[Review] Sing Us a Song

Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep is another in a series of attempts to bring back oldschool games with a modernized take via Kickstarter. It received a lot of excitement during its Kickstarter campaign but ended up with a lukewarm reception upon release. In part, this was due to the unpolished state in which it was originally released, despite the development taking over 3 years. It received a Director's Cut about a year later, which fixed many of its technical issues, but the game unfortunately never managed to capture a large audience despite that. For obvious reasons, I'll be reviewing the Director's Cut.

Story

People who have played the Bard's Tale series know that the story was never particularly deep or a huge focus of the games. It was there to drive the gameplay and the lore was just detailed enough to make for an interesting setting. That said, this entry into the series is a direct sequel to its predecessors, unlike inXile's previous game, The Bard's Tale (2004), which was an entertaining game, but was not directly related to the original trilogy. BT4 makes plenty of references to the older titles, and even goes so far as to reuse the old villains, but no prior knowledge is needed to enjoy the story or any of the events within. The story itself is interesting enough, with a few minor twists, though nothing unexpected. The provided companions, though largely one-dimensional, do comment on things and banter amongst each other, so I'll call them acceptable.

Gameplay

While you spend a lot of time running around, exploring, and talking to people, Bard's Tale 4 really has two major gameplay features that it focuses on:

Combat

Combat is turn-based and occurs on a 4-by-4 grid. The top two rows belong to the enemies and the bottom two belong to the player's party. There are no special victory conditions beyond "kill everyone", though in a couple of fights, killing everyone comes with a slight twist. So combat essentially boils down to "throw everything at your enemy until nothing is left standing". That said, there is a fair bit of complexity to the whole thing. The player characters level up by selecting skills from 4-5 different skill trees, with the caveat being that each character can only select 4 active skills, which includes any additional skills granted by equipment. So even though one might be inclined to select as many different skills as possible, you're inevitably forced to focus on a specific build. Moreover, the positioning of the characters is vitally important, as most of the skills can only target certain spaces on the enemy side. Overall, I found the combat to be enjoyable, if somewhat repetitive.

Puzzles

Bard's Tale 4 is filled with puzzles and secrets. And I do mean filled. Every single area will contain a number of puzzles that you must overcome in order to advance. Though the number of puzzle types is somewhat limited, they do increase in scope and complexity as you progress through the story, which can be both a good and bad thing, depending on how much you like puzzles. Even if you're not a fan of puzzles, there's no need to fret, as you can use a special song to solve any of them, as long as you opted to have that song in your repertoire at the beginning of the game (not sure if it's something you can enable later on).

Art

Graphically, Bard's Tale 4 is nothing special. That's not to say there aren't a lot of beautiful environments in the game, just that nothing particularly stands out about it visually. Putting that aside though, the soundtrack of the game absolutely phenomenal, as one should hope for a game titled "Bard's Tale". I'll be listening to songs from its soundtrack for years to come.

Play Time and Replayability

I estimate it took me about 40 hours to complete everything in the game, though it's hard to say exactly since I left the game running throughout the day a few times. There's no New Game+ and nothing in the gameplay changes through different playthroughs. You can change your MC's class, but since you're running a 6-man team, it will only affect the start of the game. The only randomized thing is the loot and you get plenty of that anyway, so I'd say it's not really worth replaying unless you wanna challenge yourself on higher difficulties.

Gripes

I think the biggest gripe I have with the game is its gear system. As you adventure through Skara Brae and beyond, you acquire mountains of gear as loot. While there's nothing wrong with that in essence, the problem arises from the fact that you can't sell most of it. The amount of money vendors have is extremely limited, which results in you having to destroy half the gear you find just to clear your inventory, and that leaves a bit of a bitter taste in one's mouth. In addition, not only is the gear separated by "rarity" (green, blue, purple, orange, etc.), but the items within the same rarity can have different statistics as well, so you need to constantly check if the stuff you got is better than what you're wearing, even though it looks the same and has the same name.

Another aspect of gear I dislike is the so-called "elven puzzle weapons", which are weapons that you have to inspect and solve puzzles on the weapon itself in order to unlock additional effects for them. It's an interesting idea on paper, but the execution ended up being very disappointing. Although the puzzle weapons require certain crystals to upgrade and even force you to run around all over the map to find their respective shrines (or enemies to kill), their stats are actually fairly low and they don't upgrade in any way as you unlock higher tiers. This means that the generic loot you find along the way ends up being the better choice and the whole thing a pointless exercise in futility. A shame really.

And speaking of inspecting items, I think the feature is greatly under-utilized. You can closely inspect (rotate in 3D space) every single item that you find in the game, but other than the puzzle weapons, there's literally no benefit to inspecting any of the items. It would have been a great opportunity to add more secrets and lore to the game, rewarding those who take the time to look closely at the things they find.

Aside from the poorly executed gear system, my only other gripe would be the ending. SLIGHT SPOILER: At the end of the game, someone must sacrifice themselves for the greater good, and you don't get the option to sacrifice yourself, which just rubs me the wrong way. The hero should always get the option to sacrifice themselves. That's their whole schtick.

Final Verdict

Overall, I'd say this is a decent sequel to the original trilogy. I'll give the game a rating of 7.5, though largely on account of its phenomenal soundtrack.