The Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep (2018), developed and published by inXile Entertainment
My GOG Galaxy timer shows me 69 hours after I finally managed to beat The Bard's Tale IV. I'd say it is more than long enough for an RPG, especially the kind like this, that is filled with puzzles and more or less designed combat instead of random scuffles. And it is quite story-heavy as well, especially when compared to original Bard's Tale games and the blobber RPG genre in general.
As I've mentioned in the previous posts I've written about TBTIV, I like the game. Despite its severe difficulties at launch, inXile has managed to iron out a lot of the kinks that plagued the game when it came out. inXile has already released 4 hefty patches to the game, of which the latest one, called The Second Sight, has brought in a lot of optimization and first glimpses of the promised legacy mode. This mode is meant for those who want to play the game by using grid movement and doing their own mapping on grid paper. Though you can choose what of the old school mechanics you turn on.
Oh, and you can finally save anywhere now, which is nice. The original save points still are in the game, but they now only heal you and you can't consume them for extra experience points if you turn the save anywhere option on. That is a fair trade if you ask me.
There still are a lot of things to fix, mind you. The inventory system still is a mess and I doubt inXile can fix the biggest problem of the game, the beginning and the character creation that comes up only after the tutorial. There are other problems here and there, like some of the battles are a bit uneven. And then there is the skill system where you can only use a limited amount of skills for any character.
Another issue is the money, or rather things you can use it on, though it isn't really a problem only TBTIV has, as a lot of other RPGs have the same issue in the endgame, where you get a lot of money and have nothing in the game to spend it on. One reason for this is the generous savepoint system, that heals the characters, so you don't really need to use healing items that often, so you can get along fine with the stuff you loot. The same goes with weapons and armours, as there's rarely a reason to buy things, as you keep finding more than enough.
Barrows Deep is, in many ways, a reintroduction, or perhaps even a reboot, of the series to new players, that haven't heard or played the game before. It doesn't require any deep knowledge of the old games, which isn't surprising considering how slim the story was in those. The most notable callbacks to the old games are, that the main baddie has resurrected the three main baddies of the previous games, Mangar, Lagoth Zanta and the mad god Tarjan himself.
Yadis, the baddie at it this time, is trying to break the Maidens Song, ancient magic, that is keeping the evil Famhair gods behind the veil between realities. In order to break the song, he is using the old villains as a distraction and obstacle. He cares very little of them otherwise and has no interest in sharing his future victories with them, but he leads them on, nonetheless.
Putting more meat in the story isn't the only way this new incarnation of the series differs from what came before. The originals were, as are their remakes, more combat heavy. While you explore in those games, you encounter countless waves of enemies, which you need to trash. In TBTIV, you can clearly see where the enemies are and even try to go past them if you don't feel like fighting everyone on your way.
Another big change is putting more emphasis on puzzles. You spend more time doing those than you do the fighting, which does raise an interesting question of why the puzzles don't reward you with any experience points. You do get experience from the fights and completing quests, but puzzles are just obstacles that block your progress. Some sort of an experience system would have been a pretty nice inclusion, which could also be used in making the character progression system a bit more versatile and not be solely related to the combination of fighting and quests.
As a whole, the only things Barrows Deep has in common with the old games are the name and the world it is set in. It is so vastly different from what has come before it, that inXile could have easily called it something else instead. In a way, it probably could have been a smart choice, as being connected to an old series, and having a number 4 in the title, might have actually cost them some additional sales especially if some people were afraid they would have to know things from the old games. That tied to the technical issues at launch, it is more than likely, that the return of the Bard's Tale series will not go far.
But that besides, I do like Barrows Deep. While it has its problems, it has fixed a lot of things, at least technically. inXile is still determined to fix the game further, so hopefully, the rest of the technical issues it has will be ironed out for future players. And if you've been postponing playing it because of technical issues, now could be a good time to consider giving it another go.
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