The rise of crowdfunding platforms has revolutionized the way games get funded and distributed, allowing developers to shake the dust off of long-lost, cult favorite projects and see them to fruition uninhibited by the demands of publishers. This often means that the gaming experiences of yore — if the ‘80s and ‘90s could be classified as “yore” — get a second chance to shine. Crowdfunding initiatives have allowed Harebrained Schemes to reimagine the Shadowrun tabletop game setting as a digital 2D RPG (Shadowrun Returns), funded a special 25th anniversary anthology collection of Myst, and aided Double Fine in releasing Broken Age, a return to the adventure game genre that the studio’s founders helped pioneer in the ‘90s.
Nowadays, the nostalgia-driven passion of a body of fans can actually resurrect a game. Instead of simply musing, “Remember [old, beloved game]? I’d pay money for a sequel to [old, beloved game],” fans can put their money where their mouths areand make these dreams come true. inXile Entertainment’s The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrow’s Deep presents another such crowdfunding fairytale. The sequel to a trilogy of popular fantasy RPGs released between 1985 and 1985, The Bard’s Tale IV returns to a series that longtime fans might not have touched since they owned a Commodore 64. It’s a game that pays an affectionate homage to its roots while reinventing itself to meet the expectations of the modern PC gamer.
The Bard’s Tale IV picks up right where its predecessors left off: It’s a first-person, party-based, dungeon-crawling RPG set in a quasi-medieval world. When players begin the game, the world is much changed from the events of the previous games. It is over 100 years since The Bard’s Tale III, and players quickly discover that the Adventurer’s Guild has been outlawed and its many members persecuted. It falls upon the player to be the hero that the realm needs.
At the beginning of The Bard’s Tale IV, however, the player’s character must first deal with a group of religious zealots called the Fatherites who are hunting down non-humans and magic users — placing a target on the back of your player’s character as well as on every member of the Adventurer’s Guild to which they are led.
Fans of the original series will find many similarities between the first three games and the newest installment. The first obvious similarity is structural: Like the other games in the series, The Bard’s Tale IV mostly centers around dungeon-crawling, tasking players with guiding their parties through levels, defeating enemies, solving puzzles, and acquiring loot. The game also maintains the humorous charm of its predecessors, injecting comical bits into everything from spoken dialogue to textual descriptions.
The Bard’s Tale IV, however, also makes a lot of tweaks to the overall gameplay experience that initially appear to be in service of gamers who are more familiar with the RPGs of the contemporary moment — which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. On the contrary, these adjustments help breathe new life into the series, extending a helping hand to newcomers to the series while making its world feel richer and more immersive.
Firstly, navigation is completely different. Previous The Bard’s Tale games utilized tile-based movement; in The Bard’s Tale IV, the default method of navigation is off-rails and free (though there’s an option to toggle tile-based movement back on for players who want it). This feels natural in a game world that has also been completely reimagined for the age of the Unreal Engine — the environment comes to life when wandering through the game’s vibrant, detailed levels.
Another major change is a rework of the class system. While previous entries of The Bard’s Tale featured as many as 13 different classes, The Bard’s Tale IV pares this list down to four: Fighter, Bard, Practitioner, and Rogue. To compensate for the blow to the game’s diversity of play, however, inXile introduced a new skill tree system, allowing players to further customize their party members and encourage different specializations to match different preferred playstyles by spending skill points on various abilities and buffs. These skill points can also be refunded and relocated, allowing players to stay flexible as they progress through the game.
The Bard’s Tale IV also uses an unusual and innovative new combat system. In addition to being turn-based, combat is also performed on a rectangular grid complete with a frontline and backline. In this system, a character’s placement and set of abilities determine whether or not they can strike an opponent on the opposite grid; some attacks only strike enemies who belong to the same column as the attacker, some attacks have a range that’s shaped like an “L” across the grid. This adds a new dimension of strategy that was absent in the simple turn-based rhythm present in the original trilogy.
Of course, The Bard’s Tale IV also places special significance on the bard class and the wealth of original music that populates the game. Bards sing songs, and to sing songs, they must drink. These drinks must be concocted using the game’s complex crafting system using items looted from enemies or foraged during the player’s journey. The songs they sing in turn have powerful effects on the battlefield, buffing allies and debuffing enemies. In this way, the game makes clever use of its many original songs and melodies, composed by musicians who have been trained in the Gaelic tradition.
The Bard’s Tale IV is perfect for both longtime fans of the series and newcomers who are looking for a solid fantasy RPG that employs a refreshing, quick wit and creative combat system. For those who’d like to catch up on the series before playing, inXile also released a remastered version of the original trilogy that’s available to play on PC right now.
The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrow’s Deep comes out Sept. 18 on PC, and you can pre-order it today on www.bardstale.com and wishlist it here.