The Bard's Tale

by Star Dingo
October 21, 2004 00:00 AM PST

There's more than just a snarky, cynical sense of humor to this parody of role-playing games.

A wise man once said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. A more cynical man said "screw that" and invented parody.

So now we've got this strange thing known as The Bard's Tale, a sort of Monty Python's Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance combo, and as clear an indication as any that RPGs really have come full circle. But the Bard slings jokes and sarcasm just as well as rocks and arrows; and despite the heavy dose of self-deprecating wit, the gameplay still takes itself pretty seriously.

Laughter Is the Best Healing Spell

Even though the game handles a lot like Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, Champions of Norrath, or any number of games built on the Snowblind action/RPG engine, The Bard actually leans a little more on the RPG side than those other games--there's more exploration (including an overworld map with random encounters), a lot more story, and a more traditional character-growth system.

The Bard's stats are very customizable, and the game's talent system lets you decide whether you're going to be a two-handed sword expert, a dual-wieldin' fool, or a more defensive player with all sort of special parrying and countering skills.

The Bard's secret weapon may actually turn out to be the "summoning" system, which lets you form your own little EverQuest parties of NPCs to help you through the game. There's a good deal of strategy involved in deciding who should be in your party for each situation--a fire elemental to scorch things from a distance, a healer to keep everyone's HP on the level, a lightning bug to light up the darkness, a rogue to hunt down traps in dungeons, an arrow-firing amazon, a heavy-handed fighter to act as a tank, and several more than can evolve and change as the game goes on. The Bard's no slouch, but he'd be toast without these helper monkeys.

Razor Wit

Anyone who's got even a little bit of love for RPG'ing will find lots of familiar facets skewered--ancient corpses that come to life when you take the important item they grasp, the plight of "The Chosen One," three-minute time limits randomly imposed on battles. But even if the humor winds up falling flat or not flying frequently enough, fret not: It seems there's still an actual big, cool game buried under the cynical surface.