Comments on: Retro: Tales Of The Unknown: The Bard’s Tale

By: Captain Rufus

Captain Rufus — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 05:58:41 +0000

I feel about the first 6 Ultimas (Plus Worlds and Underworld series) the way the regular RPG community seems to feel about Final Fantasy.

Cept without any desire to write, read, or draw stories involving the characters having rampant amounts of nookie.

So that would mean I love the series like its the cutest effing puppy you could ever want to own.

And its fall is one of the many reasons EA can choke on its own bilous vomit.

By: Jason

Jason — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 04:53:58 +0000

How do people feel about the Ultima Series?

By: Max Cairnduff

Max Cairnduff — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 12:04:38 +0000

I used to love these games, I may even have finished BT though I’m not sure now.

Never mapped though, I always found it too boring, thank god for automapping.

By: Kieron Gillen

Kieron Gillen — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 12:04:28 +0000

I don’t believe they have. But the originals play with DOSBox.

By: Samiel

Samiel — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 12:00:11 +0000

All this talk of the bard’s tale series has brought back some nice memories. Does anyone know if a Windows compilation of the series has been released?

By: Flim

Flim — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 20:35:58 +0000

Played Bards Tale 3 on the Spectrum for days on end (my brother cruelly wouldn’t let me play the original on his C64).

Ooh, don’t forget Dungeon Master either.

Eye of the Beholder was superb. Level 5 when you first meet the giant spiders (conveniently _before_ you get the neutralize poison spell…), playing in the dark with the sound turned right up… who needs horror movies?

By: Ergates

Ergates — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 14:30:16 +0000

Eirik:
I remember Shadowlands – bastard hard from what I recall.

It’s sequel (Shadow Worlds – set in space) prompted me to buy a 14″ telly with a scart lead for my Amiga as the small text was too blurry to read on the old telly.

By: Pestilence

Pestilence — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 10:09:26 +0000

I played BT1 and 3 on my Apple II. I could never get anywhere with BT1 as I kept dying before I could toughen up but I ended up finishing BT3. I had a friend who had BT3 on his C64 and we’d bring his computer over in his mom’s car and play it side by side.

In BT3, after you finished the beginning section. the review board would give you enough XP to go from lvl 10 (or something) to level 35. There was a great bug in the Apple version where if you summoned a creature, and went to the review board, they’d give you that huge XP bump again. Needless to say, I abused that something fierce.

And yes, the monk was unbeatable.

BT3 also had the geomancer. When a fighter reached a certain level (mine was named Blade, wholly original for an thirteen year old :)), you could switch classes to a massive damage dealing magic user.

Ahh, good times, good times.

I loved the Phantasie series as well. I had a pirated copy of Phantasie II that I played and played and played until I realized (coming to the end) that I had been playing the entire time from a savegame that had already beaten the game and I had been wasting my time. Piracy wounds again…

I then went out and bought Phantasie III which was hard as hell at first, but it stands as the first RPG I legitamately won (BT3 doesn’t really count since I was able to level up to such a huge degree).

Thanks for the memories RPS!

Pest

By: G

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 11:01:12 +0000

Has anyone played Etrian Odyssey 2? Out in the US and, as usual, it’s cheaper to get DS games from America than here

By: Tyler

Tyler — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:15:33 +0000

To think I probably wasn’t even conceived when this game came out… and I had never even played them. For some reason I love old games, maybe its the charm behind the (now) godawful graphics, maybe it is the thought at how many books of graph paper were bought in order to actually play these games, or maybe because almost every PC I had ever owned until about 3 weeks ago fell into the category of outdated POS and the only games that they could play were at the very least 3 years older than them. However, I have got to play this game and Etrian Odyssey when I either get a DS or find my copy of No$GBA. Now where the hell can I find that much graph paper, although it doesn’t really matter, because I can’t draw or write anything legibly anyways, so I guess I’m screwed… but I do have a old LCD monitor that i can plug in to my laptop and I do have access to computer mapping software for paper RPGs… I guess I DO have it more easy than you did, and a lot cheaper too because I’ll have to get it online, because even if I could get the disks, they would be so degraded by now that they would better serve as drink coasters than a data storage medium, and the simple fact that I haven’t seen a floppy drive on ANY computer made in the past few years so the point is moot. Besides think of how much money I will save on graph paper alone!

By: Michael America

Michael America — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 20:01:39 +0000

I loved that screamer room. Get ‘em under that gate and just thunk!thunk!thunk! your way to food.

By: The Apologist

The Apologist — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 22:45:20 +0000

A further comment of love for Etrian Odysey – just picked it up a week or so ago and have been pretty happily obsessed for a while. I agree completely – I have found it more fun to go to that game which harks back to a golden age, but includes many other modern design elements to remove the frustration and up the pace a bit. Love it.