Bards Tale

Copyright : Electronic Arts | Reviewed by : Malc Jennings

They disbelieved my wind dragon... They possessed my greater demon... Now it?s up the the Bard and his magic fire horn. First you explained the city. Then the cellars and sewers below. Now you?re trapped in Harkyns Castle. 7 levels conquered and still 9 to go... Command 4 different classes of magic user: Conquere, magician, sorceror and wizard, each with unique spells. And the Bard who makes music with his music, 85 spells in all. But choose well - the wrong spell and you?re history... Pushes the power of your computer to it?s limits.
So it?s fast, it?s big and there?s plenty of power for 3D scrolling, full colour mazes, amazing sound effects and animated colour monsters. Excellent game design, each level is demanding and different. That?s how LCA put it on the back of the box but whether any of it?s true remains to be seen.

Graphics

Now, back in my junior/high school days this was one of the most talked about computer games of the strategic genre ever, having never played or even thought about buying the game in it?s time (despite all the hype) I just dismissed peoples claims and left it on the shelves. In high school the game was ported over to higher (but low today) end machines and became the most talked about titles yet again, still I dismissed it.
The graphics in the Amstrad CPC version aren?t quite as spectacular as the box states (see introduction) and none of those monsters appear to be animated to me, if they are then the frame rate must be lower than Quake 3 on a BBC micro. Colours are fair but still pretty basic at times, images of monsters and certain scenes appear to be pretty well drawn despite the lack of animation. Playing areas are mixed, in the top left corner you will see what your men are looking at, in the bottom table you will see experience points, health and other statistical information and on the right hand side there?s a brief and sometimes detailed information panel.

Sound

Sound is again a let down after you look at the back of the box, the "amazing sound effects" are often limited to the occasional bleep and bang from your CPC speaker and to be fair it would be much easier and less annoying with the sound turned all the way down. It looks to me like LCA wrote a single description of a single verion and stuck it on the back of every single box, not a smart idea as your "fans" will no doubt feel cheated once the game has loaded.

Gameplay

Gameplay is fair, it?s certainly an enjoyable turn based game and doesn?t look far away from the games we saw much later on the Amiga and Atari ST, even some early PC games. The fact is that we here at CPC Zone (me in particular) don?t spend a huge amount of time in playing strategy games, especially those that are mostly text based and obviously can?t give a great opinion on how well the game plays.
From what we are told this is one to add to any strategy game fans collection and judging by the comments I heard when the game was at the peak of gameplay heaven it?s got to be a winner, grab it now.