The Bard’s Tale really shines in bringing life and personality to your
character. Voiced by Cary Elwes (of Princess Bride’s Dread Pirate Roberts fame),
the bard is not shy about keeping his observations and motivations from the
narrator, other characters in the game, or even himself. His musings are often
sarcastic, occasionally mean-spirited, and sometimes even reveal a hint of a
good heart buried beneath all of the self-absorption. In short, he is a complex
and interesting character and in a way this is a subtle means of skewering the
RPG standard of generically noble and universally bland heroes.
The game even lets you direct the bard’s barbs in conversation through its
“smarmy or nice” interface. When conversing with characters – which are all
voiced and well-acted, by the way – you are in control of some of the bard’s
responses. Rather than selecting from a list of text responses you merely choose
the attitude of his response. Select “smarmy: and you let the bard loose to
deliver barb-laced sarcasm and occasional mean-spiritedness. Select “nice” and
you let a little of the good side of the bard’s character out, although this
option is not necessarily a sarcasm filter. What makes things particularly
interesting is that sometimes one response is far more appropriate than the
other and being nice when you need to be gruff or being mean-spirited when you
need to show compassion can cost you the opportunity to pick up bonus experience
points, items, side-quests, or silver.
 |
| The bard gets a little help from his friends. |
Well so far the game sounds pretty good and for the most part it is, but there
are some serious shortcomings that prevent the game from being one of the truly
great ones. The first problem is with the awkward healing system. There are no
potions to quaff in The Bard’s Tale. Rather you must collect special crystals
instead. These crystals are used to call upon the spirit of the princess you’re
ultimately trying to rescue in the game to come down and heal you and your
summoned companions. Crystals instead of potions, no big deal there. Where the
real problem lies is in the healing process. To invoke the healing spirit you
must hold down the left trigger to display a compass rose style menu, select
healing from that menu, and then from the next menu select the number of
crystals that you want to use to power the healing. What’s worse is that the
combat does not pause during all of this. When you’re desperate for health you
must bug out of combat run to a safe place, and quickly make your way through
the menus before your enemies catch up to you. Once you select the heal option,
you’re then forced into a cutscene that shows the princess’ spirit descending
from the sky, bestowing healing on your party, and then ascending back up into
the sky. This cutscene lasts over 5 seconds – an eternity in game time – and
there is no way to bypass it or cut it short. At a certain point in the game
you’ll learn a song to summon a healer into your party, but this is not a very
good substitute. The healer can not be relied on in a pinch as she seems to cast
her healing spells at random, and never when you desperately need it. Plus
having a healer around takes a slot away from a character that can actually
attack the enemy, so this option is best used for between battle heals to save
on healing crystals.
Unfortunately the game’s combat can be just as frustrating as the healing
process. The controls are a little sluggish to respond and you can feel a delay
from the time you press the button to the time the bard swings his sword. This
is a particularly annoying problem when it comes to blocking. The game is
designed to make blocking vital to your success and yet you’ll constantly put up
your block after you’ve received the blow or be forced to guess when an attack
may be coming so that you can put your block order in on time. It is also
impossible to break out of attack animations, so if the game decides to send
your bard on a three swing combo and the enemy moved before your attack button
press registered, you’re stuck watching as the bard swings through thin air,
powerless to stop him. It is ironic that a game that attempts to streamline
gameplay and poke fun at game conventions suffers from one of gaming’s more
garden variety weaknesses, that of poor and unresponsive control. It’s enough of
an issue to prove frustrating during the longer stretches of fights, especially
since the game likes to keep you fighting a very high percentage of the time.
If you’re an RPG fan and are looking for a little good natured ribbing of your
genre of choice, you’ll probably be happy to look past the game’s issues simply
for the entertainment factor. There’s enough to like about The Bard’s Tale that
it warrants a look despite its problems. If you’re simply looking for hack and
slash action though, you may want to rent the game first to see if you can put
up with the fight controls.
In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated:
79%. The Bard’s Tale is the (Monty Python’s) Holy Grail of action-RPGs.
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