The Bard's Tale

by Vivendi Universal

Product Features

• Third person action RPG that casts you as the Bard, musician and adventurer
• Based on the original Bard's Tale, the grandfather of all role playing games
• Snarky/Nice conversation system lets the players choose the tone of the Bard's interactions
• Get immersed in an environment alive with interactive townsfolk, original music, birds, animals, rustling trees, waving grass, and trickling water
• For 1 player

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0001XE0OS
• Item Weight: 8 ounces
• Media: CD-ROM
• Release Date: June 21, 2005
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #14,940 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Platform: PC

The Bard's Tale was the great-grandfather of modern-day Computer role-players. This updated version brings back the fun and adventure, as you play The Bard -- a hero who's only after coins and cleavage. Is a dragon attacking a village? He'll face it, for the right price. Has a princess been kidnapped? He'll save her, but only if she's hot. Comedy and fantasy action combine for a uniqe 3D role-playing experience!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

130 of 136 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great witty version of an RPG classic, November 21, 2004

By 

Lisa Shea "medieval swordfighting enthusiast" - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (TOP 50 REVIEWER)   

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: The Bard's Tale (CD-ROM)

I remember playing the original Bard's Tale game - it was a game I loved and played for months and months. This new version features the brilliant acting of Cary Elwes of Priness Bride frame!

You get to create your bard character with the standard attributes - strength, dexterity and so on. But once you get into the game, you'll quickly discover the comic timing that makes this game so unique. You wander into a tavern and are promptly told to go search for rats. Your character asides that this is a rather cliche quest, but you'll do it for the (ahem) ample barmaid who smiles at you.

You head down into the dusty cellar, where you find your rat and slay him. Then, as you get your little scene of the Bard's Victory, a HUGE rat sneaks up behind you and breathes on you with a massive fire breath! When you hobble up to the tavern, everyone is laughing their fool heads off.

It's that sort of twist that makes the entire game hilarious, especially for RPG buffs. Every normal twist and turn of RPG campaigning is made fun of here. You are given the option of the "nice" or "naughty" option at every turn - and it's not always the "nice" option that you want to try! The game is very replayable, as you see what happens with various combinations of answers.

There's plenty of combinations of fighting, spellcasting, healing and so on - in traditional RPG fashion. I particularly like the wiggly little magic spiders myself, as they remind me of the Spirited Away anime. But really the wit is the key feature of this game. You fight through scenarios to get to hear what the witty comments will be at the end :)

Highly recommended for RPG fans - especially those who are fans of the Princess Bride style of dry wit!

70 of 73 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Very Amusing, Interesting Game Marred by Interface, July 27, 2005

By 

David A. Lessnau (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: The Bard's Tale (CD-ROM)

The plotline of this game and the way in which it's "acted" are excellent: very witty, very interesting (though predictable), and very well done. I enjoyed that immensely. Unfortunately, the way the publisher implemented the gameplay reduces the overall enjoyability... A lot. My biggest gripes:

- I didn't care much for the top-down viewpoint which this game uses. I'd much rather have a first person point of view. This is especially true since you can't change the vertical angle (azimuth) that you're looking through. It's always almost directly overhead. You can't see what's in front of you and you can't really see what's on the walls around you.
- The game gives you only a very limited view of the area. I ran it at 1280x1024 and could only see the various monsters as they were about to pounce on me. Theoretically, you can zoom the camera in and out, but the amount of difference is insignificant. This is especially bad when using a bow: throughout the game you end up focused on the small "radar screen" and firing blindly in the approximate direction of some red dots (your bow range far exceeds your view). You hardly ever get to see what you're shooting. Since I used the bow almost exclusively, that really reduced the enjoyment of the gameplay.
- The controls are very awkward. You move by right-clicking where you want to go. Fire/Strike by left-clicking. Block with the space bar. Rotate the view clockwise/counterclockwise with the A and D keys. Change your radar with the X key. And, most awkwardly, change weapons/party members with 2-level combinations of the 1, 2, 3, and 4 keys (1st "menu" level) and the A, S, D, and W keys (2nd "menu" level). Because of the difficulty of the keystrokes, this last "control" makes it very tough to make changes during combat. So, essentially, what you start a combat round with is what you're going to be stuck with (unless you can find a corner to hide in while you make changes).

I've got some other complaints, but compared to the above, they're minor. For the most part, the game is enjoyable and fairly easy. There are a couple of areas that are pretty hard. But, they're workable. Without those three major gripes I listed above, I'd highly recommend the game. As it is, though, I rate it as just 3 stars out of 3: it's OK.

Update: This game comes on 6 CDs. If your computer has a DVD reader, I highly recommend you hunt out the DVD version of the game (just for the sake of ease of loading). One other thing: in my case, CD 5 wouldn't read during installation on my computer. On my wife's and son's computers, it read fine, so I was able to make a copy of that CD to install with. If you run into the same problem, see if you can make a copy of the troublesome CD somewhere else.

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Occasionally funny/entertaining, some flaws, August 30, 2005

By 

Raedwulf "Raedwulf" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews

= Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: The Bard's Tale (CD-ROM)

The humor and the musical interactions within the game are first rate. It was almost like watching a play at times. The music was very entertaining. The twists in the game were entertaining and I played the game through to the end because I enjoyed it. I wanted to see what they'd do at the end.

But there were quite a few flaws. The alleged "non-linear" aspect of the game is highly misleading. There are very few choices to undertake at all. You have to do A, to get to B, to get to C, etc. At least you need to do that to succeed. While you certainly could visit certain limited places almost immediately, you'd get killed mucho pronto if you did.

With all the sparkly effects and in game rendering of cut-scenes, they would almost always slow to a crawl. While I'm sure the screaming cutting edge machines of the developers ran all those auras around the creatures nicely, my machine (which beats the recommended configuration) couldn't handle them, even with all video controls turned to the minimum.

And at a certain point, nothing can stand in your way. Even the Bosses were a pushover. No real strategy was involved, except some minor tweaking of your party. And the "less A, more I" was not that accurate. My party frequently did very stupid things, and didn't follow orders hardly at all.

Overall, it was entertaining and I'd recommend it, but only after it was patched to fix the framerate problems. It is relatively inexpensive, so would be worth the money if fixed.

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