drunks and trow sing songs-
skull, tree, moon, sun, chicken, lute:
portal puzzle beat
Additional Comments:
Straight up - I love this game! This is probably my favorite hack n'slash game out there. Now, I've never played any of the original C64/PC titles, but sometime in the late 90s I bought the NES port and played the heck out of it. It was one of the more innovative takes on a typical dungeon crawl/RPG that I had seen allowing for a wide variety of party setups with a large cast of characters. Needless to say, when I saw that there was a new Bard's Tale available for the PS2 sometime in 2004, I just had to have it.
Right from the get go, I enjoyed this game. From its unique summoning system to its deeply rooted Scots' environments to its wonderful voice-over cast (it's got Cary Elwes as the Bard - what else is there to say?), everything is just amazing in this game. The music alone is fantastic, presented as appropriately styled period pieces, such as The Nuckelavee. There's literally nothing for me to complain about regarding this game. Even the fact that you have to double-back through the first two towers after defeating the guardians has never bothered me since the concept has been worked into the storyline. Normally, I'd be annoyed with such a setup, but not here.
Another thing I love about this game is the constant battle of the cynics between the Bard and the Narrator: the Bard completely jaded on the whole notion of adventuring and princess-rescuing and the Narrator, well he's just generally annoyed with the Bard and all of his needless tomfoolery. Not only does their quibbling bring laughs, but it continually moves the story forward in a rather unorthodox fashion regarding the player or Bard's sudden newfound omniscience, or what would typically be the lack thereof in any other game. Either way, the Narrator's remarks, whether it be about the Bard or some random acquired token, are just priceless.
Ok, I do have one teeny-weeny, little issue with this game, but it's almost not even worth mentioning because it doesn't even effect the gameplay at all, but I must. Why the hell does it take so many donations to collect all the extras? Seven-hundred!? Are you kidding me!? And other than the artwork, they're not even worth it - trust me. I foolishly sat around for an hour or so making all seven-hundred donations so I could achieve the 100% completion benchmark I set myself. First off, you need ~70k silver (depending on your Charisma) to even manage all the required donations, and that's not an entirely easy feat in and of itself. The whole thing reminds me of the 200 consecutive jumps you need to achieve in the Thunder Plains in Final Fantasy X for Lulu's ultimate weapon (or whoever's weapon you get). It's as if the whole thing is just some sort of sick joke on the developer's part to see if they can con any idiots into trying it. Well, they got me. (jerks....)
Rating: 5 Bodbs out of 5
dude that 200 jumps on FFX was RIDONKULOUS!
ReplyDeleteYou're telling me. I think the most I ever achieved was somewhere around 20-30 consecutive jumps after spending several hours attempting it. Eventually, I just said eff this and moved on to something else.
ReplyDelete