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The Bard's Tale IV: Director's Cut
Released On: Aug 27, 2019
84
7.1
Where to Buy
Where to Buy
Metascore
Generally Favorable Based on 5 Critic Reviews
84
100% Positive
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
0% Mixed
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable Based on 5 Critic Reviews
84
100% Positive
5 Reviews
5 Reviews
0% Mixed
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Sep 4, 2019
Bard's Tate 4: Director's Cut winks at you with meaning while telling an "innocent" joke or making a dad pun. It takes you on a journey to lakes of mist over the sea of Orkney islands with its music. But most important of all, it reminds you what videogames should be all about. Damn fun.
Sep 18, 2019
The Bard's Tale 4: The Director's Cut is an epic tale of corruption and evil, suffering and loss, of lessons learned too late and and the bitter consequences. It's also a story of hope and triumph and perseverance. It's a game that challenged me and a story that tugged at my heart.
User Score
Mixed or Average Based on 65 User Ratings
7.1
55% Positive
36 Ratings
36 Ratings
20% Mixed
13 Ratings
13 Ratings
25% Negative
16 Ratings
16 Ratings
User Score
Mixed or Average Based on 65 User Ratings
7.1
55% Positive
36 Ratings
36 Ratings
20% Mixed
13 Ratings
13 Ratings
25% Negative
16 Ratings
16 Ratings
May 6, 2024
Beautifully crafted game! Faithful to the story line of the original series, but with a complete new take on combat to add a lot more depth. But the real hook was the overall Celtic themes and especially the music. Very obvious that a lot of love went into this, and it shows!
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PC Jun 11, 2021
There is no way this game have less than a 9. It has some flaws, but they are few and small, versus the big ammount of great features it has. One of my best experiences with videogames ever.
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PC Sep 11, 2019
The Bard's Tale IV: Director's Cut is a great dungeon crawler with many clever puzzles and epic combats turn based. It still has some bugs, but the experience is better than the original.
Aug 27, 2019
Anyone who did not pick up The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrows Deep when it was released in 2018 missed an amusing and well-crafted RPG, a definite high point in a storied and popular franchise. With some minor interface and gameplay tweaks and the addition of some new quests and significant additional areas to explore, the Director’s Cut makes a good case for itself and the game includes some nostalgic bonus content and some behind-the-scenes features as well.
Aug 25, 2020
Classic dungeon crawler in new design, with modern game solutions. 1/ Original and demanding fighting system with lots of combo-mechanics. Game can be very easy or extremely difficult, depends on party configuration. 2/ Lots of puzzles - yes this is that kind of game, what else you have expected? Puzzles are more and more difficult during game. So if you like puzzles you shouldn't be disappointed 3/ Storyline is as it is should be in crawler - quite simple heroic fantasy tale. 4/ Some side quests enough for good playing 5/ Nice graphic with spirit of good old crawlers 6/ Marvelous folk music over 100 pieces, written and sang by professional folk music writers, singers, and musicians. Ver, very strong point of the game. IMHO very immersive game for many hours of play. Game starts slowly introducing player into game mechanics and story, so don't be discouraged – after several hours game shows off.
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PC Jun 21, 2020
A meditative walk simulator along a full of puzzles path. Turn-based battles and ethnic music are included. Works more or less fine on Ubuntu 18.04 (AMD Ryzen 7 2700X + Nvidia GTX 1080 + QHD + 32 GB+Intel SSD). There are some freezes after every location load. Turning around ones helps. Probably the SSD speed is crucial.
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PC Dec 18, 2024
I was a backer but waited to play the Director’s Cut version.
The good:
- they tried to make the first few locations feel alive
- Combat mechanics are good and deep - They invested into some good music (even if some of it is not 100% to my liking)
- Good character level progression and builds The bad:
- Poorly optimised performance clog
- Game breaking save bugs, crashes, even in the Directors Cut version
- Save system is overly complicated and worst of all, often doesn’t work, losing saves and having to retrace your progress
- Quits without saving every time computer goes to sleep
- story is meh and incoherent, clearly not the focus
- Characters are meh
- Dialogues are awful and cringey, some feel like they’re written by a 10 year old for other 10 year olds
- Character models are meh - Inventory is bad
- Gear puzzles are annoying not because they are difficult but because it’s really hard to click on the correct gear via the UI
- Other puzzles are nothing to get excited about
- Combat music is same same and gets annoying
- Combat animations are long and annoying when you are seeing them for a hundredth time
- Talking mouths are annoying as you can’t hear them clearly half the time
- Some weapon puzzles are not solvable on lower detail settings
- Dungeons scenery is not very coherent - lots of same looking recycled statues for whatever reason and can you never distinguish secret buttons
- Weird difficulty spikes, often you’ll progress a level just fine and then meet a totally overpowering mob realising you need to go back and level up before you can continue here
- A lot of enemies are just placed in locations without any discernible purpose other than for you to fight them - why does every dungeon have same goblins and acolytes?!? What are they doing there? Overall you’ll be completing the game because of your character level progression and somewhat interesting combat and be annoyed with everything else. After struggling for awhile you’ll start asking: is there a purpose to all of this?!? Am I enjoying this??? And realise that there are a lot better games you could be playing.
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PC Oct 18, 2019
PS4 Pro - I finally tapped out at after 5 hours due to the balance of difficulty hindering game progress. The world looks like a mobile game, very similar to the Elder Scrolls Blades. Load times take 20 seconds-plus. So moving back and forth for some quests began to feel like a chore and caused feelings of dread about simply wanting to grind outside of the main quest.
Combat is the biggest issue because of difficulty. Every meaningful quest encounter is balanced to be barely passable and often felt due to the luck of draw. I died several times on any mid-level battle and then sat through another significant load time, stunned at how punishing it is. After trying new areas, progressing the main quest out of sheer luck, only to repeat the punishing process with no direction or tips from the game, I had to stop.
I want to support InExile but I’d be lying if I said this game wasn’t trash.
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PC Sep 16, 2020
THE BARD'S TALE IV has a great Gaelic score and a pretty interesting combat system. And that is all the good I have to say about THE BARD'S TALE IV! Graphics are outdated and the game world appears lifeless. Most NPCs stand around and don't do anything but wait for you to walk on by and talk to them. The game is very poorly balanced with some enemies being too easy and some supposedly low or mid level encounters being way too hard. Then there are the horrendous loading times of several minutes: the game is not up to date on a technical level to justify such loading times. Not even close! Quests are tedious and require traveling back and forth long distances with the occasional death and long loading times. Puzzles are extremely bad - I ended up disabling them. BARD's TALE IV does not deserve to bear the name BARD'S TALE, it's an insult to the superb original trilogy. Do yourself a favor: the original trilogy got a superb remaster, buy that instead. You'll be glad you did. BARD'S TALE IV however is a 3 out of 9 (Bad).
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PC Summary The Bard's Tale IV: Director's Cut is the return of the iconic RPG series. Delve into a tactically rich combat system that rewards creativity, solve puzzles to gain treasure and advantages, and discover a beautifully crafted world.
Platforms:
- PlayStation 4
- Xbox One
- PC
Initial Release Date: Aug 27, 2019
Developer:
Publisher: InXile Entertainment
Genres:
