Video Gamers Podcast - Gaming Quick Takes: Bards Tale IV

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Starting point is 00:01:16 Hey everybody, it's Josh, and I am back with another Quick Takes episode for you. This one is going to appeal to maybe some of the older gamers, but I hope that if you are a younger gamer and you're not familiar with games like this, that you at least look into this gameplay. Back in the day, you had these games that I absolutely loved, every game in this genre just about, where it was a first-person RPG game, kind of like Skyrim, but it's treated a little bit differently. You have that same perspective, okay? You are a hero and it's first-person. But in these types of games, you had a party of people that you would either acquire or start off with. And you would go and you would travel around. Generally, it works in a grid-based

Starting point is 00:02:03 system or something like that. If you listen to my Legend of Grimrock Quick Takes episode, very similar in that vein. And there was a whole genre that kind of exploded in this regard. But it is an RPG game. It is first-person perspective. You go around and you explore a world. You build a party. The party crafting system is really good because you can build the party kind of how you want with the different classes and stuff like that. But Might and Magic is probably one of the more famous series in this genre. Not the heroes of Might and Magic, which is more like a tactical, almost like real-time strategy game.

Starting point is 00:02:41 This is the original Might and Magic games. And so a little bit different genre than I think a lot of people are used to. But if you're like me and you're a little bit older, you probably played a lot of games like this back in the day. So the game that I want to talk to you about today is a game called Bard's Tale 4. Now you say, hey Josh, what about Bard's Tale 1, 2, and 3? Ah, forget about those. You don't need to play them to appreciate Bard's Tale 4. And Bard's Tale 4, to me, is an absolutely phenomenal game in this series. And it's a standalone. Like I said, you don't need prior experience in this series to play it.

Starting point is 00:03:18 So what is Bard's Tale 4? Well, it's everything I just told you about. But why am I recommending this game? And why do I like it so much? Well, if you're like me in your RPG games, you like lots of different gear. You want, you know, thousands of different swords and bows and spells and things like that to choose from. Then this is the game for you. If you like a party based combat where positioning matters and you know, you have to have healers and frontline tanks and backline magic users, and you want a rogue that can do a ton of damage, but if they get

Starting point is 00:03:53 caught, they're going to die because they're glass cannons and things like that, then this combat system is for you. The way that Bard's Tale 4 works is in first-person perspective, you walk around a city and you come across characters that you can interact with. Maybe there's guards that are blocking a path and you can't get past that gate because they won't let you. So you have to explore around and find another way around. But oops, okay, now you tick this guard off, so you enter combat. Well, the way the combat works in Bard's Tale 4 is very cool because you play in this kind of like column system. So you get to put your characters, your party in these various columns. And of course you want

Starting point is 00:04:30 your tanks up front and your casters in the back. But things can definitely get mixed up. Some of the enemy abilities might shift people around and pull your mage to the front line and things like that. But you attack in these columns, but you can combo things in a lot of different ways. Now, this is a very complex system. It's easy to pick up, but it's hard to master. And I don't want to spend this entire episode trying to explain the combat system to you. Just trust me when I say it works very, very well, and it makes every encounter in this game really enjoyable to do. So what are some of the other aspects of Bard's Tale 4 other than, you know, hey, there's a lot of equipment and yes, the combat is great. There's a great story

Starting point is 00:05:10 to the game. You are, you know, you have a mission to kind of save the world from some evil wizard, and it's going to take you to a lot of different locations. Like I said, you're going to start off in a main city. You're going to wind up down in the sewers exploring those. Those are going to take you to a mountainous region where you're walking around. And then maybe that takes you to a forest where you meet some elves that are distrusting of you and you have to earn their trust. And then that takes you to a coastline where you're walking along the ocean and you're trying to figure out how to get out to this big pier that seems to be locked down. So there's a lot of really cool locations. Every area feels very different. The monsters are different, and that's a lot of fun. I mean, if you're like me,

Starting point is 00:05:51 you get tired of games where you fight the same five monsters over and over again. There's dungeons. There's puzzles. Now, the puzzles in this game, because it's a first-person perspective, are a lot of fun because a lot of them involve moving things around and trying to get through this one room that maybe is ridden with traps or riddled with traps. And you have to try to figure out which pressure plates to do. And you can pick up stones and put them on that. Or maybe you can just use your mage to teleport you to the other side and stuff as well. So it's one of those games where it's so in-depth and deep underneath the surface that it's a little deceptive of a game because there's a lot more to it than

Starting point is 00:06:34 what you would initially see. So this was one of those things that I really loved about it, and it caught me off guard. I knew that this was my kind of genre, but I didn't know that I would love this game as much as I did. There's secrets everywhere. There's hidden walls. There's comedy in the way that the characters interact. This is one of those games that honestly has it all. And it's just one of those games that not a lot of people have heard of. And if they have, I think they're instantly put off because it's the fourth entry in a series and they know nothing about the previous games. And that's okay. Like I said, you don't need to do that. This game can be had for very cheap. I don't know what the current price is, but honestly, I feel like you could pick it up for maybe $10. I'll probably go back and actually replay this game. It's that fun to me. Now,

Starting point is 00:07:16 I am a huge fan of this genre. It was my teenage years when I was growing up, but I feel like they just have a tremendous amount to offer to people. I think you should give it a try, even if you have not played this genre or you don't think that this is up your alley. This is one of those games where I think it would transcend those barriers as far as, you know, it's just,

Starting point is 00:07:40 there's not much about it that's not enjoyable. Every now and then you can get stuck. Every now and then there's a little bit of a puzzle where you're like, oh man, I don't know how to figure this out. I mean, you could always look it up, but it's better to just do that. Is there hard fights sometimes and maybe you're going to die and lose that fight? Yeah, there are. But you can just reload and try it again and try different things.

Starting point is 00:08:00 But to me, that's the fun of it. I like difficulty. Not that this game is overly hard. This is no Dark Souls where it's frustrating at times, but it's got that right level of difficulty. It's got that right level of honestly everything. So I look up some gameplay. Gameplay doesn't really do it a ton of service, to be honest with you, because it's an RPG and you really have to know the characters and the story and the quests and the secrets. You get some fantastical weapons. You meet some really crazy characters and stuff like that. But check it out. The art style is neat. It's unique. And I think it's well worth

Starting point is 00:08:36 picking up. So highly, highly recommend this game. It's actually making me want to download it and play it again. So I might just have to do that. But again, I love trying to expand your gaming horizons on games that maybe you haven't ever heard of before. I get that they're not always going to be for everybody, but I love being able to say, hey, you probably haven't heard of this. Check this out. And that's what I'm doing with Bard's Tale 4 as well. If you've played it or you're a fan of the series, hey, I would love to chat because it's so fun to reminisce about this. I feel like it's a genre that has fallen out of popularity for no reason whatsoever because these games are great.

Starting point is 00:09:11 If you do wind up picking it up, let me know what you think. I love hearing people's experiences with games like this as well. So, all right, that's it for me for this Gaming Quick Takes. I hope you give Bard's Tale 4 a try, and I will see you on the next bonus episode. Thank you for the incredible support. We really do appreciate it, and we're going to keep these episodes coming at you as our way of saying thanks. All right, hope you guys have a good day. I will see you later.

Video Gamers Podcast - Gaming Quick Takes: Bards Tale IV

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