Paddy Waring at GameCloud writes: "Despite taking place in a marvellously detailed, humorous, and lively world, the story of The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrows Deep is rather by-the-numbers, and a lot of the game’s design harkens back to the old games in the series in the worst, most rigid ways possible. Further to this, even after a few updates, the game is still fraught with technical issues, but it is slowly being patched, and inXile has a good track record for working on their games to improve them. And the good things that are still present in this game are excellent, like the fantastic writing, refreshing approach to puzzle designs, and beautiful music present throughout. The design could also be tweaked to remove the sting of a lot of the older design tropes that cause the most grief. As it stands, the game in its current state is rough as guts, but there’s a lot of room for improvement, and I’ve faith that it will improve. It will just take time."
With months of post-launch fixes and changes now in place, is Bard's Tale IV: Barrows Deep finally worth investing your time in? JDR picks up a lute and sings its verdict.
Bard’s Tale IV’s plot continues in the series’ pre-established universe. Its animated prologue tells a tale of two maddened gods, their brutish apes-turned-into-men, and their attempt to use their barbaric humans to wipe out the ancient races of elves and dwarves.The ancient races triumphed over these gods and sealed them into another realm. As expected though, you can’t imprison any god with lock or key. To prevent their return and to punish mankind, a human princess was enchanted to sing a spell to keep the evil deities contained for all eternity. Her song remained ironclad so long as it was continually sung forever. That, of course, is only what the stories say. The country of Caith certainly knows the legend. Already, three would-be conquers tried freeing the evil gods to win immeasurable wealth and power. Good thing then that they each were defeated by an assorted pack of puny heroes. That’s not to say another greedy bloke wouldn’t try again, and with the sudden violent persecution of non-human races it seems something’s rotten in the city of Skara Brae.
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