I am genuinly amazed

[mirkomick]

Two things before a longer wall of text will appear

1. Thank you Krome for releasing this fantastic gem of a game in an amazing remake, imho the best remake ever made, thank you so much.

2. Everybody who is interested in what my expirience was and why I rate this (the remake trilogy) the second best game of all time is welcome to read my story but I'm afraid I need to write a lot to explain properly what happened.


If you don't want to read all of this (though I recommend it) scroll down to the conclusion



Time to begin,

I started playing the original Bard's Tale around 1986 on my Amstrad CPC 464 with a greenscreen monitor (though I had floppy drives).
Back then it was one of these "sense of wonder" games for me, one of the few games where you actually could "save" your progress and the adventure basically never stopped.
Must have played it off and on for years, though the memory is hazy, I was around 10 years old back then. (My youngest son now is 13 - strange feelings :-) ).
And fyi I played a pirated copy, that's how I discovered the game, but some time later I bought the original.

To the best of my knowledge, BT2 was never released for the Amstrad, so I never played that game, but a few years on when BT3 was released I owned an 8086 with a monochrome monitor and bought BT3 soon after release and played through it, enjoyed this game a lot as well but I always felt sorry I could not use my original party as I always liked the idea of taking your progress from one game to the next.

Years passed, both games made an impact but BT1 much more, this game is imprinted in my memory, so much so that I never forgot the way from the AG to the Review bord and to the mads god temple, never forgot his name and pretty much knew the sequence to beat the game throughout the last 30 years.

When abandonware sites were a thing, I downloaded the 3 games, gave 1 a try, played it a little but never gotten around to play much.

When Bard's Tale 2004 was released I bought the game twice, once on my IPad once on steam, basically to play through the original Trilogy in one go, again, never gotten around to it, started BT1 on both platforms but only played it a little.

Again, years passed, I always knew, one day I will play through all 3 games, with my party, from start to finish, one day I finally will overcome the hurdles, I guess the furthest I came was to the end of the Temple in BT1, I enjoyed mapping the dungeons and the gameplay overall but it was just too time consuming.

Interlude.

During the last 10 years I played a lot of classic RPGs I never gotten to play as a kid and teen, either due to hardware restrictions (Baldur's gate 1 for eg I tried a demo on my 486 but my machine was too slow to play it) or due to the fact they weren't available for me at the time.
I got Wizadry 6-8 on steam, played and mapped out 6 till I reached the bridge but lost interest. Liked the game and the expirience.
Bought the remasters of Baldur's Gate1 and BG2, played 1 and 2 in Coop with my wife, finished 1 and 2 with her, and one day we will play Throne of Baal together as well, BG1 was great and 2 was even better, enjoyed the expirience very much.
Recently I bought Might and Magic X, so I could give Might and Magic VI a try while waiting for the release of BT2, great game as well, felt like a mix of Skyrim and The Bard's Tale, enjoyed it so far and probably will finish it after I complete BT2.

All the mentioned RPGs were great expiriences but then yesterday happened, the reason for this lengthy text.

I bought the trilogy the day it was released looking forward to finally play through all three games with the same party, to finally go on the journey again, the journey I started 30 years ago and finally go the whole way. Especially looking forward to finally playing BT2 which I never even started before.
I expected BT2 to be better than 1 but not as good as 3 so I didn't expect too much.
I also expected it to be basically a breeze, as the only time my party died completely in 1 was the first time I encountered Mangar, The second time I was better prepared, got a level or 2 more under my belt and won, though a few party members still died that day.
And basically BT2 was what I expected, new enemies, stronger enemies but no big match for my level 50 party. Great new mazes, nice and interesting story, the snares, a very nice new concept.

----------------Conclusion------------------

Yesterday I entered Oscon's Fortress.

I mapped it out with a full party
(the fight with Oscon made me laugh out loud, Mangars brother out for revenge declaring the toughest fight ever for me, 2nd round he dies, I still remembered I died fighting Mangar), then obviously died in the snare and came back with only 4 heroes.
I left my bard and 2 Archmages at the AG, thinking it will be fine, everything will be fine.

When I stepped on the first antimagic spinner I realized, well, the bard would have been an excellent addition here...

On my way to the snare, fight after fight, not all of them I can run away from, then disaster strikes, my Paladin dies. My warrior is low and the rogue is no big help anyway.

I need to get out, I need to get out, retreat, regroup and come back.

Why am I walking back? I don't remember if there was a reason or if I forgot I could cast a spell.

The game gripped me yesterday, it gripped me in a way I haven't felt in decades, I chuckled while I was walking towards the snare, feeling a little nervous, knowing the game forced me out of my comfort zone.

When I ran back I was on edge, feeling the urge to get out of the dungeon, knowing it was very dangerous now.

And then, on an antimagic spinner I was attacked again, 1 low health warrior, 1 rogue and a useless archmage. Needless to say, I saw a harp soon after.

I played basically all day yesterday, the incident occured around 23:30. I was amazed, happy and glad that I was taken aback to my formative years, I never thought this would happen again.

Finished the snare around midnight, and felt very very smart I solved the riddle, which was a real good one.

And today it amazed me again when I entered the crypt.

-------------------------------------------------

Why only second best game of all time?

Deus Ex made me get up one hour earlier everyday, so I could play it for one hour before work.
This is how good Deus Ex was.

And it's only an iota better than The Bard's Tale Trilogy.


Thanks to everybody who read this little tale of mine

Special thanks to Michael Crawford for writing this extraordinary game which is Bard's Tale 2

And Extraspecial thanks to the whole team of Krome for giving me this expirience.

[J. Glennson Reeves]

I read it all.

First best game of all time used to be STALKER, it is now Witcher 3 provided you run many important mods and have a strong system.

I rank BT behind Wizardry only because Wizardry was first, however, Dungeon Master beats them both.

[mirkomick]

Stalker is still on my to play list, got 2 of them on steam already, tried it once ages ago but again, the pc was too slow back then :-). Witcher 3 comes after I finished 1 and 2, own them both already.

As BT was the first rpg I ever played it will always rank higher than wizardry for me.

Dungeon master I loved as well, Eye of the beholder 1 and 2 I loved more though, and really adored Legend of grimrock 1 and 2.

And thank for reading it all :-)

[noblesse_oblige]

Originally posted by mirkomick:

The game gripped me yesterday, it gripped me in a way I haven't felt in decades, I chuckled while I was walking towards the snare, feeling a little nervous, knowing the game forced me out of my comfort zone.

When I ran back I was on edge, feeling the urge to get out of the dungeon, knowing it was very dangerous now.

And then, on an antimagic spinner I was attacked again, 1 low health warrior, 1 rogue and a useless archmage. Needless to say, I saw a harp soon after.

I played basically all day yesterday, the incident occured around 23:30. I was amazed, happy and glad that I was taken aback to my formative years, I never thought this would happen again.

This. This is what it's about.

Originally posted by mirkomick:

Special thanks to Michael Crawford for writing this extraordinary game which is Bard's Tale 2

And Extraspecial thanks to the whole team of Krome for giving me this expirience.

Indeed.

[Napkin]

Awesome! I see many similarities :-D

[Morgian]

It is hard to say what games were the best over the years. I forgot many completely except the title (e.g. Dragon Age), while I still know details about others (like where to get the magic lockpicks in Ultima V or the password for the Oppression). Going by what I remember, my favorites are/were Civilization 1-4 (especially the mod Fall from Heaven 2, which was better than Civ 4 in several ways), Deus Ex 1, Bioshock 1 (I love the soundtrack), Gothic 2, Divine Divinity 1+2, Underrail, Ultima VII (Serpent Gate), Neverwinter Nights 2 (the add-on about the Crusade), Fallout 3 & New Vegas, X-Com (the original), Morrowind and Skyrim.

Would be nice to have some remastered, but anything with 3D graphics is probably off the table due to time (which equals money). But maybe someone tries it on with the old SSI games, which interface was not much different from Bard's Tale? ;)

[Targess]

Originally posted by mirkomick:

Two things before a longer wall of text will appear

1. Thank you Krome for releasing this fantastic gem of a game in an amazing remake, imho the best remake ever made, thank you so much.

2. Everybody who is interested in what my expirience was and why I rate this (the remake trilogy) the second best game of all time is welcome to read my story but I'm afraid I need to write a lot to explain properly what happened.


If you don't want to read all of this (though I recommend it) scroll down to the conclusion



Time to begin,

I started playing the original Bard's Tale around 1986 on my Amstrad CPC 464 with a greenscreen monitor (though I had floppy drives).
Back then it was one of these "sense of wonder" games for me, one of the few games where you actually could "save" your progress and the adventure basically never stopped.
Must have played it off and on for years, though the memory is hazy, I was around 10 years old back then. (My youngest son now is 13 - strange feelings :-) ).
And fyi I played a pirated copy, that's how I discovered the game, but some time later I bought the original.

To the best of my knowledge, BT2 was never released for the Amstrad, so I never played that game, but a few years on when BT3 was released I owned an 8086 with a monochrome monitor and bought BT3 soon after release and played through it, enjoyed this game a lot as well but I always felt sorry I could not use my original party as I always liked the idea of taking your progress from one game to the next.

Years passed, both games made an impact but BT1 much more, this game is imprinted in my memory, so much so that I never forgot the way from the AG to the Review bord and to the mads god temple, never forgot his name and pretty much knew the sequence to beat the game throughout the last 30 years.

When abandonware sites were a thing, I downloaded the 3 games, gave 1 a try, played it a little but never gotten around to play much.

When Bard's Tale 2004 was released I bought the game twice, once on my IPad once on steam, basically to play through the original Trilogy in one go, again, never gotten around to it, started BT1 on both platforms but only played it a little.

Again, years passed, I always knew, one day I will play through all 3 games, with my party, from start to finish, one day I finally will overcome the hurdles, I guess the furthest I came was to the end of the Temple in BT1, I enjoyed mapping the dungeons and the gameplay overall but it was just too time consuming.

Interlude.

During the last 10 years I played a lot of classic RPGs I never gotten to play as a kid and teen, either due to hardware restrictions (Baldur's gate 1 for eg I tried a demo on my 486 but my machine was too slow to play it) or due to the fact they weren't available for me at the time.
I got Wizadry 6-8 on steam, played and mapped out 6 till I reached the bridge but lost interest. Liked the game and the expirience.
Bought the remasters of Baldur's Gate1 and BG2, played 1 and 2 in Coop with my wife, finished 1 and 2 with her, and one day we will play Throne of Baal together as well, BG1 was great and 2 was even better, enjoyed the expirience very much.
Recently I bought Might and Magic X, so I could give Might and Magic VI a try while waiting for the release of BT2, great game as well, felt like a mix of Skyrim and The Bard's Tale, enjoyed it so far and probably will finish it after I complete BT2.

All the mentioned RPGs were great expiriences but then yesterday happened, the reason for this lengthy text.

I bought the trilogy the day it was released looking forward to finally play through all three games with the same party, to finally go on the journey again, the journey I started 30 years ago and finally go the whole way. Especially looking forward to finally playing BT2 which I never even started before.
I expected BT2 to be better than 1 but not as good as 3 so I didn't expect too much.
I also expected it to be basically a breeze, as the only time my party died completely in 1 was the first time I encountered Mangar, The second time I was better prepared, got a level or 2 more under my belt and won, though a few party members still died that day.
And basically BT2 was what I expected, new enemies, stronger enemies but no big match for my level 50 party. Great new mazes, nice and interesting story, the snares, a very nice new concept.

----------------Conclusion------------------

Yesterday I entered Oscon's Fortress.

I mapped it out with a full party
(the fight with Oscon made me laugh out loud, Mangars brother out for revenge declaring the toughest fight ever for me, 2nd round he dies, I still remembered I died fighting Mangar), then obviously died in the snare and came back with only 4 heroes.
I left my bard and 2 Archmages at the AG, thinking it will be fine, everything will be fine.

When I stepped on the first antimagic spinner I realized, well, the bard would have been an excellent addition here...

On my way to the snare, fight after fight, not all of them I can run away from, then disaster strikes, my Paladin dies. My warrior is low and the rogue is no big help anyway.

I need to get out, I need to get out, retreat, regroup and come back.

Why am I walking back? I don't remember if there was a reason or if I forgot I could cast a spell.

The game gripped me yesterday, it gripped me in a way I haven't felt in decades, I chuckled while I was walking towards the snare, feeling a little nervous, knowing the game forced me out of my comfort zone.

When I ran back I was on edge, feeling the urge to get out of the dungeon, knowing it was very dangerous now.

And then, on an antimagic spinner I was attacked again, 1 low health warrior, 1 rogue and a useless archmage. Needless to say, I saw a harp soon after.

I played basically all day yesterday, the incident occured around 23:30. I was amazed, happy and glad that I was taken aback to my formative years, I never thought this would happen again.

Finished the snare around midnight, and felt very very smart I solved the riddle, which was a real good one.

And today it amazed me again when I entered the crypt.

-------------------------------------------------

Why only second best game of all time?

Deus Ex made me get up one hour earlier everyday, so I could play it for one hour before work.
This is how good Deus Ex was.

And it's only an iota better than The Bard's Tale Trilogy.


Thanks to everybody who read this little tale of mine

Special thanks to Michael Crawford for writing this extraordinary game which is Bard's Tale 2

And Extraspecial thanks to the whole team of Krome for giving me this expirience.

Love you're taste in games as Deus Ex was likely my fave and the BT series was a gem growing up. Played on my C64 around the same time. Though I likely enjoyed the AD&D series of games more then the BT series. Pools of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds etc...

[Darkmoor9]

Awesome story. :) By the way, just like you suspected, the Amstrad CPC (and the ZX Spectrum) only got BT1. The Spectrum was where I originally played BT1, on a 60 minute cassette tape. :) Ah, those were the days...

[mirkomick]

Originally posted by noblesse_oblige:

This. This is what it's about.

Exactly!

Originally posted by Napkin:

Awesome! I see many similarities :-D

I knew I wasn't the only one :-)

Originally posted by Morgian:

Going by what I remember, my favorites are/were Civilization 1-4 (especially the mod Fall from Heaven 2, which was better than Civ 4 in several ways), Deus Ex 1, Bioshock 1 (I love the soundtrack), Gothic 2, Divine Divinity 1+2, Underrail, Ultima VII (Serpent Gate), Neverwinter Nights 2 (the add-on about the Crusade), Fallout 3 & New Vegas, X-Com (the original), Morrowind and Skyrim.

Been playing the civ series since civ1 came out, played every iteration, loved each one of them except beyond the sword, which I thought put too much into the game (cooperations). Loved the final version of CivV and realy enjoy civ VI in it's current state. Gothic waits in my library for me, bioshock 1 I nearly completed. Fallout is the other RPG series I really love, played 1 when it came out, 3 when it came out, New Vegas recently (and I think it's the best one), the other 2 I will still play.

I don't think most games you mentioned would need a remake, I still enjoy Deus ex 1 in it's current state. Not so long ago I played through the original Half-Life and it's expansions and really liked it - though I played Black Mesa as well and have to say, it's pretty cool :-)

Originally posted by Targess:

Love you're taste in games as Deus Ex was likely my fave and the BT series was a gem growing up. Played on my C64 around the same time. Though I likely enjoyed the AD&D series of games more then the BT series. Pools of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds etc...

Thank you very much :-), so far I never played any of the goldseries games (The ones made by SID I guess was the developers name), read about all of them in magazines but never had the right computer to play them, but I know one day I will

Originally posted by Darkmoor9:

Awesome story. :) By the way, just like you suspected, the Amstrad CPC (and the ZX Spectrum) only got BT1. The Spectrum was where I originally played BT1, on a 60 minute cassette tape. :) Ah, those were the days...

And thank you too :-), thankfully I didn't need to play BT1 on tape, but the Amstrad I owned only had a build in tape drive, so until we bought a disk drive for it, I needed to load my games from tapes as well, and yes, those were good times, I distinctly remember the loading screens and loading musics from the firebird games I bought on cassette (Thrust, Helichopper, The Wild Bunch and Booty)

[JTFinnegan]

I put in my vote for Master of Magic as the best game of all time.

I first played BT on my friends c64 in collage. This would have been around 1988 or 89. When we started. a group of us at the dorm each created one character and tried playing with each of us controlling our character in combat, and the game owner driving. That did not last long, but that first session was a blast. I never managed to finish any of the games, because the semester would end. Good memories :)

[mirkomick]

Originally posted by JTFinnegan:

I put in my vote for Master of Magic as the best game of all time.

I played MoM back in the days a bit, liked it as well, but never gotten around to it again, played HoMM3 instead later on. From my memory I'd say MoM is the better game and probably still the best in the fantasy civ genre.

Originally posted by JTFinnegan:

Good memories :)

Good memories indeed :-)

[Madpuppet]

Dungeon Master, Ultima 3, Bards Tale, Pools of Radiance. Top RPGs from my childhood....
... I don't know if I could rank them ...
I never played might and magic. I'm guessing it was because Might and Magic 1 never came out on the Amiga and I was a fairly early adopter of the Amiga...

for some reason I never got into rpg's on the c64. I think all the good ones came out as I was moving to Amiga, other than something primitve like Gateway to Apshai.

[Darkmoor9]

JTFinnegan, were you talking about Might & Magic (a series of games like Wizardry and BT, which also had the strategy spin-offs Heroes of Might & Magic)) or Master of Magic (basically Fantasy Master of Orion)? This thread currently mentions both...

[thorin106]

All those games that most people listed are the greatest for me and I still own the original copies just not the legacy machines they were played on. I remember playing them all into the dead of night knowing I had to go to work the next day. But sadly I never completed any of them for I was an collector of games and devoted so much time to each. When I heard BT was going to be remastered it brought back old memories of staying up late and enjoying playing BT. It may not be as modern as the games made today but it was the gameplay that I enjoyed most for back in the day it was not about graphic cards and more on the Sound cards like SB, Roland, etc. Good job to the developers for re-releasing this treasure of an game.

[mirkomick]

Originally posted by MaDPuPPeT:

Dungeon Master, Ultima 3, Bards Tale, Pools of Radiance. Top RPGs from my childhood....
... I don't know if I could rank them ...
I never played might and magic. I'm guessing it was because Might and Magic 1 never came out on the Amiga and I was a fairly early adopter of the Amiga...

The RPGs of my childhood are easy to name and rank BT1 BT3 EoB and Ultima Underworld, basically the order of when I played them, the earlier the higher it ranks :-)

Might and Magic VI is the first MM RPG I played and I only started it 6 weeks ago after finishing BT1 again, to get my fantasy fix :-).

Originally posted by Darkmoor9:

JTFinnegan, were you talking about Might & Magic

I went with MoM, I guess that's what he meant.

Originally posted by thorin106:

All those games that most people listed are the greatest for me and I still own the original copies just not the legacy machines they were played on.

For me it's the other way round, I'm pretty sure I don't have the original copies of the games anymore, but my Amstrad is still standing on my attic, haven't been turned on in over 20 years though so I guess it won't work anymore but I can't let go :-)

[magnumaniac]

Originally posted by MaDPuPPeT:

I never played might and magic. I'm guessing it was because Might and Magic 1 never came out on the Amiga and I was a fairly early adopter of the Amiga...

for some reason I never got into rpg's on the c64.

You missed out there then... M&M 1 & 2 were on c64. Amiga had M&M 3 onwards I think. Great games all.

Still, BT1 was the first for me - completed 1,2 & 3 on the c64. Then Dragon Wars too (that may have been on the Amiga though). So good to have these available again in a playable format, so many good memories... proper old-school RPG gameplay with no gigantic exclamation marks over "quest-givers" heads and beams of light indicating objectives etc.