The Bard's Tale Reviews
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On the whole, The Bard's Tale is a good action-RPG title and a great effort by the gang at inXile. The use of the Snowblind engine allowed it to effortlessly provide enjoyable hack-and-slash gameplay, while the dialogue and presentation provided the necessary charm to make The Bard's Tale stand out.
The second is at The Gamers Temple with an overall score of 82%:
For the most part The Bard's Tale is an enjoyable game. However there are a couple of big problems that drag the overall experience down. First, and certainly most important, is the combat responsiveness. Well, to be more accurate the problem really lies with the unresponsiveness. There is a noticeable delay in pressing the attack button and the attack itself. Battles are in real time, so this delay can create all sorts of havoc. It is just bizarre that the developers would allow the game to have this type of a flaw. Maybe they were too busy writing some of the very funny jokes. The other disappointment is the way you heal yourself. Unlike the more traditional RPGs, you don't have an (inventory) to speak of. This would usually be the place to hold healing potions and such. But in this game you must conjure the spirit of the very princess you're trying to rescue. The problem with this is that there is no simple way to do this in the heat of battle. You have to navigate through a few menus in order to make the call. And of course you can't pause to heal, so you sort of end up running around trying not to get hit while summoning help. Seems to me that a much better solution would have been to allow you to map a button for healing...like maybe that pretty useless (jump) button!
And the third is at DailyGame with an overall score of 7.7/10:
In fact, with Cary Elwes in tow and the hilarious script already in hand, it's easy to wonder whether inXile would've been better served making a brief comedy than a game. inXile Entertainment is clearly composed of great gamers with great senses of humor, but even the greatest of combinations can miss its mark. The Bard's Tale doesn't do anything wrong by any means, and in fact it does a few stereotypical gameplay things rather well. But it doesn't do anything particularly new, either, and to stand out in any overcrowded genre, a game needs more than a funny script to drive it forward.
