InXile Entertainment’s The Bard’s Tale 4: Barrows Deep launched with its fair share of issues, and despite some patches, the game still felt fundamentally flawed in a number of ways. However, even after the developer’s acquisition by Microsoft, it continues to support the game. It recently released a major update, called Second Sight, which introduces a bevy of quality of life features.

Some of these include classic grid-based movement in Grid Mode. Though the feature is in beta, it offers a more classic dungeon crawling feel to the game. Players can also save anywhere (well, almost anywhere) with quick-save and quick-load options. Auto-Resurrect can be deactivated, and Perma-Death is also an option, the latter resulting in your save file being permanently deleted.

In one of the nicer options to have, players can also disable Enemy Reactions. This stops them from continuously talking and taunting during fights. Silence is indeed golden. A new difficulty, character respeccing, and much more are also provided, which should make for a vastly improved experience overall. Check out the full patch notes here, with highlights given below.

Legacy Mode Features:

• Grid Move (BETA): You can now play using grid-based movement! This feature has been a long time coming and we worked hard to get that classic game feel while still working with all our more modern elements and overworld design. You’ll have the option to grid move with full free look enabled at all times or play in a more classic mode in which your camera is rotated for you as you walk forward along the grid. There’s still polish on this feature left to do, 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, and what you feel the most important improvements to the system would be. Let us know what you think on the forums!
  Note: For those turning this feature on in an pre-patch 4 save game, you’ll notice many NPC’s aren’t looking directly at you in the world while moving on the grid. We adjusted NPC’s to better align with the movement grid, but to make that change propagate in existing games it’d require wiping out the NPC’s save data That would reset things such as their inventory, which we wanted to avoid at all costs.
• Save Anywhere: This has been our most requested feature. You can now save the game (almost) anywhere in the game. Save through the pause menu, or use F5 and F9 to quick-save and quick-load. While save anywhere is active, you cannot consume luck-stones for bonus experience. A small price to pay.
  Some areas have been blocked off from saving for technical reasons, and if that’s the case you’ll see a prompt appear letting you know that’s the case. Usually just moving somewhere else in the room or level will resolve that issue.
• Auto-Resurrect: For an extra bit of difficulty, you can deactivate auto-resurrect. This will cause characters who fall in combat to only resurrect upon finding a luck stone. Food will also not revive characters while this is active.
• Perma-Death: This mode is only for the bold. If your entire party is incapacitated, your save file is permanently deleted. Don’t say we didn’t warn you. This option cannot be changed once it’s been set and can only be set on new games.
• Enemy Reactions: Deactivate enemy reactions to stop enemies from chattering and taunting.
• Auto-Mapping: You can deactivate auto-mapping entirely, resulting in all your maps appearing black with no icons. Break out your graph paper.
• Mini-Map: You can toggle how prominent your mini-map is on screen. You can set it to always show, only show while your adventurer’s HUD is up, or never show at all.
• Show Waypoints: Toggle waypoints on or off, if you hate being told where to go.
• Show Enemies On Map: Toggle weather or not enemies appear on your map and mini-map, for an extra challenge.
• The A-Team is back: You can spend 8 mercenary tokens at Mercy the mercenary vendor to hire 6 adventurers who are fully geared for war and ready to rock: Brian the Fist, the Fichti Paladin; El Cid, the Dwarven Fighter; Markus, the Elven Bard; Sir Grady, the Trow Rogue; Merlin, the Einarr Conjuror; and Omar, the Elven Magician
• Adventurer Re-Spec’ing: By spending a mercenary token at the Review Board, you can refund an adventurer’s skill points.
• Legendary Difficulty: A 4th difficulty tier has been added, increasing enemy difficulty by 100% over normal mode.

Balance Changes:

• The caster of All Together is now able to cancel the order, taking all his/her allies out of the stance that he/she granted them.
• Increased the damage per spell point dealt by the Veteran passive to +3, up from +2.
• The Veteran skill now grants max spell points.
• Guardians, when absorbing re-directed physical damage, now benefit from 1/3rd of their total armor.
• Increased the damage per spell point dealt by Spell Blade to +2, up from +1.
• Several skills in the Cleric tree now grant bonus spell points, to help Rogues and Fighters spec into Cleric.
• Mangar’s Mallet’s Spell Point cost has been increased to 8, up from 6. Its damage has been reduced to 1.5x your intelligence, down from 2.5x your intelligence. Trust me, its still an amazing value.
• Oscons Halt Foe is now battle ready. Its Spell points have been reduced to 5, down from 8. Its cooldown is increased to 4, up from 1. Basically, its cheaper to pull off, but you can’t do it as often.
• All Together’s cooldown has been decreased to 2, down from 3.
• If a warrior is wielding a buckler and grants Deflect to his allies via All Together, those allies will benefit from the Stubborn Defense passive.
• The damage ratio on Dueling Stance is increased to 0.8x your strength, up from 0.5x
• Dueling Stance’s opportunity cost has been reduced to 1, down from 2.
• Wayland’s Watch is now Battle Ready, while its cooldown has been increased to 2, up from 1.
• Deflect is now Battle Ready.
• Cultists Wizards have had their intelligence doubled, making their arcane barrages deal more damage, and their focus harder to break.
• The loot weight on Black-jacks and Razor Strops has been doubled, making them appear more often in chests.
• Blood Pact’s change to trigger has been increased to 50%, up from 30%.
• Last Breath has its cooldown increased to 3, up from 2.
• The damage of Passing Slash has been increased.
• Elixirs of Focus now grant a flat intelligence increase instead of a % based one. This will benefit low intelligence characters more, and high intelligence characters less.
• Lesser elixirs grant 4/8 intelligence.
• Greater elixirs grant 6/12 intelligence.
• Arcane Barrage’s damage now scales on a diminishing curve, instead of linearly. This means it’ll do slightly more damage early game, but characters with higher than 20 intelligence will see a gradual falloff in damage-to-intelligence ratio.
• Soul Leech can now only trigger 3 times per turn, instead of infinitely.
• The Inner Peace passive no longer increases the channel duration of meditate by +1 turns.
• Conjurors mark now deals damage equal to 33% your strength, instead of 40%. Additionally, its AOE damage has been halved and it can only be triggered by non-spell attacks. This was done because of how dominant spell spamming was as a strategy, and spells triggering the mark added too much bonus damage without any real coordination with your team.
• The 3 buff from vorpal plating are now mutually exclusive. Applying one of those buffs will remove any existing buffs that might be on that adventurer.
• Horrifying vorpal plating has its duration reduced to 1 turn, down from 2.
• The Rogue’s infiltrator passive no longer hides the entire party. It now hides the rogue and any adventurer’s standing directly to his right or left. This stealth now only lasts 1 turn, down from 3. 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. 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.
• The acidic boon line now works as such:
• Acrid now has a 50% chance to apply one stack of rend.
• Caustic now has a 100% chance to apply one stack of rend.
• Acidic now has a 100% chance to apply one stack of rend. If the target has no armor, it’ll apply the Melting status effect instead, causing them to take bonus damage with each attack.
• The Electrifying boon line now works as such:
• Jolting now generates a single stack of status each time a non-damaging ability is performed, up to a maximum of 3 stacks.
• Shocking now generates 2 stacks of static each time a non-damaging ability is performed, up to a maximum of 4 stacks.
• Electrifying now generates 2 stacks of static each time a non-damaging ability is performed, up to a maximum of 6 stacks. Each time an enemy is stunned in this way, there’s a 15% chance to stun the entire enemy team.
• All traps now deal true damage, meaning that armored characters can now take meaningful damage from traps.
• Fixed an issue where early access and backer reward items, like the Red Boots, weren’t showing interaction FX when they should.
• Fixed an issue in which Sundering Smash wasn’t displaying the correct amount of armor it should rend. The damage rent was higher than what was being displayed. The tooltip was fixed to match the higher value.
• Torches and the Blazing Star now correctly show their abilities while viewing them in the inventory.
• The rusty berserkers horned helmet has been reduced to its intended 1×1 size, down from 2×2
• Drunkenly Empowered rhyme of the duotime no longer affects itself
• Drinking, while already plastered, will not continue to double your strength with each drink.
• Clerics can now target themselves with Change Fate.
• The Lunge passive on Elven Boots now only triggers when the owner uses their move ability, and not when moved by others. Additionally, it can only be triggered once per turn.
• Poison damage was increased substantially and is now based on the level of the character it’s applied to, instead of being based on the applicators strength.
• On Fire status effect damage is now based on the level of the character it’s applied to, instead of the applicators strength. The damage shouldn’t be vastly different for most characters, but you’ll see low strength characters able to deal much more damage with fire, while very high strength characters might see a slight drop in the damage dealt by that status effect.
• In light of this change, Crux’s passive has been adjusted to deal only a token, comical amount of damage if he applies it to your own team.
• Alguin now has 34 intelligence, down from 86. This means Alguin is much more likely to have his focus broken during Alguin’s Gambit.
• Razor Strop had its base bonus damage reduced by 25%, and its base duration reduced to 2 turns, down from 3.
• The Razor Strop item had its passive, Finely Honed Blade, fixed so it now correctly increases the duration of Razor Strop by 2 turns.

At X018, Microsoft confirmed the acquisition of Obsidian Entertainment, developer of Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire and Fallout: New Vegas, after months of rumours. However, it also revealed that inXile Entertainment of The Bard’s Tale 4 fame would be joining its first party line-up as well. This obviously raised the question of what would happen to inXile’s current projects (Wasteland 3 is still in development).

It didn’t explicitly state what’s coming for future releases – and whether they’d arrive on platforms like GOG. However, inXile did say on Twitter that it was honouring backer commitments for The Bard’s Tale 4 and Wasteland 3. So if either title has goals and planned releases on a platforms like PS4, they will go through as planned. It even confirmed that Thief of Fate, the remastered third title in The Bard’s Tale Trilogy, is going through as planned.

For the future, it remains to be seen what inXile will be developing, now that it’s part of Microsoft Studios. The publisher has stated that inXile will remain independent in its decision-making and creative process. But whether the company will still specialize in old-school style cRPGs or venture into something else completely remains to be seen.

We're keeping our backer commitments for BT4 and WL3. Beyond that, it's hard to say. It's still very early in this new relationship.

— inile entertainment (@inXile) November 11, 2018

Ehh? No, Thief of Fate is still on the way.

— inile entertainment (@inXile) November 12, 2018

"If there’s one thing The Bard’s Tale 4 is capable of, it’s inspiring the feeling of an epic story unfolding."

So on the surface, it’s telling a brand new story in an established and beloved universe, with thematic similarities and the same classic role-playing. Meanwhile, it’s all presented in contemporary graphical fidelity with today’s technology providing other benefits like improved animations and character design, a larger scale, more in-depth combat and full voice acting. However, regardless of which side of the fence you sit on – whether it’s the jaded old-school fan who thought the classics were better or the unfamiliar RPG aficionado – The Bard’s Tale 4 as a whole fails to really build upon its few strengths.

You’re the hero, starting in Skara Brae as fanatics roam about hunting Adventurers and other non-human folk like Elves, Dwarves and so on. Encountering Rabbie, a fellow Bard, you venture into the depths of Skara Brae Below to find out what’s going on. Of course, with the set-up of two immense evil deities called the Famhair seemingly waiting beyond the veil to claw their way back to dominance, there’s clearly more afoot than just a few zealots.

If there’s one thing The Bard’s Tale 4 is capable of, it’s inspiring the feeling of an epic story unfolding. Though the pre-menu cinematic helps set up the world and current day setting, the main menu features a literal bard keeping his rapt audience up to date with your journey. It may come across as slightly odd but it’s a neat, unorthodox and somewhat fitting way to segue-way into your saved state.

To be honest, even when entering Skara Brae, the mood and overall aesthetic feel delightfully authentic and down-to-earth. Characters quip about with modestly amusing dialogue when they’re not gravely whispering about the wrongdoings of the zealots. Oddities roam about entertaining you about cabbages and the soup that only the “worthy” may taste. Even the loading screen notes are delightfully written. “Don’t be afraid to hire mercenaries. Sure, they smell bad but they can fill critical gaps in your party,” says the game irreverently. The Celtic and Scottish dialects, the various songs that passers-by will sing and even the excellent vocal tracks during battles help ease you into an apparently epic odyssey.

"Once you descend into Skara Brae Below, cracks truly start to appear. If the initial escape didn’t alarm you enough, the game’s graphics are severely wanting."

Though the characters of The Bard’s Tale 4 are well-voiced, they’re nothing exceptional. It’s not that they suffer from terrible writing or less-than-stellar designs. As a whole, they’re fine but I didn’t find myself too horribly invested in Rabbie saying I’m a hero that will eventually abandon him. Dalgiesh’s struggles to prove his innocence or Wringneck’s overall roguish demeanour didn’t really hook me either. The Green Lady’s introduction offered promise but that was mostly down to my general interest in Elven culture and her role as a Practitioner than in her ordeal.

Maybe the characters could have used more interesting lines or had better chemistry with each other. Whatever the case may be, they’re serviceable and little else. That goes for the various NPCs dotting the world, each with their own motivations and personalities that did a decent job of making settings feel lived in. As it stands, the world comes as barely having more personality than its denizens.

Once you descend into Skara Brae Below, cracks truly start to appear. If the initial escape didn’t alarm you enough, the game’s graphics are severely wanting. For all the attention to detail, the graphical details themselves seem shabby. Character models are plain with facial animations ranging from average to awkward. I’m not usually one to hound on a game’s graphics but the performance in The Bard’s Tale 4 is pretty worrying as well.

Stutters when turning corners or advancing forward, stutters during battles – it’s one thing if the game is poorly optimized. But when it looks as underwhelming as this, even at High settings when my system meets or surpasses most requirements? It feels jarring and even less acceptable. Even worse is the fact that dialing down the graphics doesn’t help – aside from making the game look worse – and this is after two big post-launch patches.

"Once again, this is all serviceable but it also feels surprisingly simplistic. Raising core stats is mostly reliant on loot acquired, which itself is pretty limiting."

The Bard’s Tale 4 starts you with a pre-created character named Melody but upon reaching the Adventurer’s Guild underground, you can create your own custom Fighter, Bard, Practitioner and Rogue. Customizing one’s race (which confers different bonuses), voice, temperament and portrait is all very much par for the genre’s course. However, it lacks the more nuanced approach that games like Divinity: Original Sin 2 or Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire take. It’s by no means terrible but it’s only the beginning of things that could have been handled much better.

Stats-wise, you’re given skill points to assign to different trees. Each class has a different set of trees so the Bard has Music, Attack, Defense and Brewing. The Practitioner is your magic user and has Spellcraft, Defense, Meditation, Bladecasting, Crafting and so on. Each level-up brings a new skill point which can be invested almost anywhere across these trees. You could also place points into improving core stats like Strength, Constitution, Intelligence and so on.

Once again, this is all serviceable but it also feels surprisingly simplistic. Raising core stats is mostly reliant on loot acquired, which itself is pretty limiting. I can handle items offering a few small boosts here and there but in The Bard’s Tale 4, getting better gear feels like the only way to really significantly upgrade your stats especially when such small bonuses are offered early on.

As you unlock more skills, you hit an appraisal goal. It’s time to head to the review board, which deems you worthy of being stronger and thus opens up some more skill branches. Perhaps this is a more organic way to gate progression but it doesn’t really make that much of a difference in the grand scheme of things. Then again, hitting that appraisal goal does incentivize you to take skills you might not think of using, so there is that.

"Though the use of four skills with some passives and only a handful of initiative points for the whole group sounds limiting, it’s actually handled pretty well."

As a dungeon crawler, the core gameplay revolves around exploring different areas, solving puzzles, taking up side quests – of which there are many – and battling nefarious soldiers, beasts and cultists. This is where The Bard’s Tale 4 is supposed to shine and for the most part, its combat can be pretty involving. Each character can equip four different skills from their Mastery Book. They also have a set number of initiative points (three from the game’s beginning with more earned later) that dictate their actions.

Initiative points are shared among the entire party and it’s possible to move forwards or backwards when facing enemies, which determines the kinds of attacks and skills you can use. Some skill can time to channel but deal significantly greater damage. The usual modifiers to critical hits, spell damage, etc. also apply and can be acquired as passives from the skill tree. Other passives can also be equipped from different pieces of gear.

Though the use of four skills with some passives and only a handful of initiative points for the whole group sounds limiting, it’s actually handled pretty well. An example of a typical battle could be your Fighter drawing aggro and also increasing his armour to negate most attacks. Your Bard can then chug some ale, gain magic points and provide temporary health to an ally.

Meanwhile, your Practitioner can be stationed behind the Fighter, using one initiative point to build up her Spell Points before unleashing them as column-long attacks that damage multiple enemies at once in the next turn. Your Rogue can also slink about, hiding in the shadows and striking enemies from afar with his bow. Throw in different passives and strategies and there’s a good amount of depth to be had in fights. Enemy variety isn’t too extreme but they make for interesting scraps all the same.

"The problem is that neither of these two mechanics are implemented in exceptionally clever ways. In fact, the puzzles themselves are very straightforward."

The problem is that not every fight can be approached the same way. Enemies have different Power ratings – Green is weaker than your group, Orange is nearly as strong and Red is outright dangerous. So when confronted with overwhelming foes, you can sneak around them – which is mandatory in some sequences – or, in the case of certain quests, come back later when you’re stronger. However, the indicators and your own party providing hints aren’t one hundred percent reliable. A group with Orange outlines and multiple waves may seem like an even fight but it goes more swimmingly than you’d think.

However, face off against Green-level foes, being assured that they’re pushovers and you’ll soundly eat defeat. It’s just one of those things that needlessly complicates the exploration and combat. If enemies are indeed tougher, either balance the quests doled out at certain points or let them outright annihilate me. At least then I have some kind of baseline for how much stronger I need to get. As it is, second-guessing conflicts because I can’t trust the indicators is annoying.

Though the aesthetics of each area are decent, they’re fairly limited in terms of their actual design. Yes, I know it’s a dungeon crawler and to the game’s credit, it does mix up the exploration a bit. Different puzzles can obstruct the way forward and some even require special songs to cross. The problem is that neither of these two mechanics are implemented in exceptionally clever ways. In fact, the puzzles themselves are very straightforward. At times, especially when it comes to manipulating gears to open doors, they can be very tedious. I did appreciate the Elven Puzzle weapons and how you had to solve different components to unlock their full potential. That was neat even though again, the puzzles aren’t particularly crazy to solve in their own right.

"Even without its questionable gameplay decisions, many aspects of The Bard’s Tale 4 like the characterization, puzzles and environments rank as decent, maybe even slightly above average overall if you’re kind."

Another disappointing aspect of the game is how stingy it can sometimes be with its loot. The exploration, puzzle solving and combat should all work in unison to reward you. While there were times that I obtained a decent weapon from completing a side quest, other times exploring and completing a section with puzzles offered next to nothing. It probably wouldn’t have bothered me all that much if the core stats weren’t so dependent on how good your gear and weapons are.

Unlike Torment: Tides of Numenera, the dislike for The Bard’s Tale 4 isn’t a complete mystery. It has an old-timey feel to it, one that enraptures you with its music and aesthetic as you adamantly learn the ins and outs of combat, uncovering this massive world in the process. However, it’s also a contemporary mess, filled with strange progression and balancing decisions, bugs (like a character’s dialogue continuing to play even as I get to the next cutscene), low quality graphics and shambling performance.

Even without its questionable gameplay decisions, many aspects of The Bard’s Tale 4 like the characterization, puzzles and environments rank as decent, maybe even slightly above average overall if you’re kind. It’s not the worst follow-up to a beloved old-school franchise I’ve ever seen – there’s certainly a fair bit of charm to be had. However, inXile needs to put in some serious work if the execution behind The Bard’s Tale 4 is ever going to live up to the lofty scale of its ideas.

This game was reviewed on PC.

inXile has released an infomercial style commercial motivating players to invest in its crowd-funded RPG The Bard’s Tale 4. Check it out below.

The trailer helps provide some relevant details about the game including the number of stages, enemies, player classes and even who’s behind the soundtrack. The Kickstarter campaign is currently at $1,456,513 as of this time of writing with 40 hours left to go and there are stretch goals up to $1.9 million in funding. If you back more than $20 at this point, you’ll pick up some additional benefits including reworked versions of the first three games.

Of course, as specified at the end of the trailer, inXile can’t provide a solid release date just yet and development will take long as time increases. Nevertheless, inExile has brought out a highly successful Kickstarter-funded title with Wasteland 2 so they’re fairly good with their promises.

Will you back The Bard’s Tale 4? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

inXile Entertainment, developer of Wasteland 2 and the upcoming Torment: Tides of Numenera, is prepping its next big Kickstarter, this time bringing back The Bard’s Tale. The Bard’s Tale 4 will begin its crowdfunding campaign on June 2nd at 7 AM PST and if you’re interested enough to contribute to the RPG, you can do so in the first 24 hours and receive a free game in the process.

inXile CEO Brian Fargo stated that, “This is our way to show our gratitude to those who continue to support us. We’re also very happy to be working with our friends at CD Projekt, who have shown they understand the right way to treat your fans!”

The free games in question include Wasteland 2 (Steam or GOG), The Witcher and The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings (GOG), which will be delivered to backers once the Kickstarter campaign concludes. Will this provide enough incentive to back The Bard’s Tale 4? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

inXile Entertainment had been teasing a new game for a while now and it appears to be something separate from Shadowrun: Hong Kong. Over the weekend at PAX South, CEO Brian Fargo revealed the studio’s next project: The Bard’s Tale 4.

This is the same RPG that Chris Keenan said had “been passionately demanded of us for a while now.” Fargo took to Twitter to confirm the game’s announcement and said that he is “personally excited to be working on this.”

The Bard’s Tale 4 will continue the story from the third game and will apparently have the good ol’ style of turn based combat according to GameSpot. As with inXile’s other games, The Bard’s Tale 4 will have a Kickstarter campaign with more information to come in the next few months.

What are your thoughts on this new project, especially since Fargo has been involved with the previous games? Let us know in the comments below.