The Bard's Tale Legacy Mode?

[The Flower of Battle]

Unfortunately, i wasn't born when this gem released and i absolutely prefer old school RPGs over the new ones, and i want to experience this game in the best way possible for a new comer. I don't mind playing this game in the hardest way possible, i just wanna know the differences between Legacy Mode and the normal remaster mode. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

[grommile]

Legacy mode is a set of eight options:

1. Individual Inventory: Instead of a shared party inventory, your characters have their own individual inventories (max 16 slots each).

2. Misc Differences:
--- BT1: The first slot in the party is for Specials (summons/NPCs) only.
--- BT1: No archery.
--- BT1: Items disappear by percentage chance instead of having charges.
--- BT1: If playing with Individual Inventory, characters have a limit of eight items.
--- BT2: If playing with Individual Inventory, characters have a limit of 10 items.
--- BT1+2: No wine skins.
--- BT1+2: No Identify ability for the Rogue
--- Each game has its own distinct item and spell list.

3. Game Specific Songs: Each game has its own list of bard songs, and the behaviour of variable-power songs differs between BT1+2 and BT3.

4. Use Unequipped Items: Allows you to use items in combat without equipping them first; tradeoff is that you are not allowed to equip or unequip items during combat.

5. Automap Disabled: Self-explanatory. You will need a pad of squared paper (or suchlike) to have a pleasant gameplay experience in this mode. In BT3, it doesn't disable the automap completely, just turns off a bunch of its features so that it works like the original.

6. Full XP Requirements: Restores the original (much more punishing) XP requirements for levelling, and allows replaying set-piece encounters (like the horde of Berserkers in BT1).

7. Save At Guild Only: You have to go back to the Adventurer's Guild to save the game in BT1 and BT2 only. BT3 still has save-anywhere, because that was an authentic feature of the original.

8. No Items In Houses: This turns off some hints and gear rewards that can be found by entering generic houses in the cities.

[kaypy]

6 also enables a couple more mechanics that make life easier in exchange for the XP requirement:
half empty items sold at shops get recharged rather than vanishing.
you can enter combat mode without opponents (which gives cheap healing via bard songs)
and of course the repeat battles can be farmed for XP

[The Flower of Battle]

Many thanks for the detailed answers friends! I just have one off topic question, is there like an elixir or food that you can take with wherever you go? The only place i know to heal your party members is that temple, but there will be no temples in dungeons and that's why i asked.

[grommile]

Originally posted by The Flower of Battle:

I just have one off topic question, is there like an elixir or food that you can take with wherever you go?

Your mages learn healing spells as you progress through the game.

[RoguishPaladin]

Originally posted by The Flower of Battle:

I just have one off topic question, is there like an elixir or food that you can take with wherever you go?

Additionally to the answer that grommile gave you, there is a bard song that replenishes HP slowly and (eventually) magic items which come with some of the healing mage spells on them. Don't wait on the items, though, and get used to using WOHL and FLAN a lot.

That being said (and as someone who grew up with the originals), after you've tried out legacy mode, maybe switch some of the options on and give them a shot. The options which increase difficulty rather than just increasing awkwardness are 4, 5, 6, and (to a lesser extent) 8. 1 just reduces bookkeeping, 2 introduces features into the earlier games which made the later games a little more interesting, like ranges and the ability to have 7 PC if you wish, and 3 doesn't really make a power difference since you don't get access to the later games' songs until the later games. I personally am a strong advocate of save-on-the-fly, especially as there are bugs in this game which could get you stuck, and I would resist calling save-at-guild "more difficult", but it is certainly authentic to the game and I wouldn't fault you for seeing it as integral to an "authentic" run.

[CeterumCenseo]

Differences of Legacy mode are also explained in the online manual. Distances in BT1 comes to my mind as well. Actually I found the original game much more difficult at the beginning, don't know if they recreated that in legacy as well. Main reason was that your L1 chars missed often, were therefore killed and reviving them was too expensive, so you created new ones instead. At the end, I had +/- 30 characters created to get a party going around at night.

I play my current game with the "normal" setup, but only save in the guild, maybe out of sentimentality.

[grommile]

The early game in BT1 was brutal, because it was possible to walk out the door and get jumped by 8 Mad Dogs or Barbarians.

Remaster BT1 in full Legacy Mode is still gentler than the authentic C64 experience of BT1, though, since your characters start with ~10 more hit points than they did in C64 BT1.

And you had to put up with the disk access times of the Commodore 1541 disk drive when generating new characters or saving the game, too.

[The Flower of Battle]

Thank you all for your wonderful replies. I'm now playing on Legacy mode and slowly catching up to the mechanics of the game, and i daresay that i have learned 70% of them now.

[jonnin]

Its up to you of course, but some of the options are going to be a big hassle and the way it was back then was because of tech limitations, not to enhance gameplay. Like going to the inn to save, that is just annoying, and adds nothing to the game. It probably saves space in the save game file or something, which was an issue in 1985. Im kinda torn on the mapping: the new version journal map is so good you can ignore using light spells and all, and just check your location frequently. If you can detect and zap traps, nothing else matters with that tool available, while with it off, you are in for a tough time with all the spin you and move you stuff in most dungeons.

[grommile]

The game code on the first-out-the-door platforms (Apple II, C64) had exactly as much RAM and disk space available to it in 1985 as it did in 1988.

It was probably more a question of improved code than disk space; on the C64, BT2 and (especially) BT3 had noticeably more responsive disk I/O than BT1.

[omega]

I played on an Amstrad CPC 464 with a green screen monitor back in the day, I never finished it because all I did when I got high enough level was go round the town killing the statues and then to the castle and the 4x99 berserkers fight to level up. Back the the guild, rinse and repeat. Then I got a Commodore Amiga A500 with a 1/2 meg upgrade and forgot all about bards tale for a few years. When I finally got back, I had a PC and downloaded BT2, never finished that either :) Hoping to finish it this time though. Might try legacy mode if I ever finish it.