effectively at level 24 or 25 while the others are at around 13 or 14, and their stats make them godly, like 18s in several attributes.
Not like it matters too much really, they can’t wear armor or use many weapons, so you’ll always want to have them in the back slinging spells. It’s just kind of funny to me that those two are outclassing the others at least in that regard.
I’m going to keep liveblogging my playthrough here because why not. So I’ve hit a funny situation with my magic users, that I alluded to above but has become much more pronounced. So, like the original trilogy, you level up your magic users in a specific class, and once you learn all the spells for a class you can switch to a new one. Actually, you can switch pretty much whenever, but you’re probably going to want all the spells. And since, as in most games, you level much more quickly at lower levels, and your magic users are constantly resetting, they are growing at a rate that outpaces any other character class.
So my other player characters, a paladin, warrior, bard and rogue, are at level 16 now and hit points vary between close to 200 and down around 100. But my two magic users have learned all conjurer, magician and sorcerer levels and are working on wizard. Both are around level 5, but all attributes are maxed at 18 and their hit points around closer to 250. I think I saw that level xp requirements were lowered pretty drastically for the trilogy re-release, so this may be much more prominent in these newer games. And it doesn’t affect much, just gives my magic users more survivability which is always welcome. Just kind of funny to see my two wizards sitting back there being all buff.
So I’m quite a bit farther now - got through the catacombs into Harkyn’s tower, which teleported me over to Kylearan’s dungeon at the top. That last one is pretty puzzley, but at the end Kylearan gives you a key to Mangar’s tower so I’m getting close to the end I think.
At this point my wizards leveling has tapered off to match closely with the others and since the fighters get more HP per level, they’ve come out back on top. But! In Kylearan’s dungeon I found a super mega weapon, a magic staff that recharges the magic users’ spell points. Now I pretty much never need a temple or recharge, I’m damn near autonomous. Damn near a god, even.
And I’ve beaten The Bard’s Tale! Just the first one, so there’s two more to go in the trilogy. I’m enjoying playing so much more this time around, I just got bogged down in mapping and worrying about keeping my party safe - the automap and save anywhere features are a huge help. I’d probably bail out along the way like I did originally without them.
Even still, it can get a little hairy, especially toward the top of Mangar’s Tower. There are plenty of vampire lords and major demons that can rob you of experience of levels if they hit you, plenty of traps that you stone you, which is basically death until you can find a healer to un-stone you (I don’t think you’re able to find a spell to do this yourself, same as withering). But I did make it to the top and took down Mangar. On to the second game, The Destiny Knight!
o7
Achieved gained: old-school
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.