The Bards Tale – Review

Here Ye, Here Ye this is a tale of one mans quest for coin and cleavage… oh dear, you can tell the female gamer is going to love this title already can’t you? It’s not misogynist at all is it, as yet another big breasted wench launches her assets in your general direction. But it’s all done in jest so it’s fine… no really, surely you remember the black and white minstrels? If it’s done in jest anything is fine. All hail politically incorrect humor!

So trying to wade past all of this anti girl gaming garbage what is there. It’s the story of the devilish rogue Bard who wanders about smiting and earning, yes it’s a role-playing game and it doesn’t try and be anything else. The stats are there, the skills are there, the swords and armor… it’s all there, even barrel smashing, not much changes in this genre I guess. Upon beginning the game you soon realize that this is far from a serious outing however as the rpg cliches run rampant… did I mention barrel smashing? Where this game differs from the plethora of RPG titles that have gone before is that there’s no ‘faffing’, by that I mean there’s little to do behind the scenes other than putting stats up now and again. Everything else you expect to be doing in an RPG title seems non existent and taken care of for you, which is either a great thing for those who hate rpg faffing, or a really bad thing for those who love it.

The secret behind most great games is of course gameplay and the Bards Tale is certainly something a little different despite essentially being an angled top down role-playing title that sees you in control of a roguish bard in search for ‘coin and cleavage’, oh wait.. did I say different? As mentioned it’s also fairly laden with misogynist humor and isn’t at all ashamed of the fact since this is what the game is all about. You roam from place to place doing various tasks and meeting various people. Most gamers know what this sort of gameplay is about so I’m not going to bore you with the gory details, what I will say however is that some aspects of this title are maddeningly frustrating, particularly further into the title, simple things such as healing mid fight will see you smited time and again. I still can’t work out whether this is just bad game design or it’s meant to add a level of difficulty to tone down the repetitive nature of the tasks. Either way it can get annoying, meaning gameplay is far from the jovial romp experienced early on.

Graphically the Bards Tale is a nice angled top down view (ok isometric for the technoboffins) adventure title that swings into first or third person perspective for various cutscenes. Levels are detailed well enough, though the top down view can make things difficult to see at times given it’s fixed. That said what there is to see is very nice indeed with some sweet character models and nicely detailed texturing.

The sound in a Bards Tale is something rather strange because although you can tell a lot of effort has gone into it it’s still ear bleedingly awful at times. The voice acting is fairly atrocious and the accents.. good god. It’s so strange that Cary Elwes who has the most wonderful speaking voice was urged to put on some sort of odd cockney, irish, northern English, Scottish mish mash when the Bard would have had far more charm had Elwes just spoken it sarcastically, Dread Pirate Roberts like. Subtitles are available and cover everything spoken so this is great news for the deaf gamer, even the songs sung in game are perfectly subtitled and timed to the song itself in karaoke fashion. There’s an upside to the sound however in the form of the narrative which holds plenty of humor if you can get over the ‘non political correctness’ and just accept it for the idiocy that it is.

Female gamer angle, well where to begin, there’s so many double entendre’s in this title that it plays a little like a Carry On film at times. Needless to say you play a male character in your quest for coin and cleavage. One must wonder if they’ve made this title top down to ensure the cleavage shots have the best possible angles. All in all it’s the same old problem, it’s aimed at gamings main demographic which is, we’re told the 15-25 male crowd and with this title that shows.

All up it’s really a difficult one to come to a firm overall conclusion on because on the upside it’s nice that inXile have taken the seriousness out of the rpg genre and tried to bring something different to it. My view is no doubt tainted because the sexism in games is a personal dislike of mine as I feel it’s not helpful to us female gamers in the least. That said this title isn’t helped by the repetitive nature and frustration of later battles so it’s not all about the anti girl gamer here, there are other problems. Overall, it’s not all bad, there are moments of clever narration and silly wit that almost manage to break the tedium and graphically this title is very nice indeed. I feel perhaps if another chance for Bards Tale 2 is given that the addition of a cocky female partner who gives as good as she gets (oh dear had that been in game I dread to think!) would be a cool addition but please dear god have her in more than a chainmail bikini!!

Review by Angela

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