For anyone out there that wishes to check out a few classic dungeon-crawlers, The Bard's Tale Trilogy is the definitive experience. The three games, warts and all, have been effortlessly reproduced. Accessibility is the least of anyone's concern here, thanks to a slew of convenient features. An auto-map that also tracks hints is a godsend. Of course, the option to ignore all of these niceties is freely available. Whatever the case, this is a fine epic that guarantees many hours of enjoyment.
Whether as history lesson, exercise in nostalgia, or appetizer to the upcoming fourth entry to the series, The Bard's Tale Trilogy remains engaging. It requires a lot of patience and attention to detail and a special love of character micromanagement and, although the rerelease is more colorful than the original, the graphics and core gameplay are still rooted in the limitations of 1980s technology. Playing The Bard's Tale Trilogy is a reminder that while games have achieved cinematic production values that rival anything from Hollywood, they don't always fire the imagination the way that the less graphically accomplished adventures often did.
I’m playing through the series on the Xbox. It maybe takes an hour to get used to playing this type of game on the console but Inxile did a great job with the transition. Fans of Wizardry should give this a shot.
Excellent remaster of the best RPG series of the 80s. The world is recreated perfectly with the graphics updated but still mostly to their roots. Most important is the addition of interface tweaks which make the experience much more enjoyable for those of us that want to enjoy a nostalgic game, but without the need for buying a graph paper book to map exploration or memorize the spell commands.
High on challenge and low on graphics intensity, this old-school remaster is well worth a look for RPG fans who either haven't experienced this trilogy yet, or who want to experience it again.
The original trilogy was my first real RPG, back in the 80's. This remaster is simply fantastic. The games are nicely and faithfully remastered. The improvements like saves and automaps are simply fantastic: they are making the games playable by todays standards. I started playing and I simply could not stop. I also did not feel any urge to look for help on Internet. I just dived into the puzzles and dungeons. Very well done!!!
The Bards Tale Trilogy probably isn't going to win any converts from today quality games, but, if you liked games from yesteryear then this'll probably be right up your street, especially if RPG was your genre. Just like the Amiga classic, the Bard Tale bring imagination into game playing and reminds you that just because a game's old, doesn't mean it's going to be easy, it's not.
For the price you'll pay for the game, it#s honestly worth a punt. Well done !
Well (re)made with added features (optional). Played through all 3 recently and while online walkthroughs help where when I was young hours of meticulous mapping and notes were needed. Great for nostalgia, and well worth a spot on the digital game shelf.
Krome Studios and inXile have done a great job giving the original classics a new lick of paint. The initial release provides BT1, with BT2 and 3 to folllow later in the year - but unlike the originals, the remaster tweaks a few things to make it more viable to carry a party though the series from start to finish.
The game remains a classic 'blobber' dungeon crawler from the era, with the emphasis on fast turn based combat, exploration (now with auto-map) and a challenge based around HP and SP management... how far should you push yourself in a dungeon before turning back to escape? The challenge has been dialled down a little with the introduction of save anywhere and lower xp requirements for levelling, but the devs are adding a Legacy mode which turns off these elements for a more hardcore BT experience. The 3D view and portraits are mostly great, although sound could be better.
Overall a great remaster - cant wait for 2, and especially 3, to be added.
SummaryThe Bard's Tale Trilogy is a complete remaster of the iconic series that helped define the RPG genre. Featuring updated graphics and optional quality of life gameplay features, this is the ideal way to experience the dungeon crawling challenge that made the original games beloved classics.