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The Bard's Tale series is one of the more influential early CRPGs. A turn-based RPG using text to depict battles, it featured graphics in a small window in the corner that depicted an open world and, gorgeous animated pixel art characters and monsters (the NES version featured more traditional early JRPG style monster art).

In the first title of the series, Tales of the Unknown, is set in the country town of Skara Brae, which has been plagued by monsters and surrounded by a spell of "Eternal Winter" at the hands of an evil wizard named Mangar the Dark. All of the militiamen have disappeared, leaving only a group of adventurers at the local Adventurer's Guild to save the town.

You create a party of 6 characters by randomly rolling their stats, and you could choose from Warrior, Hunter, Paladin, Rogue, Monk, Bard, Magician, or Conjurer. Certain ports of the game also allowed you to port characters from Wizardry and Ultima III.

The various classes developed automatically like you'd expect (rogues sneak attacking from shadows, monks with high armor class in robes doing high unarmed damage, warriors getting extra attacks per round, etc.), but the mages were particularly interesting. Only mage characters could change class and learn all of the spells from each of 4 mage classes: Conjurer, Magician, Wizard, and Sorcerer. There are 85 spells in the game covering the gamut from buffs, to utility, to damage, to area of effect spells. Some versions of this game required you to type in 4 letter commands to cast them, others let you use a mouse and select from a list.

While the game was named after the Bard, and surely influenced what we think of as bards today in modern RPGs, sadly the character class was not the strongest, and you really don't even need to have one in your party (in fact, you're probably better off without one since he only truly affects one moment in the game, which you can circumvent). The games featured bard songs that would trigger when you sang them, which you could only do a number of times based on your level until you required a drink at the bar. The Amiga version would change the voicing of the song to match the instrument your bard had equipped.

There are several challenging dungeons to crawl full of myriad monsters and magic items. Back in the day, you pretty much had to have graph paper to have a chance of finding your way, and that was often spoiled by teleporter and spinner traps that would disorient you. The game did not pull punches, and was very subtle in its way of moving the game forward. Many people relied on the Cluebook, which was published for the game. Within its leaves, a firsthand account of how to navigate the game was written. It was pretty interesting and innovative for the time, and definitely a necessity for serious fans of the series.

The game would go on to be ported to the following systems: Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Apple II, Apple IIgs, Atari ST, Commodore 64, DOS, Macintosh, NES, PC-98, ZX Spectrum. It would also see two official sequels: 'The Destiny Knight' and 'Thief of Fate', as well as 'The Bard's Tale Construction Set', which was an early RPG Maker style program that allowed you to make your own games using the Bard's Tale engine (commercial games were released using it, including: 'The Bard's Quest' and 'The Bard's Lore'). It also included a sample scenario called 'Star Light Festival'.

Originally, a fourth title in the series was developed, but it ended up being rebranded 'Dragon Wars' and became a spiritural successor instead.

A series of novels was also written in the 1990s including some by legendary author Mercedes Lackey.

In more recent years, following a successful Kickstarter campaign, a sequel entitled 'Bard's Tale IV', and a spinoff called 'The Mage's Tale' were developed by InXile Entertainment (who were later acquired by Microsoft). They also remastered the original trilogy at that time. They made some welcome quality of life improvements such as party inventory, pooled gold, and an automap, but also changed some things that made fans angry, such as making the 4 groups of 99 barbarians in Bard's Tale 1 that became a great place to power level your characters a one-time battle instead of respawning. They later fixed this issue after public outcry, and the new remastered Trilogy is, in my humble opinion, now the best way to play the original series. As a fan of the game, unfortunately, the music left something to be desired, and so I have set out to fix that. Titles reflect the song names in Bard's Tale Trilogy.

Original score by Lawrence Holland ©1985
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