The Bard's Tale: Won (at last)!

I'll be back to collect Shamino in a few weeks.

Well, my roller-coaster journey through The Bard's Tale is over. I know my postings on this game have been a bit schizophrenic, sometimes seeming as if I liked the game and sometimes as if I hated it. If so, then the posts are accurate, because that is exactly how I felt.

The game is challenging from the very beginning, thrusting you into a Skara Brae full of monsters in which the difference between survival and death depends primarily on luck. Run into some kobolds and you'll make it; stumble into a house with six barbarians, and your level 1 party is history. The game became more stable once I started dungeon-crawling, and for four out of five dungeons, my characters rarely died. But once I hit Mangar's tower, the vagaries of chance returned with a vengeance. Turning a corner and blundering into a party of six demons, four master wizards, and three red dragons is relatively commonplace, and if you can't run from the battle, there's essentially no way to survive it. Demons, dragons, magic users, and several other creatures are capable of launching deadly attacks that do more than 100 HP damage to all your party members, against which you have essentially no defense (the anti-magic bard song seemed, in my experience, to do nothing). If my characters were 10 levels higher, they wouldn't survive such an encounter, and I don't think there was any realistic way to get them 10 levels higher. It would have taken millions of experience points (most battles, even at the end, were giving me 5,000-7,000 each on average).

This is the bastard causing all the trouble.

So my winning was mostly luck. I made probably 20-25 forays onto Level 5 of Mangar's tower, dying each time, before I found the path that led me to Mangar himself. After that, I traced that path about 12 times before I finally got lucky and defeated Mangar. I would have recorded it, as I usually do for end games, but I never knew which time would be "the" time, and by the time I finally won, I had given up on recording.

  

Mangar is surrounded by two demon lords and three vampire lords. Vampire lords can stone you with a single touch and demon lords can belch fireballs. Mangar himself is no pushover, capable of some serious damage. Again, I just got lucky. The monsters decided to go after my summoned dragon, giving me enough time to kill a couple of them. The demon lords decided to cast spells instead of spewing fire. One lucky round is really all it took.

(Incidentally, the summon dragon spell is the most awesome spell in the game. The dragon almost always gets the first attack, and if you're lucky he'll breathe fire and wipe out an entire group of monsters.)

   

Winning gives you 300,000 experience points--like I really need those now, thanks--and returns you to the Adventurer's Guild, where I was happy to save and quit. I never finished mapping Level 5. As I allow myself to do once I've finished, I consulted a walkthrough and discovered I didn't really miss anything, although he found the final battle "disappointingly easy." Whatever. Apparently, I could then have gotten a cool magic item, but I don't see any reason to keep playing after I've won.

I'm going to do a quick posting with a final ranking for The Bard's Tale. After that, I have to regress to Wizardry II and Wizardry III (I ordered The Ultimate Wizardry Archives after my first attempts to play them didn't work) before moving on to Phantasie.

One final thing: most of the messages scrawled on the dungeon walls turned out to be clues to one thing or another. Even the message "Thor is the greatest son of Odin, "found in the first dungeon, turned out to be helpful in the fifth when answering that question gives you a little Thor figurine you can use to summon him. But one message I never did figure out, also from the first dungeon: IRKM DESMET DAEM. It doesn't seem to be an an anagram ("mirk Ed Mets made?") and it doesn't give enough letters to be a solvable cryptogram. Googling the phrase just turns up references to The Bard's Tale. Any ideas?

The Bard's Tale: AAAAAAAARGH!!!

Bard's Tale, have you no sense of decency?! No sense of pacing?! This is not how you craft a good CRPG. You don't make it moderately difficult ("pleasingly difficult," I said a few posts ago; oh, how you must have cackled at that) for 90% of the game and suddenly introduce battles with 12 demon lords on the last level! You do not include a host of creatures--oh, those %*#$*& vampires--who can level-drain you with a single touch. Do you know how long it takes to gain levels in your game?

You do not--above all, you do not--allow creatures to stone you with one touch and not include a freaking stone-to-flesh spell! And if you do--you utter, irredeemable pricks--you do not make such battles inescapable so that the last 50 hours of playing your game boil down to entering the dungeon, climbing up five levels, getting stoned, and having to make your way out of the dungeon to heal the stoned character at a temple. Yeah, nice gameplay. Bastards.

But if you must do all of these things, must you also--hey, I'm talking to you, you heartless time-sucker--must you also make it so that healing a stoned character costs 15,000 gold pieces? Mere moves from the end of the game, must you make me return constantly to low-level dungeon-crawling to build up my finances and experience points? Is there no end to your cycle of futility?

AAAAARRGH!

Ranking and Rating CRPGs

I've been thinking about the process of rating CRPGs. What makes certain games so addictive and enjoyable? I started making a list of everything that occurred to me, and tonight I organized that list into categories. It just so happens that there are 10 categories, and if I assign 10 points to each one, I have a decent 100-point scale.

 

The things I like about CRPGs may not be the same things you like. For instance, I don't care much about graphics. All I ask is that, as I put in my list, they're not distractingly bad. I care even less about music. I know that game developers pay composers and musicians to record extensive soundtracks for their games, but one of the first things I almost always do when firing up a new game is turn the music off.

On the other hand, I do value some unusual things. For instance, I love games that extensively describe the different weapons and armor you pick up. I also love the process of finding new stuff and outfitting my characters. I value strong NPC interaction as much as exciting combat. I prefer my areas to re-spawn so I can return to beginning areas once I'm level 12 and idly fireball rats just for fun.

I could read these all night.

With this in mind, I created this master list of characteristics (titled with a nod to my Reddit user name, and my favorite drink). Each of the individual items combine to create a score of 0-10 in each category, contributing to a master score of 0-100. Let me know if you think I missed anything obvious. Ultimately, over the years, I expect I will create a separate blog post for each of the items in these categories.

CRPG Addict's Game Innovation, Merriment, Likability, and Engagement Test (GIMLET)

1. Game World

• Game world has unique features that distinguish it from other CRPGs
• Creators have endowed game world with history and lore
• You understand how your character and quest fit within overall game world
• Your decisions and actions measurably affect game world

2. Character Creation and Development

• Game allows extensive customization of characters during creation process
• Characters are rewarded for combat and quest-completion
• Character advancement process is satisfying and rewarding
• Encounters and dialogs play differently with different classes, sexes, alignments, and characteristics

3. NPC Interaction

• Game has NPCs with whom you can talk
• NPC Interaction advances the plot of the game
• Game offers you flexibility in dialog choices
• NPC Interaction provides opportunity for role-playing
• PC learns things about the game world from NPCs
• Game offers NPC relationships (romances and friendships)

4. Encounters & Foes

• Game offers unique monsters distinguishable from other CRPGs
• Foes are well-described in game world
• Foes behave in different ways depending on their type
• Game features some scripted encounters with opportunities for role playing
• Game has some level of random encounters so that you never know what's coming
• Areas respawn at some point after they are cleared

5. Magic and Combat

• Player has numerous options in combat
• Combat is tactical, requiring some strategizing to successfully navigate
• Combat offers opportunities for role-playing
• Magic system (if included) is well-balanced

6. Equipment

• Game has wide variety of weapons, armor, and accessories to buy, find, wield, and wear
• Game makes it easy to understand and evalute how items compare to each other (e.g., which weapon does the most damage)
• Items are thoroughly and interestingly described
• Items are at least partly randomized within game world
• Player can create or customize items

7. Economy

• Game gives you monetary rewards for killing creatures/solving quests
• There are interesting and helpful things to buy with your money
• You never reach a point in which collecting money becomes pointless

8. Quests

• Game has a "main quest" the completion of which constitutes winning the game
• Main quest has different outcomes based on player decisions
• Game features side quests that offer opportunities for character building
• Side quests have opportunities for role-playing

9. Graphics, Sound, and Inputs

• Graphics are not distractingly bad
• Fun and realistic gameplay sound effects
• Interesting and immersive background sound effects
• NPC dialogue, if spoken, is well-acted
  
• Controls are intuitive and responsive

10. Gameplay

• Game is alinear, allowing freedom of movement throughout game world
• Game is highly replayable, offering different experiences for different classes and alignments
• Game has the right level of difficulty: challenging without being exasperating
• Overall pacing is good; game is not over too quickly, neither does it drag

After I finish The Bard's Tale, I'll rank the games I've played to this point on the scale. Without overly demanding criteria for graphics and sound, I suspect that some of these older games (especially a few of the ones coming up) will hold up quite well.

Bard's Tale: Pleasingly Difficult

The night before last, shortly after encountering the above-pictured beast, I found out what happens when your entire party dies in The Bard's Tale. It isn't so bad and yet at the same time it sucks incredibly. Instead of losing your entire party to the dungeon depths, as in Wizardry, your entire party returns to the Guild of Adventurers, dead but with all of the items, gold, and experience they've accumulated. Doesn't sound too shabby.

The problem is, it costs a lot to resurrect a dead character, especially a high-level dead character. Resurrecting six dead characters cost way more than I had at this point. I had to create a dummy character just to exit the Guild. I was able to resurrect one character immediately, but to get the other five, I had to build up my savings. It took a good three hours before they were all happy and healthy again.

It sounds horrible, especially to modern gamers, but I actually really, really like this aspect of The Bard's Tale. Death isn't a game-killer the way it is in Wizardry, but boy does it have consequences. Since you can only save in the Guild of Adventurers, every dungeon foray is a risk, creating a palpable tension as you wander your way through the passages. And every once in a while, you stumble into an encounter like this one (there were actually two more on this same level, with a dragon and a high-powered wizard) that makes your stomach drop and an expletive escape your lips.

Modern games make it far too easy. In something like Baldur's Gate, you would save every five or ten minutes. If you stumble on to a soul sucker, you might treat the first battle against him like a test run. If your characters die--or, heck, even just lose more hit points than you want to spare--no problem. Just reload and run the encounter again with the experience at your back. Even that was too tough for the creators of Neverwinter Nights, though. In that game, you could just use your Stone of Recall to take a time-out, get healed up, and return to battle fresh. What a bunch of wusses we've become.

Because of the frequent save points, modern games depend on the difficulty of individual battles to make the games challenging. In The Bard's Tale, Wizardry, and other games of the era I'm playing, there are plenty of difficult individual battles, but it's the totality of the expedition that brings the difficulty. You must constantly strategize. How much gold do I need to get from this encounter to make the "trap zap" spell worthwhile? What should I set as my bottom hit point threshold before I return to the surface? Do I want to expend 15 spell points on this group of wights, or take the risk that they'll turn me into a crippling old man with one touch? I've only got 15 squares left to map on this level, but my characters only have 1/2 their hit points. Should I press on or go back?

Exhilarating. Fortunately, I have a lot of games like this left to play.

I finished mapping and exploring the Mad God's catacombs last night, finding in the process his eye (which is equippable, but I don't know what it does). An inscription on a wall told me to "seek the Mad One's stoney self in Harkyn's domain," while another one more cryptically told me, "to the flower fly the mad one die once lost an eye!" In any event, this suggests that the third dungeon is one of the towers in the corners of the Skara Brae map. Since there are three of them, I'm guessing I'm about 2/5 done with the game.

Made a really dumb mistake last night. Because I don't have a rogue, I have to cast "trap zap" on every chest after battle, which depletes the spell points of my conjurer fairly quickly. Last night, my conjurer and magician reached their seventh spell level, so I decided to dual them to other classes to start gaining additional spells. The intelligent thing to do would have been to dual my magician to a conjurer so he could have "trap zap" too, and my conjurer to a sorcerer. Instead, I dualed my magician to a sorcerer and my conjurer to a magician. I know this sounds complicated, but trust me, I'm an idiot.

Bard's Tale: Intense Dungeon Crawling

       

I had hoped that I would be able to announce that I had won The Bard's Tale this weekend, but I'm not even close. I finally just finished mapping the first dungeon of four levels; at least, I hope it's only four. I nearly didn't find the fourth level because getting down to it involved (d)escending through a pit in the floor with a levitation spell in effect. The pit was barely visible, though.

As you can imagine, the monsters get tougher the lower the level. I'm finding that spellcasters are my worst enemy. I routinely run into parties in which there are 12 or more spellcasters in three or more groups, making it nearly impossible to clear them out before they get a couple of fireballs in. Most monsters are standard D&D fare; I haven't encountered any truly unique ones yet.

Fortunately, I've yet to have my entire party wiped out. I don't even know what happens if that occurs. I've lost individual characters several times, though, and it's getting expensive to raise them.

Some miscellaneous things about the game:

• There are several party-effect spells that I've found useful to have running when I start my dungeon crawling. These include MALE (levitate), YMCA (mystical armor), MACO (compass), and GRRE (a light spell that also reveals secret doors). The screen shot below shows my party in a dungeon with several buffing spells active (lined up in the center of the screen).

• These spells take up a lot of spell points, and spell points do not regenerate in the dungeons. I've gotten in the habit of standing outside Roscoe's Energy Emporium, casting these buffing spells, then going inside and paying to get my spell points recharged before heading into the dungeons.
• There are four spellcaster classes in the game--conjurer, magician, sorcerer, and wizard. You cannot select the latter two when you start, but you can change a conjurer or magician to those classes (or each other) once they reach Level 3. There are seven spell levels per class. I'm on the cusp of getting Level 7 spells for my conjurer and magician, at which point I'll switch them over to the other classes. Theoretically, I guess, one character can cycle through all spellcasting classes and get all the spells, but this must take an incredibly long time.
• Only after about 10 hours of playing did I figure out that the "T" key pauses the game. If you don't pause during mapping and such, the clock keeps running and your spells run out faster. It would have been handy to know that earlier.
• The "P" key starts combat with your own party, giving you a chance to have your characters assail each other. I can't imagine why I would want to do this.
• When you first encounter creatures, you can try to run from combat. If you succeed--which you seem to do about 75% of the time--you stay in the same square, and as far as I can tell there's no penalty. I have frankly been running from a lot of combats if they look difficult.
• Instead of armor and weapons +1, +2, and so on, better armor and weapons seems to be distinguished by the metal used to craft them. During this dungeon crawl, I found some mithril swords and armor that seem to be one step up from the regular weapons and armor I had. I also found a "bardsword" that only my bard can equip; I'm not sure what it does.

The main purpose of dungeon crawling so far, it seems, is to pick up hints and clues written on the walls. I don't understand most of them yet. These are some of the ones picked up in the first dungeon:

• "Pass the light at night!"
• "Golems are made of stone."
• "IRKM DESMET DAEM"
• "Heed not what is beyond understanding."
• "Thor is the greatest son of Odin."
• "The hand of time writes but cannot erase."
• "Seek the snare from behind the scenes."

One inscription was helpful, though. A magic mouth appeared and told me that "a man called Tarjan, thought to many to be insane, had through wizardly powers proclaimed himself a god in Skara Brae a hundred years ago. His image is locked in stone until made whole again..." I'm guessing Tarjan is the name of the "mad god" whose priests keep asking me for his name. I suspect this leads to the second dungeon.

I'll leave you tonight with my map of Level 4 of the wine cellars/sewers. With luck, I'll win the game this week.