Ah, how many hours I spent roaming the streets of Skara Brae with a party of underdeveloped and underequipped adventurers, just trying to get enough experience to be able to explore the catacombs under the city. The Bard’s Tale was the first computer game where I got the sense of playing an RPG, instead of just fighting against weak design and poor mechanics.

For this rerun, I got the remastered version launched by inXile Entertainment in 2018, The Bard’s Tale Remastered Trilogy, which is fantastic. It revamps the graphics without losing the flavor of the original, unifies the mechanics of the three games, and adds some precious features like automap or being able to save the game anywhere.

The first time I played this game, I only finished the first story, Tales of the Unknown: The Bard’s Tale (1985), and never had a chance to play The Bard’s Tale II: The Destiny Knight (1986) or The Bard’s Tale III: Thief of Fate (1988). My plan now was to go through all the three games with the same party of adventurers. My team was formed by Trane (male human paladin), Ella (female human paladin), Basie (male dwarf warrior, who was seriously underperforming and was replaced), Duke (male human paladin, who replaced Basie), Chet (male human bard), Monk (male elf conjurer/sorcerer/wizard/magician), Mingus (male elf conjurer/sorcerer/wizard/magician), and Billie (female elf magician/sorcerer/wizard/conjurer). The names are inspired by jazz musicians.

It is a hard game, generating a mix of frustration (from things like rooms that extinguish any light source and turn you around, or being frequently poisoned by spiders in the dungeon without having any cure other than running back to the city looking for a temple) and satisfaction (sometimes just surviving a tough fight in the dungeon and being able to return to the surface before everyone died of spider poisoning was celebrated like a big victory). Even with auto mapping (added in the remastered version), The Bard’s Tale does a very good job of confusing the player into getting lost. Some diabolical locations mix zones of darkness, spinners, teleporters to identical rooms, and other niceties. But, with much patience and much grinding, I managed to complete the first game.

I fought the last battle in Tales of the Unknown: The Bard’s Tale, against Mangar and his vampire lords and greater demons (which he continues to summon), at level 22 for Trane, Ella, and Chet, 20 for Duke (who joined the party later), and level 7/7/7/5 for Monk, Mingus, and Billie. After the experience gained in the last combat, Trane, Ella, and Chet jumped to level 26, Duke to 23, and Monk, Mingus, and Billie to 7/7/7/7 plus a stack of extra experience. They also had a bit over one million gold in the bank and some nice trinkets to be transferred to the next game.

The Bard’s Tale II: The Destiny Knight is even more brutal than the first Bard’s Tale, but if you import an experienced party from the previous game the beginning of the story is much more pleasant. The first dungeon we find in the starting city of Tangramayne hosts many of the tricks from the first game, plus a couple of new ones. As if the spinners, teleporters, and dark rooms weren’t annoying enough, there are two situations here where you can get stuck for a long time. There’s a chasm that cannot be traversed unless you have accepted a certain winged creature from a previous location into the party (and you are not given that information). If you are travelling with a full party of seven, it’s unlikely that you will replace one of your loyal adventurers with an unknown monster you found in a dungeon. But without the winged creature there is no way to progress. Then, after the chasm there is a door that will only open if your bard is playing a certain song. If you unwisely decided to have a party without a bard in a game called The Bard’s Tale, there is no way to pass through those doors. At least the rewards for this quest are amazing. Even with a veteran party like mine, the experience I got at the end was enough to jump three levels ahead.

The trickery gets much worse later in the game, but I think the worst case is found early at Fanskar’s Castle, where you have to choose one among three doors, and two of them will lead to rooms where the party is instakilled just by entering: “As you enter the room a fiery cavalcade assaults your mortal forms, destroying you instantly.” As if this wasn’t bad enough, you have to make your choice in the dark, without a compass, and the doors have spinners before them. That doesn’t only kill your characters, it also kills the fun.

And then there is the part that made me quit the game. It’s called Dargoth’s Tower, which can be accessed from the city of Philippi. After several levels full of spinners, anti-magic squares, darkness areas, and other traps, you finally get to the top level. Fighting Dargoth and his minions is not a problem. But to get the third piece of the MacGuffin you are looking for, the Destiny Wand, you have to go through a maze. It starts with a riddle that has an answer of eleven (!) words that have to be guessed from various vague hints found throughout the tower and then entered in a specific order. That done, you are teleported and given a warning about a timer (there is a beating heart sound in the background to indicate that time is running off). Then you have to go through a specific sequence of places fighting monsters and collecting the passwords they give. The whole area is full of spinners and it’s not possible to cast spells (so you have no compass). Halfway through this process, there is a corridor with a door on one side and a magic mouth on the other, seven squares apart. You need to collect six different sentences from the mouth, and to get each one requires you to exit the corridor and reenter. Between the door and the mouth there are two spinners and between the spinners a trap that drains hit points. To get in and out with one sentence, it takes a long time to deal with the spinners and some damage from the trap. To get all the sentences you have to go through that twelve times. Even if you manage to survive the damage from the trap, the timer runs out before you can complete the sequence of sentences and your party simply dies. It’s the most infuriating dungeon design I have ever encountered. This is not entertainment, it’s torture.

I was really looking forward to playing with the same party through all the three games. But after this annoying level design in the second game I lost the will to continue. You can only use the same party in the last game if you finish the previous one, so I just abandoned the whole thing. Very disappointing. On to the next game…