#THE BARDS TALE MUSIC SERIES#

I rather enjoyed these, though I did find that, like the bard, I did better after drinking a beer. The best way to go about solving the puzzles is to shoo the faerie along as you experiment with which faces will get the sprite to the end of its journey. To find the solution, you must rotate these faces until you can get the sprite from the start to the magical rocks. How do these work in puzzles? You have pillars with rotating pictures in them, and each face dictates where the sprite moves after you shoo it away - left, right, stay, or return the same direction. The InXile team created an entire lore behind these little spiffy sparks, and it’s a different treatment for faeries than you’ll see in other games.

These little glowing sprites move in a straight line when pushed, and if they don’t hit a special grouping of magical rocks, they poof out of exist. The best - and most difficult - puzzles involve fairies. The Bard’s Tale IV’s puzzles are intricate, and one sort of these is unlike anything I’ve seen in my near 40 years of playing video games. You don’t need a bard for these, and they’re essential for solving puzzles and learning more about the world.įar too many games have puzzles that are about finding objects or matching blocks (I see you, mobile gaming). In Barrows Deep, you belt out the beats just when you’re fighting, or you can play special songs of exploration when you’re cruising through town, tiptoeing through a forest, or delving into a dungeon. (Unless you create one at the start, you won’t find one until a few hours in.) In the first three Bard’s Tales, your bard could sing songs when exploring or during combat. My adventures in Caith started to sing (I’m not sorry for that) once I added a bard to my party. I found that, despite some glitches, I deeply enjoy my return to Skara Brae, and more than 20 hours into my adventure, I’m pleased with the challenge of the puzzles, the bard’s role in your party, and a turn-based combat system that feels different than what you find in most RPGs. What they’ll find is a game that makes music and puzzles an even bigger part of its soul, celebrating what many of us fell for back in the 1980s. InXile Entertainment (which Interplay founder Brian Fargo started in 2002) turned to those fans in 2015 with a Kickstarter for The Bard’s Tale IV, and three years later, the role-playing game is ready for its 33,741 backers - and anyone else who wants to buy it on Steam, GOG, and other platforms.

#THE BARDS TALE MUSIC SERIES#

The Interplay series is known for its emphasis on music, puzzles, and sometimes brutal combat. The Bard’s Tale IV resurrects a long-dead franchise, picking up a century after The Bard’s Tale III (which itself came out 30 years ago in 1988).

The bards tale music