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Beer beer beer tiddly beer beer beer!

The Bard's Tale, the pinnacle of comedy among computer role playing games, bundled with the classic DOS-era dungeon crawlers: Bard's Tale 1,2,3, is available for Windows and Mac OS X on GOG.com, for only $9.99.

In a world, that's in a desperate need of a hero, one man chooses his own destiny. Yup, that sounds about the same as every other role playing game. Only this time, things go a little bit different. The Bard, a roguish vagabond who only cares for coin and cleavage, has no intention to perform acts of unmatchable heroism and prove that he's larger than life. Neither he has desire for fame and glory that would earn him a place in songs and sagas that would fuel the imagination of the generations to come. After all, he can always come up with songs and sagas praising him, while he enjoys a pint of beer and some female companionship at some cozy inn. Yup, whatever he does, he will be remembered as a great champion of the realm. What would you do in such unique position? Loot riches and woo maidens--it's the correct answer, my friend.

The Bard's Tale delivers solid cRPG gameplay, a vast fantasy realm to explore, tons of quests to perform, and hundreds of items to loot. By all means this is a fully-fledged role playing game, but that's not what it's famous for. Brilliant comedy is where this game truly shines among all other titles in this genre. With excellent writing and fantastic voicing done by Cary Elwes (of The Princess Bride fame) as the Bard, and a gaming voiceover veteran, Tony Jay as the Narrator. There's also an extra treat for the die-hard old-school computer RPG fans included with this release: the classic DOS-era hard-as-nails Bard's Tales 1, 2, and 3.

There are many cliche RPGs out there, but this is not one of them. As you embark on this adventure, you have no way to anticipate how will it end. One thing's certain though--there will be plenty of coin and cleavage coming your way if you get The Bard's Tale for only $9.99 on GOG.com!
OH IT'S BAAAAAD LUCK TO BE YOU!
One can never have too many action-RPGs.

Bought!
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G-Doc: Again, we're sorry. :-(
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rodrolliv: At least they got texts. Where are the Italian and Spanish texts? :/
Trust me, it's like trying to comfort a kid who has just found a lump of coal in his Christmas stocking by saying "yeah, but at least you have something to keep you warm"
Great addition.

Question about the 2004 version: Does it scale correctly at higher resolutions specifically 1920x1080?
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rodrolliv: At least they got texts. Where are the Italian and Spanish texts? :/
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Ghorpm: Trust me, it's like trying to comfort a kid who has just found a lump of coal in his Christmas stocking by saying "yeah, but at least you have something to keep you warm"
Attachments:
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CJDJ: Tried that. :) No good.
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Simbabluenobi: Have you tried shutting off AERO if it is on? One way to do that is with the Compatability Setting check Turn Off Desktop Composition and Desktop Themes. Aero apparently has it's own setting for Virtual Sync used primarily for Videos, Movies and application 3D but having it on can have a negative effect on gaming.

edit: For what it's worth ... I downloaded the (new & improved) demo from Cnet and when I clicked the shortcut all I got was a Black Screen ... I had turned on AERO as I was having Tearing while watching movies on Netflix.
After I changed the Compatability settings to Run in XP sp3, Run as administrator, Disable desktop themes, Disable desktop composition then clicked the shortcut and the game started right up.
I'm pretty sure I did all that before I gave up on the Steam version. I'll have to check again when I get home from work. I never had a problem with it starting up... just very slow when playing (i.e. sword swing button pushed, matrix-style swinging). Thanks for the tip nonetheless.
Got the steam version as very nice Christmas present from InXile, but I want it DRM-free...and now it ´s here :)
For some reason, I always thought the old bard's tale trilogy have nothing to do with this new one... Hmm
Yes! I've been wanting to play this lately. Nice addition GoG!
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Crosmando: I suspect it had something to do with the legal arrangements with EA, but it would of been so much better to have the old BT games with standalone installs/shortcuts, so we can run them in a window like DOSbox does.
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F4LL0UT: I don't get why on Earth people want to play games in windowed mode. Big pixels won't hurt your eyes - having to read tiny letters on the other hand might. :P
Windowed mode allows you to double or triple the image exactly for better quality, while fullscreen puts you at the mercy of whatever the ratio is between the original game and your native resolutions.

DOSBox is also important if you want to play on Linux, Android, jailbroken iOS, and usually Mac. (I don't need those things now either. Are you positive you will never want them?) Finally, with DOSBox you have easy customization and troubleshooting, along with plentiful support from other users. I know what to do with DOSBox on my machine and I know where to start if the experience sucks. With the setup they've chosen here, I have no idea what it's going to be like or how I'd approach a problem.
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F4LL0UT: I don't get why on Earth people want to play games in windowed mode. Big pixels won't hurt your eyes - having to read tiny letters on the other hand might. :P
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einexile: Windowed mode allows you to double or triple the image exactly for better quality.
Really? You're bringing up image quality? You remember what game we're talking about? :D
Nice, some old games with good bonus material and a good price! :D I'm surprised we haven't seen a new release lately (although I'm fine with that).
I loved TBT and was surprised, that there were some older games. It was bitter to find-out, that the old trilogy was some old sub-par cRPGs :(

Also, TBT was my last nail in the fantasy-clishe coffin, I couldn't take 'traditional fantasy' 'seriously' again - so I still haven't played Dragon Age even though i got it to my birthday years ago.
This is a stupidly funny game. Instead of playing it many times, I saved before significant character interactions so I could try each option. There were always some real funny ones.

Just as an action RPG, it's pretty average. The comedy pushes it to a high level.

(and kill the chickens...)
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Tsugirai: For some reason, I always thought the old bard's tale trilogy have nothing to do with this new one... Hmm
I think the connection is/was Brian Fargo, the industry veteran who was involved with the original Bard's Tale games as well as games like Wasteland, and who was also the lead designer of the "new" Bard's Tale.