The Bard's Tale (Xbox, 2004)

HAVEN'T FINISHED YET BUT IT'S A FUNNY GAME. GAME PLAY IS OK. CAMERA COULD USE SOME IMPROVMENT. WOULDN'T SUGGEST IT FOR REAL YOUNG KIDS. GUY REALLY LIKE TO STARE AT THE GIRLS HUGE CHESTS. MAKE A FEW SEXUAL COMMENTS. I LIKE THE MAGIC ABILITY TO CALL IN HELP. TRAPS ARE SURPRISING AND REALLY CATCH YOU OFF GUARD SOMETIMES, SO CALL UP THE GUY WHO WILL SPRING THE TRAPS FOR YA! SCRIPT IS REALLY THE BEST PART OF THIS GAME. CHECK IT OUT, I DARE YOU NOT TO LAUGH.

This game has incredibly funny and sarcastic dialogue and narration. It starts out well enough with the story of the main character who is a rather crude maladjusted yet somehow likable Bard. The Bards constant motivation throughout the game is money and lust as he pursues a chance to bed down a beautiful princess. All and all, the hilarious situations and continuous sarcasm keep the game moving along and entertaining.

The game play is another story altogether, as it is awkward to control and becomes very repetitive, especially in battle scenes. Changing between weapons and calling forth magic are not as simple as a button press, it requires you to go through several icon menus all the while in the heat of battle which gets frustrating after a while. The game also doesn't give you much free play, it pretty much forces you through the storyline and doesn't let you really explore back through the game.

I did enjoy a couple of the bonus dungeons that popped up during the game which allowed you to find additional weapons and armor. I also thought that some of the city layouts and graphics along with the character graphics were pretty good. Still, I felt that when the game was over, I was left a little disappointed and wanting something more that never seemed to materialize.

* Hilarious Dialogue (Witty, Sarcastic, Best I've come across in a game.)

* Awkward Game Play / Repetitive Battle Sequences

* Forced storyline with very little free play.

* Decent Character Graphics and City/Town Layouts

* Overall a little bit lacking.

This game is a light hearted relief to the dark and serious games that are so prevalent today. I just finished Doom 3 and Halo 2 and had several weeks of bad dreams but with this game there is a relaxed fun feeling.

The graphics do leave a bit to be desired when compared to current standards but this is more than made up for by the irreverent humor. I would suggest you get a hold pf a simple walkthrough as it is very easy to miss a lot of neat stuff which will shorten the game but can also keep you from finishing some of the quests as it is not easy (sometimes impossible) to go back and play through an area again.

I do LOVE the fact that we do not have to break 5 million barrels and make massive trips to "town" to sell things to get money due to the system of automatically converting items to silver. I also love the fact that better itmes will automatically equip themselves. I had a hard time with Diablo 2 because I could not decide what to keep and what to sell so it is nice for a change to just sit down and mindlessly play a game.

CONCLUSION:
This is a great game to just enjoy and not think too much.

Game is an excellent example of relaxation game. All the goals are easy..kind of.. and great humour of the creators makes game alive.
Excellent scenery, different personalities of characters and bard-crook is the great interative comedy.

This game is a fun, light RPG for people who don't take gaming too seriously. Personally, I had a blast playing it. This game had me laughing within the first five minutes of playing it. If you are looking for a fun game that's not too challenging, but sure is entertaining, than this is the game for you. When the narrator yelled at me for opening a chest in someone's room, I knew I was in for a wild ride of RPG parody. Great game!

The Bard's Tale is a great game! The game's script is very smart, with a dry sense of humor and a main character with a fondness for directly addressing the game's narrator, with often hilarious results. In many situations the player is given the cfor the hero to respond to the other in-game characters with either a pleaseant ("nice") or snarky ("rude") response, some of which can shape the way the characters in the game respond to you, allowing for limited replayability. Gameplay is well-conceived with the camera remaining overhead for much of the game, and zooming in for cut scenes. One drawback to the overhead style of play is that the player must constantly readjust the camera's angle in order to always see the hero, and the hero's clothing can make him blend in with the enemies when in a large-scale battle, but once the player is used to this, it becomes much easier to track the hero. Difficulty level is pretty good, with enough of a challenge to keep savvier gamers interested and the novices appeased as well. No really flashy bells and whistles graphically, but if you like a throwback to older quest-style games that remain a pleasure to play over and over, grab this one up while you can.

I really like the voice acting in The Bard's Tale. It's a challenging, but very fun game that pokes fun at nearly every aspect of D&D style RPG's. I would recommend this game for anyone who considers themselves to be a well rounded gamer.

This is a loose off chute of the original Commodore 64 / Mac Bard's Tale game. THough it isn't the same as the series, it is definitely fun and enjoyable.

I bought this game because I love the whole Knight going on a quest idea. It got boring really fast becuase the little mini movie scenes in between play time are longer than the play time. Not my favorite.

awful game, awful camera angles, someone really goofed on this one, plus a lot of not funny cliche's

This XBOX game can be run on the XBOX 360 if you download or otherwise install the compatibility update. The graphics are good and the game place is more or less hack and slash with a small twist. It's very similar to others in the genre. At the end of the day, the humor the developers attempted to bring to the game falls a bit flat for me and it it's merely an average game. It's not bad mind you, it's just not as good as maybe it could've been.

My opinion: there are better games in the role playing genre on the XBOX that you might want to take a look at instead, like: Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance II.