The Bard's Tale

Instead of following the tried-but-not-always-true formulas often found in fantasy RPGs, it manages to save itself by being nothing but irreverent and just a little bit rude.

Tries to be funny but the jokes are far too obvious. As a game it stumbles upon the same mistakes and cliches it makes fun of. Poetic justice, if something. [May. 05]

If there were a more advanced game behind the excellent writing, The Bard's Tale could have been one of the highest rated RPGs this year. The Bard's sarky one-liners, foul mouth, and rampant chauvinism make every cutscene and conversation entertaining and frequently laugh-out-loud funny.

If The Bard’s Tale played as well as it pokes fun at hack-and-slash RPG clichés we’d be talking about a ‘10’ here. The repetitive combat and reliance on tried-and-true RPG conventions, sadly, bring down the score.

It’s somewhat ironic that The Bard’s Tale, which satirizes conventional medieval epics and romances, suffers from such a conventional adventure.

A light-hearted romp through different RPG clichés and worlds that delivers just what it promises. It's fun, funny, and probably one of the best dungeon crawling action RPGs in our current generation. Of course, it's a tired genre, so coming out on top of it's predecessors is not a huge accomplishment.

The story and dialogue never cease to entertain. Objectives include rescuing prisoners, killing fearsome scarecrows and playing Cupid. But, although the developers want to ridicule, the action remains conventional.

Ultimately, setting out to critique and parody so studiously such a hidebound genre has brought The Bard’s Tale too close to what it was trying to distance itself from. This is a conventional, likeable dungeon crawl whose flashes of brilliance distract you from its accomplishments by hinting at how much more it could have been. [Christmas 2004, p.93]

It's shamelessly hilarious, leaving no topic or genre stereotype sacred. [Dec 2004, p.110]

Like Nintendo's cult classic, it's a game with likable characters, a sharply-developed sense of humor, and somewhat perfunctory gameplay.

But what I don't get is why oh why must the enemies constantly rise up to pummel your weaker party when obviously there's few options to defend such cheating onslaughts. Or, why is The Bard's choice brand of humor not making me giggle like mad?

A decent dungeon crawler that invests some energy into lampooning RPGs and high fantasy in general, but like a stand-up act about airline food or the line at the post office, its perspective isn't very interesting, and it lacks any real follow-through.

Those who don’t mind some muscle trimmed from their action RPGs may take to this most current Bard’s Tale adventure, but it’s mostly a lamentable devolvement of anything RPG or action-oriented.