Each side has their own half of a 4×4 grid, with the ability to move around that half during their turn. Once you do find yourself in a fight, however, when the funny enemies aren’t buried in a rock face, things do start to get a bit more tense. They can’t do a thing of course, and their high-pitched voices offer no threat whatsoever, but it all adds up to create a wonderful atmosphere in a game that knows when to ease the tension with a laugh. Not always as menacing as you expect in most fantasy RPGs, especially when you find creatures stuck within stone walls during one particular section (as part of the design, not a glitch), still threatening to do various terrible things to you and your party of adventurers. The music sets the scene beautifully, with NPCs singing their songs as they work in Skara Brae, and the ambience in dungeons gives every area a sense of atmosphere. In fact, the sound in general is of high quality. The actual voice acting isn’t bad, indeed, the comedy timing is excellent and the banter between your party is entertaining, but the accents aren’t exactly true to our friends up north. You may not entirely appreciate them all being fully voice either, as our resident Scot, Mick, pointed out that the accents are atrocious. Fugly, I believe was the term used in the chat, when I streamed the game. They’re detailed and varied in their design, with all interactive characters fully voiced too, but not one of them has a pretty face. Unfortunately, the beauty of the environments is not matched by the character models. Honestly, every area in this game is visually appealing. There are semi-frequent pauses in Skara Brae Below, possibly as the Unreal Engine loads in its textures, but thankfully it very rarely affects the gameplay. Now, despite my PC exceeding the recommended requirements, there are still some technical issues present mainly underground. Shafts of light filter through into the depths below, while above ground is bathed in a mid-afternoon glow. As you wander around in first person, you can appreciate the detail set into each and every building and piece of debris. I must say that Skara Brae and its underground cousin, Skara Brae Below, are gorgeous to look at. It’s a far cry from gold hoarding and boob jokes, eh? Combined with the burning down of the adventurers’ tavern, sending you and other folk underground (literally), it falls to you and a ragtag bunch of weirdos to uncover who is behind this foul plot and to fight back against the Fatherites’ downright racist regime. Something else is afoot though: somebody is trying to frame the various dwarves, elves, and trow (a race of goblin-looking folk) for heinous crimes in order to turn the populace against them. The story takes place in Skara Brae, where a religious group known as the Fatherites have begun persecuting non-humans and anyone associated with the Adventurer’s Guild, which has been deemed an illegal organisation. It reminds me a little of things like Ultima Underworld and Eye of the Beholder it works incredibly well, too. The Bard’s Tale IV is a combination of genres, with the main exploration portion of the game taking place entirely in first person, which then shifts to a third person, turn-based combat system when you inevitably end up in a scrap. It’s not just the humour that has changed since that old console loot ‘em up, either. A little more on the level of Divinity: Original Sin 2, just not quite as clever. The Bard’s Tale IV does have humour, but it’s far more understated and less about the objectification of women. There’s Thomas Hoff and his unattainable soup, as well as Farmer Killop and his love of all things cabbage, carrots and potatoes. Don’t get me wrong, there is still humour. Perhaps that’s why The Bard’s Tale IV: Barrows Deep (no really, there’s no apostrophe in Barrows – perhaps it’s a scale of depth, like “we’re thirty barrows beneath the surface”) is a more serious adventure. No way that would fly in today’s climate. The last Bard’s Tale that I played was that bawdy 2004 adventure on PS2 and Xbox, which was like Diablo but with occasional boob jokes.
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