Thirty Days of PC Games (Day 1) The Bard's Tale Series

Thirty days of PC games takes a look at the thirty PC games that either paved the way for better PC games, were revolutionary or simply fun to play. Each day, for thirty days, a different PC game (or series) will be featured.

The Bard’s Tale: Tales of the Unknown – Volume I (1985), The Bard’s Tale II: the Destiny Knight (1986) and The Bard’s Tale III: Thief of Fate (1988) was three dungeon crawler games based loosely on the Dungeons and Dragons table top games. Interplay Productions used 3D graphics to bring these three tales to life. The game is simple enough, where players can create six characters from the following classes: warrior, mage, bard, hunter, paladin, monk and sorcerer. Players could even import characters made from Ultima III or Wizardy to play in Bard’s Tale, which was unheard of at the time. These days we can import saved games and characters as seen in Dragon Age and Mass Effect.

Players had to create maps in order in order to keep track and this was commonly done on graph paper, giving it a more of a D&D feel. All actions were written out instead of seeing the action first hand.

The Bard’s Tale II won an Origins Award for Best Fantasy or Science Fiction Game in 1986 and showcased improvements from the first installment. A new class was introduced, the archmage, puzzles in the game were clearly harder and even real time puzzles were brought into play. Banks were used to store money and casinos available to play Blackjack. Players could even import a character from the first Bard’s Tale as well as from Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord.

Bard’s Tale III included 84 different dungeon levels that took the player to different lands for each quest and even brought players to ancient Rome via a time warp. Characters from the first two Bard’s Tale games could be imported as well from Ultima IV. Auto-mapping was introduced to the series as well as two new classes: geomancer and chronomancer.

Since their release, there have been several novels created and in 2004, UnXile and Vivendi released The Bard ‘s Tale for Xbox and Playstation 2.

The Bard’s Tale series is regarded as a fun, challenging classic dungeon crawler game that gave the inspiration to several games that came after.

Share this article:

Share on facebook
Facebook
Share on twitter
Twitter
Share on linkedin
LinkedIn
Share on tumblr
Tumblr
Share on email
Email
Share on whatsapp
WhatsApp

Recent Posts

Marvel 1943 cover art. Captaint America and Black Panther Gaming News

Get a Closer Look at the New Black Panther and Captain America Game | Marvel 1943

It’s been a while since we first got word that the great Amy Hennig was working on a new Black Panther and Captain America game. After creating something like Uncharted, …

Mad Catz Strike 11 Keyboard. A keyboard with red and black keys Hardware & Tech

Mad Catz S.T.R.I.K.E. 11 Mechanical Keyboard Impressions

I have been on the search for a decently priced wireless keyboard and there is no shortage these days. Our friends over at Mad Catz sent over their S.T.R.I.K.E. 11 …

Hardware & Tech

Level Up Your Set Up with Nanoleaf

Nanoleaf has been one of the market leaders in the gaming lighting space for years now. They have a variety of products to level up not only your office space …

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Gaming News

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and What’s Next For Xbox | Let’s Chat

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is the next big game set for release and the rumor mill has been set ablaze with talks of Xbox going multi-platform. We take a few …

Gaming News

The Pimax Crystal 8K VR Headset | CES 2024

AR and VR were some of the bigger topics during this year’s CES. Last year I was able to go hands-on with the Pimax Portal but this year it was …

CES

NVIDIA Announces 40 Series Super Cards and More at CES 2024

A year can’t go by without a huge announcement from NVIDIA. During CES 2024 in Las Vegas, NVIDIA announced an upgrade to its 40 series cards. The GeForce RTX 40 …