![]() ![]() One area I’ve barely scratched the surface of, Mangar’s Tower, is essentially an enormous puzzle box. There are also hidden nooks and their equally hidden chests, weakened walls to bust down, mechanical gear puzzles to solve-so many secrets. It’s one of my favorite parts of any dungeon crawler, and in The Bard’s Tale IV it’s pervasive. I can’t count the number of times I’ve wandered deep down some corridor, pushed a switch, watched part of the wall disappear, walked out, and thought “Wait, I’m back here?” I love that feeling. You start in the oft-threatened town of Skara Brae, a throwback to the old Bard’s Tale games, but soon venture into a vast underground area (“Skara Brae Below”) with secrets packed into nearly every corner. I’ve settled on level design, because that’s where The Bard’s Tale IV excels most, and it’s what kept me playing even after I got frustrated by myriad performance issues. To some extent, The Bard’s Tale IV asks you to reconsider what constitutes the dungeon crawler genre. Those are the two aspects that feel the least dungeon crawl-y, and the two I expect will be most divisive for longtime Bard’s Tale fans. ![]() I wish you could have more skills accessible at a time, as the skill trees are large and you only get to “memorize” four per character. The Bard class is particularly interesting, as most of their attacks require swigging alcohol beforehand-and later, you can open up a skill that throws the empty bottle at an enemy for extra damage. I’m finding it very satisfying, especially as I get further into the game and have more options. Swinging your sword might cost one point for instance, while a “Rain of Arrows” might take two points and an extra turn, although it’ll also strike three squares at once. Fights are played out on a 4×4 grid, and your actions governed by a pool of points. The solution is either a high-concept card game or a very constricted tactics game, depending on your point-of-view. It’s a change with far-reaching consequences, as it evidently required The Bard’s Tale IV to come up with a new combat system too. (You can turn grid-based movement back on in the settings, if you’d like.) You have freedom of movement though, almost as if you were playing an Elder Scrolls game. In The Bard’s Tale IV the map is still based on a grid, and in some areas you can pull up the map and see those squares. Oh, and sit through those interminable load screens one more time. The only fix I’ve found? Reloading, which is easier said than done, as you have to either reach a save point or exit to desktop and then run the game again. Multiple times now I’ve thought “Why is this character doing almost no damage now?” only to check and notice their Strength is set to 0 for no reason. This is important, because in The Bard’s Tale IV your stats (Strength, Constitution, Intelligence, and Armor Class) primarily come from your gear. My least favorite, and one I’ve come to dread in my seven hours, is a bug that makes it so none of your gear’s stats are applied correctly. ![]() Then there are all the bugs, many of which are minor but still really damn annoying. There are a lot of moving parts, but coming off the back of Destiny 2 and Shadow of the Tomb Raider I can’t help but feel The Bard’s Tale IV needs another handful of optimization passes. The Bard’s Tale IV has great art direction as I said, but the models and so-on, the raw guts of it, don’t look like anything special. I’m never going to be excited about poor performance, but there are games where I at least sort-of understand the trouble. IDG / Hayden DingmanĪnd The Bard’s Tale IV just doesn’t look that great. Need to pop into the Adventurer’s Guild to get your next quest? Expect a 30-second load into the building, then another 30 to 60 second load on the way out, every single time. But in The Bard’s Tale IV, every load time is hefty-like, at least 30 seconds. I’ve grown fairly accustomed to a long up-front wait these days, the price we pay for seamless open-world background loads. ![]()
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