"Bard's Tale 4 was good at launch" is a hill I will happily die on, but not everyone had a smooth-sailing experience with it out of the gate, and even I have to admit that there were some rough spots. The Bard's Tale 4: Director's Cut, released today, aims to address those shortcomings with new features, a "massive balance pass," and new content including more powerful bosses, Dwarven weapons, and the Royal Necropolis of Haernhold.

"We had a rough launch as you know and the sales were not as strong as we had hoped. We knew we had a good game but the issues at launch didn't allow everyone to get the same experience, the review scores were all over the map," inXile CEO Brian Fargo said. "In addition our fans pointed out areas that needed improvement and we got right to work to create a game they would really enjoy. We spent the last 8 months implementing a good 40 pages of improvement and adding additional content to give our fans a Bard's Tale they deserve."

Haernhold, an end-game dungeon with new puzzles and bosses to take on, sounds like the big hook, but it's the behind-the-scenes stuff that really makes the difference. Along with "thousands" of bug fixes and gameplay improvements, the updated edition introduces new character creation and difficult options (including an option to save anywhere), adds some much-needed inventory filters, and drops in new character portraits, improved level art, and a new intro cinematic. Overall performance has been improved, full controller support is implemented, and mandatory puzzles can now be skipped, although you'll still need to figure out the optional ones if you want the full tour.

I've played with the Director's Cut a bit and I really like what I see. The original release ran very well for me so the performance boost is tough to pick up, but the inventory is more manageable, which is nice, and the new character creation and difficulty tuning options should make the game a lot more accessible.

The one knock against it is that the Director's Cut is a completely separate version of The Bard's Tale 4, so you won't be able to pick up where you left off: I was hoping to dive straight into the Haernhold endgame content, but I'm going to have to start over from scratch and do some Skara Brae-saving first. Honestly, I don't mind much. (And yes, I tried manually copying my saves to the new location. No go.) 

Bard's Tale 4: Director's Cut is $35/£25/€35 on Steam. Everyone who owns the original Bard's Tale 4: Barrows Deep will get the updated edition for free.

The Bard's Tale 4: Barrows Deep was one of my favorite games from 2018, and I wrote a glowing review to prove it. In August it will get even better as The Bard's Tale 4 Director's Cut, which was announced in February, will go live.

The Director's Cut "directly addresses feedback received from the game’s initial launch with thousands of fixes and tweaks included," developer inXile Entertainment said. It will also add long-awaited DLC in the form of a new final chapter that promises to add hours of new content. No details were revealed, but based on appearance of the large green fellow at the end of the trailer, I'd say we're finally going to see what's happening in Haernhold. (Also, that's what inXile said last year.)

The updated version will also include new enemies, weapons, and items, an updated interface, more class and gender character creation options, additional difficulty settings, full gamepad support, rebalanced combat and encounters, and "thousands of fixes and improvements."

The Bard's Tale 4 Director's Cut is available for pre-purchase on Steam, and will also be coming to GOG. If you already own the original release, you'll get the Director's Cut content and updates as a free update when it goes live, which is set to happen on August 27.

I thought The Bard's Tale 4: Barrows Deep was an excellent dungeon crawler when it came out in the fall of 2018, but not everyone was quite so satisfied with the experience. I enthusiastically stand by my assessment—I enjoyed it throughout, even though the ending was a bit of a bummer—but if you're on the "disappointed" side of the divide, inXile is working on a "Director's Cut" version of the game that might give you a reason to take another look. 

The Director's Cut is an outgrowth of the 2.0 update that the studio announced in December 2018. "As the scope of the patch has expanded (and continues to), we decided that it warranted a more formal title than 2.0. When released, it will turn the game into The Bard’s Tale 4: Barrows Deep - Director’s Cut," inXile's Paul Marzagalli explained in a Kickstarter update. "We are introducing several new features, most notably the previously mentioned DLC and an engine update, a larger undertaking allowing us to further improve performance and optimization." 

The update will incorporate a free new dungeon, with a new plotline and enemy types, that was also announced in December, along with new master-crafted gear and dwarven weapons, updates to the game engine that will improve performance and stability, better art, additional character portraits, better localization options, and "expanded balancing efforts across the entire game," including combat, the economy, and character abilities. 

Inventory filtering is coming (finally), a new "Song of Exploration" will enable players who don't dig the puzzles to skip past them entirely, and of course the obligatory "and much more!" is promised as well.

InXile currently expects to have the Director's Cut update ready for release in June. Alas, with the good news comes a spot of bad: Because inXile is "unable to finalize the Mac and Linux versions of the game and continue to simultaneously make such sweeping changes to it," those versions won't be released until the Director's Cut patch rolls out. 

I liked The Bard's Tale 4: Barrows Deep an awful lot when it came out earlier this year and it's improved considerably since then, with new features, performance improvements, and bug fixes. Today developer inXile Entertainment announced that the studio is working on a new dungeon, the Royal Necropolis of Haernhold, which will be free for everyone who owns the game. 

The Royal Necropolis will be a combat-focused dungeon with "several new mini-boss fights and two very challenging boss fights." Players will have the opportunity to uncover the truth of Tarjan's treachery and reverse the destruction wrought upon the tomb of Gaerwyn, the greatest hero of the Dwarves.   

"While the emphasis is very much on trying out and acquiring new, powerful gear and then using it on the most challenging fights we’ve ever made, we are also able to leverage all of our existing puzzle designs and components for a set of new, mind-bending puzzles that players will have to solve to find the secrets of Gaerwyn’s tomb," inXile said. 

Not everyone will be thrilled with the promise of more puzzles: For all that I enjoyed the game, even I have to admit that it got to be a little much at times. The upcoming 2.0 patch will address the hassle with a new song called "Struggler's Lament" that will instantly open most doors that are locked by puzzles. It will only work on core quest content, so you'll still have to handle the optional sections on your own if you want to see what they've got hidden away, but it will make getting to the end of the tale a less trying proposition. 

The 2.0 update will also add a new tier of high-level, "master-crafted" items and change up merchants to make them more useful (particularly in the late stages of the game), add new character portraits and nine new fast-travel locations, buff unique items and Elven puzzle weapons, and—finally—add inventory filtering and controller support. Work on the Mac and Linux versions of the game is also ongoing but is taking longer than expected because of the focus on post-releases updates. 

A rollout date for the 2.0 update hasn't been set, but the Royal Necropolis of Haernhold DLC is expected to be ready to go in early 2019. 

InXile Entertainment has rolled out a major update for The Bard's Tale 4: Barrows Deep that brings a host of new features to the old-timey dungeon crawler. Collectively known as "Legacy Mode," the changes include the promised grid-based movement with selectable free or fixed camera, a save anywhere option, character respeccing, and toggles for gameplay options including waypoint display, automapping, and auto-resurrection. 

The grid-based movement mode is still in beta, "but rather than holding back for longer we wanted those of you who are passionate about this feature to try it out and let us know what you think," inXile wrote. It also warned that enabling the feature in a saved game prior to patch 4 will result in many NPCs not looking directly at you while you're moving. The developers adjusted NPCs to better align with the grid, but propagating that through existing games would require wiping NPC save data. 

"That would reset things such as their inventory, which we wanted to avoid at all costs," inXile wrote. 

The updated save feature is accessible from the pause menu, and quicksaves and loads using the F5/F9 keys are also available. When the feature is enabled, however, luckstones are disabled, meaning that they can't be consumed for bonus experience. 

A new Legendary difficulty setting has been added, and for the truly hardcore there's also a new permadeath mode that, once enabled, cannot be turned off for a run. "This mode is only for the bold. If your entire party is incapacitated, your save file is permanently deleted," inXile explained. "Don’t say we didn’t warn you."

A large number of bug fixes and gameplay changes have been made as well, including a big nerf to Rogues that reduces both the range and duration of their Infiltrator ability: Previously, a single Rogue with the ability could hide the entire party for three turns, but following the patch they'll be reduced to hiding a maximum of two party members for just one turn. 

"This was done because Infiltrator passive was simply negating too much damage, and there were plenty of ways for the party to effectively deal damage in that time (like Razors Strop or Meditate) that wouldn’t reveal them," inXile said. "Hopefully Rogues position at the start of combat, and who you choose to hide, will be more strategic, while still allowing the enemy to get hits in on some characters." 

There are some lingering known issues as well, although most of them are relatively minor, or at least rare: The game might crash if you try to save and load during the end-game credits in order to re-fight the final boss, for instance. (Fix: Don't do that.) Some major features, like a better inventory system and controller support, are still in development, and the studio is also working "a few other nice things that we can't talk about yet."   

The patch notes are available in full on Steam, where The Bard's Tale 4: Barrows Deep is also on sale for 20 percent off across all editions as part of the ongoing Steam Autumn Sale.

I’ve sunk about 40 hours into The Bard's Tale 4: Barrows Deep so far, and I’m not ready to hoist my 'Saved the World' tankard just yet. It's a really big game. But even though I have yet to dispatch the latest and greatest threat to the city of Skara Brae—and the greater world of Caith, because the adventure goes far beyond Skara Brae's walls—I am happy. This is the dungeon crawling adventure I've been waiting for.

The Bard's Tale 4 is a remarkable modernization of an infamously punishing old game, and the dungeon crawler genre as a whole. The update is most obviously apparent in the free-roaming movement system that lets me look and go where I want, without the conventional constraints of grid-based movement. It’s all smoke and mirrors—the levels are as linear and corridor-based as they were in the original Bard's Tale games—but the free movement, map layouts, and longer lines of sight work together to brilliantly camouflage the angular restrictiveness and make it feel more like an open-world game. 

It took me awhile to adjust to the oddities that this hybrid system sometimes enables. The tutorial level talks about sticking to the shadows to sneak past an enemy, for instance, but there's no actual stealth feature, and visibility is solely a matter of distance and positioning on the invisible grid that maps are built upon. It's often possible to stroll up to within speaking distance of an enemy without being seen.

Jumping, ducking, hiding, leaning, and other advanced movements that you’d expect from a first-person RPG aren’t possible either, because—and I feel like this really deserve emphasis—that's not what The Bard's Tale 4 is. It might be dressed up like Skyrim Lite, but it's a Bard's Tale game through and through.

Shiny and old

As up-to-date as The Bard's Tale 4 looks and sounds (the ambient audio is fantastic), a number of the underlying systems are unforgivingly old-fashioned. Characters can't be re-specced, so if you make a bad choice or decide you don't like how your front-line tank is shaping up, that's too bad. Inventories aren't accessible in a fight, so forget about asking everyone to hold up while you open your pack and pull out a healing potion. Speaking of which, healing potions are in extremely short supply, and you can forget about crafting all you need because one of the herbs needed to make them is just as rare. And The Bard's Tale will happily throw enemies in your path that you are woefully unprepared to handle.

It was frustrating at times, until I came to terms with the idea that the fault was entirely mine for wasting resources and picking fights I couldn't win. The shortage of potions is a hassle, but it's something I can work around, rather than an unfair obstacle—kind of a puzzle in its own right. At one point on my adventures, I was faced with enemies who beat my ass severely. I could sometimes take them, but just barely, and not without blowing through far more potions than I wanted to. After several reloads (and increasing annoyance), inspiration struck: Go around them. It worked. 

The leveling system is also from an entirely different era. Characters abilities are based on "masteries" that can be purchased as levels are earned: One level, one point, one mastery. But there are multiple tiers of masteries, and unlocking successive tiers requires the approval of the Adventurer's Guild Review Board, which will only grant it once you’ve unlocked enough of them at your current tier. 

Because of that, chasing a specific ability or saving up points to sink into higher-level masteries isn’t always viable because higher tiers won’t unlock until you've enabled enough of them at your current rank. It's a hugely anachronistic but I actually like the way it saves me from the "build paralysis" I suffer when trying to figure out what to do with my characters. Instead of worrying about saving up skill points for the high-end abilities, I can blow them on the middling stuff without fear that I’m “wasting” them.

Other elements don’t feel 'old' so much as just rough or unfinished. There’s no inventory autosorting or stacking, paper doll screens aren't accessible when dealing with merchants so you can't see equipped weapons and armor when you're shopping for upgrades, and the map lacks detail—it doesn't indicate where the savegame markers are, for instance—and worse, it doesn't support manual notations. Little flags indicate "points of interest," but give no sign as to what's actually interesting about them. Maybe it's a nice view, or maybe there's a locked door or optional quest, but there's no way to leave a reminder on the map so that you'll know to pay attention the next time you're passing through the neighborhood. 

Some of these issues have been addressed in a recently-released patch: Hard drive performance still isn't great but it's better than it was, there's an FOV slider, and crashing has apparently been reduced, although I didn't have any crash issues so I can't comment on that. InXile says future patches will continue to improve performance and gameplay, including the map, which will be cleaned up for "readability" and finally get save totem markers.  

The save system bears a specific mention too. Bard's Tale 4 uses a manual checkpoint save system of "luck stones," some of which can be sacrificed—without a save—in exchange for a chunk of experience points. I really like (and hate) having to choose between the security of a save in the middle of a tough dungeon and the tantalizing promise of free and easy XP. But an unintended side effect is that I often take the XP, backtrack through a level to the most recent standard Luck Stone to save and rejuvenate my party, and then hike all the way back to the front line.

In a way, that's legitimately old-school too, kind of like the cheesy slide-and-swing maneuver commonly used in real-time grid-based dungeon crawlers: These games are hard, and we do what we must to win. But it's a good idea that doesn’t quite come off in execution. At times I agonize over the choice between safety and XP, but more often than not I just end up doing a lot more walking. The potential for frustration is also high: There are plenty of save points, but if you forget to use them and then wipe, it's tough noogies for you. There are no autosaves or do-overs if you pooch a fight. I’m inclined to see that as a good thing, but not everyone shares that enlightened perspective. 

Skara Brae is back

Combat and exploration are where The Bard's Tale 4 really shines. Turn-based battles take place on a 4x4 grid with a shared pool of "opportunity points" determining what your party, and the enemy, can and can't do. Initiative is determined manually—charge an enemy and you get first strike, but it goes to them if you're spotted first—and proper positioning of your characters is vital, especially as the game wears on. 'Fighters up front, mages in the back' is timeless advice, but some class-specific maneuvers that inflict extra damage also have limited reach or proximity bonuses. Your magic user’s flame attack does triple damage if you blast your opponent right in the face, as an example, so it might be worth moving her to the front rank to score that heavy punch. But it'll cost a point to move her up there, and another to pull her back to relative safety.

Tactical movement isn't the flashiest of Bard Tale 4's upgrades, but it is one of the most important because it can force some really tough decisions. As it's a turn-based game I can take as long as I like to ponder my options (although the enemy side will start to razz me if I dick around for too long) but ultimately there is no reward without risk: I might be able to save my badly injured fighter by pulling him back to the rear rank, but if he stays up front and eats one more hit, my magic user could have a better shot of getting off his devastating Warstrike spell. It can be nerve-wracking, because there’s no guarantee that an enemy will react to your moves in the way you want him to, but a daring, high-risk maneuver that pulls out a last-second victory feels pretty great.

Effective use of buffs is also important. My personal avatar in The Bard's Tale 4 is, appropriately, a bard, and when people start fighting, I start drinking. The drunker I get, the more effective my songs, and the buffs they confer, become. But if I drink too much (which generally isn’t a problem, but hey, everybody has bad days), I get one turn of angry super-strength—and then I fall over, helpless. 

And because attack damage is a fixed value rather than RNG-based, wins or losses never feel cheap. I know exactly what's going to happen when my rogue lands a Shiv attack (assuming I’m paying attention), and so I can plan around it. I can't blame a shitty roll of the dice for losing a close fight, but I feel in control of what I'm doing because outcomes, good or bad, are dependent solely on my planning and execution. While there's some joy to rolling the dice in, say, XCOM, games like The Bard's Tale 4 and Into the Breach, which telegraph more outcomes, bring a chess-like intensity where every sacrifice and attack must be planed turns ahead.

Drunkeneering

My bard's booziness is emblematic of a gentle silliness that runs through Bard's Tale 4. One of my masteries is Mean Drunk, which I chose solely for how ridiculous it is: After I chug a drink, I throw my magic mug at the enemy for 5 physical damage. There's a goofy lightheartedness to it that Serious Adventurers might not dig, but I really like it. It's endearing without being overbearing, and makes for a pleasant break from the usual grim business of dungeoneering. Enemy NPCs trash-talk amusingly during fights (they are particularly disdainful about my drunkenness) and party members banter as well, in a way reminiscent of the Baldur's Gate games. The Trow rogue tells dad jokes, the Dwarf fighter threatens to rip his ears off for it, and the Imp practioner—that’s Bard’s Tale terminology for magic user—gets a big bang out of tormenting me with threats of demonic possession.

The world of Caith is also an absolute delight. It's big, for one thing, and unexpectedly beautiful in parts, particularly the forest of Inshriach, a wooded area that opens up around the midpoint of the game. And there are all kinds of things to do. Combat is obviously at the top of the list, but there are people to talk to, puzzles to solve, lore to learn, and some pretty cool weapons and armor to pick up and play with. Some areas can be bypassed if you're in a hurry to get to the end (but why would you be?) and you can skip bits and come back to them later: I've got a giant who's been waiting for an ass-kicking in Skara Brae Below pretty much from the start of the game. The levels really feel packed, and it's worth putting time into properly exploring them. And there is one important concession to modern gameplay in the form of adjustable difficulty. 'Easy' mode isn’t a walk in the park, but it does makes combat noticeably more manageable.

The story underlying all this dungeon crawling business is fairly rote fantasy stuff about a powerful bad guy and a nefarious plot to take over the world (or maybe blow up, I'm not entirely clear on that). Familiarity with the old Bard's Tale games is fun for picking up references—the first major villain I encountered was Mangar, the final boss of the original Bard's Tale, and there's a shrine to creator Michael Cranford next to the old Adventurer's Guild, which I think is a nice touch—but not at all necessary to enjoy the story or understand what's happening. Not that Bard's Tale 4 leans too heavily on narrative anyway: The entire basis for the game is that my pal and I happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I wasn't doing anything else so I decided to help him out.

Again, that's the old school approach: We're here because we're heroes, and this is what heroes do. If you need more motivation than that—a deeper meaning, or maybe a more elegantly-told tale—then this may not be your kind of thing. But for old-time adventuring in a sprawling, vibrant world, The Bard's Tale 4: Barrows Deep delivers.

I've been playing The Bard's Tale 4: Barrows Deep for a few days now and so far it's been great (our review is coming), but not without some rough edges. Today, inXile explained how it plans to smooth them down, beginning with the first patch that it hopes to have out on Friday.   

The first update will mainly be a quick fixer-upper, with initial improvements to loading times (it's fine on SSDs, but standard HDD load times can be brutal), framerate optimizations, initial fixes for wide-screen support, better hardware auto-detection, and a number of smaller bug fixes. An FOV slider is coming, and there will also be an option to delete saved games, which isn't currently available.   

The second update, planned for September 28, is said to include more performance improvements, map markers indicating where the save totems are located, weapon and ability rebalancing, grammar and localization fixes, and (surprise) more bug fixes.

Beyond that—with no date set—inXile plans to add a 'Legacy Mode,' which will include grid-based movement and options to disable the mini-map, enable perma-death, turn of auto-resurrections, and other such misery-inducing 'features' from 1986, along with controller support, an option to speed up combat animations, and inventory sorting, which for some inexplicable reason wasn't present at release.   

"We are working around the clock to solve these issues as soon as possible," inXile wrote. "Also, we would like to ask you to let us know if there are any other issues that influence your personal gaming experience in a negative way. We have spent a lot of love, time and effort into the development of The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrows Deep, and there is no bigger reward for us than if you are enjoying it." 

The studio also said that delays in distributing keys to backers should be resolved by today. 

The Bard's Tale 4 comes out tomorrow, and if it's a big hit, inXile Entertainment boss Brian Fargo said on Twitter that he'll celebrate by trying to buy back Interplay, the studio he co-founded back in the early '80s. 

And in case you were curious, yes, he is serious about it. "I certainly am," he told Variety. "My fans have been requesting me to bring back my old Interplay games for years and this would be the most amazing way to make that happen."

Interplay was a top-notch outfit in its prime, developing or publishing games including The Bard's Tale trilogy, Wasteland, Neuromancer, Descent, Battle Chess, Freespace, and Fallout. Recent years (say, post-2000) haven't been as kind, however. 2014 Kickstarter campaigns for Battle Chess and a Freespace-based board game both failed badly, for instance, although Battle Chess did eventually make it to Steam. Aside from that, it's been focused primarily on re-releasing old properties like Evolva and MAX 2.

Even if Bard's Tale 4 is a hit, the whole thing hinges on Interplay's willingness to sell. Fortunately for those who'd like to see it happen, Interplay has previously expressed an interest in doing just that: In 2016 the company announced a plan (which as far as I know never went anywhere) to sell its entire portfolio. That's not quite the same as selling the entire company, but it's close enough to make for a good starting point. I've reached out to Interplay for comment and will update if I receive a reply.  

The Bard’s Tale 4: Barrows Deep is only a few days away, drawing us back to the constantly endangered Skara Brae after a long hiatus. Slap your eyes on the launch trailer above for an overview of inXile’s dungeon crawler. 

The series itself kicked off 33 years ago, which isn’t really that long ago. I mean, I’m 33 and I’m a spring chicken and definitely not covered in grey hairs and full of aching bones. Definitely. The last proper game was 2004’s spoofy action-RPG, simply titled The Bard’s Tale. All of them are in the process of being remastered, starting with Tales of the Unknown; it launched last month. 

As for the new game, it’s going back to the series’ roots, dropping the action-RPG stuff for first-person dungeon crawling with a party of adventurers. Wes took the first few hours for a spin back in July and was particularly smitten with Bard’s Tale 4’s combat. 

“So far I love this combat system, which will probably be the most controversial element of The Bard's Tale 4's design. It's a far cry from the standard RPG menu of attack/defend/magic/item, with each character proceeding in turn. But even in just a few hours, there's a promising richness to this combat. I quickly found a strategy I liked: throwing down traps that stunned enemies when they were stepped on, then using my fighter's taunt to pull a unit forward onto that space.”

You’ll be able to return to Skara Brae on September 18. 

InXile announced today that the first part of The Bard's Tale Trilogy, a remastered release of the '80s Bard's Tale RPGs that was announced in 2015 as a Bard's Tale 4 Kickstarter backer reward, will be out on August 14. A launch trailer for Tales of the Unknown, as the first entry is called, showcases both the old-fashioned dungeon-crawling gameplay and the updated art and sound that will bring it, just a wee little bit, into the modern era. 

The remastered release will deliver "a uniform playing experience" across all three games, inXile said, without the emulation or compatibility struggles that typically accompany efforts to play a game that's not too far from middle age. Parties can be carried across all three games, and all of them will have improved spell access, inventory management, and an automap feature which, trust me on this, you'll be thankful for. You'll also be able to play as a male or female character in all three games, something that apparently wasn't possible in the original releases of the first two. 

Work on The Bard's Tale Trilogy began at Olde Skuul Games, but that hit a snag in early 2017. InXile said in a Kickstarter update posted in May of this year that it had "agreed to part ways" with Olde Skuul, but still wanted the games remastered for new players. That led it to a partnership with Krome Studios, which decided to give the games "a fresh coat of paint" along with the compatibility overhaul.

It was a major undertaking: Each game looked and functioned differently based on platform (courtesy of Mobygames, have a look at some DOS (EGA, I assume)/Apple II/C64/Mac screens below) and the complete source code wasn't available for any of them. 

"If archaeology and game development had a baby, it would be this project," Krome head of development Lindsay Parmenter said. "By studying the code across different versions of the game, we were able to piece together developer intent and recreate it. Of course, having access to some of the original team members helped, too!"

Those who didn't back The Bard's Tale 4 can pick up the trilogy from Steam or GOG for $15. The second part of the trilogy, The Destiny Knight, is expected to be out in the fall, while part three, Thief of Fate, is slated for a winter release. Krome also plans to release a "Legacy Mode" option for the trilogy, which will make the games play similarly to the original releases, "with all the challenge that entails."