The other important thing to know or remember about The Bard's Tale 4 is where it comes from. This has its roots in crowdfunding, and is not a big budget game with a huge team. Character models are dated and cutscenes are slideshows with filters on, and a variety of bugs (a huge second patch for the game has just been released) forced me to reload upwards of 15 times. This is particularly annoying in The Bard's Tale 4, because saves happen at little pillars and not freely from a menu, meaning you have to redo progress each load.
But what other games do you know that come with a printable Code Wheel for solving puzzles? What other games do you know with a bard hero class powered by booze? What other games do you know with a live-action, evolving story recap when you select 'Continue'? What the Bard's Tale 4 sacrifices in polish it makes up for with personality.




The core loop is getting through areas gated off by puzzles, and sprinkled with groups of enemies. The Bard's Tale 4 is first-person when you explore but a chess-like grid when you battle. Your gang occupies one eight-square half of the board, and your enemies occupy the other. Who goes first depends on who charges first in exploration mode, and it can be a deciding factor if and when you whack the difficulty up (doing so reinvigorates combat in the latter stages of the game).
Positioning during battles makes a big difference. Abilities have hit patterns according to the grid around you, and you can't whack enemies stood behind other enemies unless using a spell or an arrow. Governing all abilities is Opportunity, a shared team resource refreshed each turn. All abilities have an Opportunity cost, except those declared Free (very useful) and spells, which use mana, although gaining mana often involves Meditating, which itself requires Opportunity. Meditating also requires charging up, or Channeling, but this prevents you doing other things and can leave you vulnerable. There are Stances you can toggle on or off for various benefits too, like counter-attacking or gaining armour, but again, doing so shuts other options off to you. There is, in other words, a lot to think about.




But puzzles are the game's bread and butter; they're everywhere. There are doors opened by connecting spinning cogs, doors opened by rotating discs with patterns on. There are giant blocks to slide onto pressure plates, sometimes on the ceiling, and tunes to ring out on bells according clues found around you. There are sudokus and logic puzzles, whole halls of hellish re-wiring (more engrossing than it sounds). There's Fairy Golf. There are even puzzle weapons which gain power the more puzzles on them you solve.




Exacerbating the issue is a general lack of finesse. There's no fast-travel apart from between settlements at standing stones, for example, so you're forced to navigate twist-turny pathing as you traipse back and forth between objectives, and the compass isn't much help. Turning pieces clockwise or anti-clockwise can be awkwardly fiddly which, the umpteenth time it happens, begins to grate, and not being able to automatically sort your inventory is a nuisance. It all sounds trivial but in an already long and winding game these annoyances build up.
This is where I urge you again not to try and force The Bard's Tale 4. This is where, after a handful of crashes and having to redo progress (which was admittedly quicker when I already knew a puzzle's solution) I clashed heads with the game. I had to turn it off and walk away, and I'm so glad I did, because returning to it a day or two later made me see things anew. I began seeing The Bard's Tale 4 not as an RPG to gorge on but to snack on - a daily crossword of a game.
It is an ideal place to return to puzzle in. There's no urgency, no tension; it's peaceful and relaxing, and accompanied by the most beautiful Gaelic soundtrack I've ever heard in a game. A whole album was specially commissioned for The Bard's Tale 4 and it is enchanting, from melancholic air to jaunty jig. This, mingled with the game's easy-going fantasy and pretty scenery, makes The Bard's Tale 4 exactly the game to play in the evening to unwind.
If there's such thing as a B-movie game, The Bard's Tale 4: Barrows Deep is it. I don't mean it detrimentally, because although it's scruffy, it has bags of charisma, and by not trying to please everybody it revels in being different. And being different in a world of so many spectacular role-playing games means everything. If you don't like puzzles, I hope I've made it clear you should probably avoid The Bard's Tale 4, but if you do - if you take pleasure in a mental stretch - then there's an awful lot here for you.
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