Yeah, this feels stupid, but I found myself casting Word of Healing anyway because I had spell points in two pools. This one always baffled me. I assume something like Cranford thought you *might* not have two level-13 basic spellcasters? Or maybe he just was going for flavor. I don't know. A backport to the original game I wouldn't mind. Though at some point you need new manuals for these kinds of changes.

An example of why the current game is frustrating. You have ranged combat backported to BT1, but the BT1 manual doesn't list spell ranges. So your Arc Fire doesn't work and you don't know why. You can go read the Bard's Tale 2 manual (counter-intuitive), but some spells have their behavior changed, so it's hard to know which you'll get from the manual.

The in-game spell descriptions are nice, but lack ranges. I guess this would be mitigated by just adding them, but really you want to know what spells you're going to get, or planning your spellcaster class changes is impossible. This feels like a major balance change to me.
Then again, the spells shifting around will probably be more confusing in this work, so I guess it should probably be there. Sadness.

Hilariously, no. On the IIgs and Amiga you could save in the snare, and this is how I completed it in uh.. 1990?
For some reason I misunderstood part of it and got it wrong and didn't care and just reloaded and did the other thing.

Only replaying it years later did I actually engage with the snare clues properly. Huh, in practice in the original games maybe I got lucky a lot, but typically a fire horn I got in catacombs 1 stuck around until I found a frost horn. They seemed to break a lot less frequently than the math said they should. Probably a property of the low-quality c64 / apple II random number generator algorithm.

The thing is, fights against that particular enemy turn into an extreme test of patience, to the point where the battle isn't worth fighting, and if the game doesn't allow the party to run away, they end up being an exercise in frustration.

If Preclusion were available, it would be a way to ensure that the battle can actually be won in a reasonable amount of time.

It's also worth noting that BT3 Preclusion is rather expensive at 50 SP (the same as Heal All, a spell that revives and heals the entire party to full), so it's not something you can use lightly, and would probably be reserved for situations like the Herb battles.

I think Herbs being able to cast Summon Herb with no mechanic to limit or counter that was bad game design. (Also, it makes the summon less useful as a party member; most players will have full parties, so any turn it spends casting Summon Herb is a wasted turn.)

My understanding is that the chance was only 1/64, which is low enough that, in that encounter in the Catacombs, you were more likely to get a new Fire Horn than you were to lose your current one.

If the RNG is not that great, I am wondering; is there a way to manipulate it? (This would be handy in the Apple 2 version of Wizardry 1; if I could manipulate the RNG in that game, I could reliably beat the game in record time.)

I wonder if the balance of the games have changed?
The originals all had balancing problems, IMO.

BT 1 was hard in the beginning, the quite easy for most of the game, and then very hard in the last few dungeon levels.

BT 2 and 3 started quite hard, but then became all too easy if you never ran away, but fought all encounters, thus becoming so high level that monsters rarely could touch you.
But for some reason monster always acted first in the round.

Is it just me or is the monk character class missing from this game?

I get a "Song failed" message when I try that. Ok, I tried it once, just to see, and at level 1. Went into combat, sang a song on round 1, sang another one, failed ("throat is parched" or somesuch).

It's not missing for me. Are you trying to create a character? If so, what race?
What did you find hard at the end?

I found Mangar 5 a bit stumbly/bumbly to find my way through.

If you aren't very levelled then Mangar 3-5 have a lot of instant deaths, stoning, drains and so on, but if you have enough levels to have high resists they're not hard in that way. I'd say it largely hinges on whether you decided to kill the 396 berserkers 20 times in a row like most people I know did. I found BT2 not very hard combat-wise in general, although perhaps it depends upon how fast you try to go through the starter dungeon. I find myself grinding there endlessly, which seems mostly required because you need some high level spells to finish it.

If you come in levelled with equipment from Bard's Tale 1, I think it starts off easy.

The Death Snares, though, I think present some real challenges.

BT3 similarly suffers from an overlong initial grind, but after that I think is fairly easy if you accept the experience in front of you.

Maybe you're right if you mean that BT1 may "require" some extra grinding to be mechanically easy but 2 and 3 did not, save at the beginning?

I'm of the opinion that if you need to actively grind in a CRPG you should play an easier game. BT 1 is the only exception I can think of. When I replayed it some years ago I found it impossible to survive against packs of Greater Demons and other nasties on the the upper levels of Mangar's Tower. The first time I played the Amiga version, and it being my first real CRPG I spent a whole summer on it.
But when replaying it I was an experienced blobberer, playing much faster, and my characters were probably quite a bit lower levels.

BT2 has an excellent starter dungeon, which is IMO one of the best dungeons in the game, with a perfect difficulty level. But after that the game quickly becomes too easy, and made me quit my replay a few years ago, since the combat was no challenge.
Importing new characters makes it even easier.

BT3 (with UOP, DOS version otherwise being unplayable) suffers from the same problem. Very hard (but not too hard) starter dungeon, then it quickly becomes too easy, and the last fights are only moderately difficult.

So personally I'm quite interested to learn how the new versions compare balance wise.

Had you actually played the game at all you'd know that WOHL has a booster and outheals QUFI as soon as you have it available. Several of the things you and jsj are kvetching about are either factually wrong, or things that were bad in the original and just made less bad with the benefit of 30 years of game design lessons learned in the industry.

Right now playing a 3 monk 2 sorc 2 mag party and it's absolutely stomping the crap out the world. Made it to level 7 in a little under two hours of play, so the level rate seems increased somewhat. The SP regen certainly is. This is just what Bard's Tale would have been had us gamers not all been a bunch of TT and boardgame dorks in the 80s.

I haven't played the remaster yet, but I am curious about what's changed. Good to hear that they boosted WOHL so that QUFI doesn't make it obsolete. (Let me guess: 4-16 like in BT2 and BT3?)

Perhaps, once your conjurers reach level 11, could you check to see if Flesh Anew is available, and if so, how much it costs? (In classic BT1 and BT2, this spell is not available at that level, while in BT3, it's available and costs 9 SP (instead of 12).)

By the way, I started playing the 2gs version, and within half an hour, I now have a level 3 party with plenty of gold. I am wondering whether my strategy of taking the ATEAM's Fire Horn and giving it to a new lucky bard, then using it to torch the 66 Skeletons in the Catacombs (easily reached, but don't forget to TRZP the trap that's on the path!) would work as well in the remaster. I got to level 3 in just two trips, but on the second I got attacked in the way out. I managed to actually win that fight with no deaths (my 17 HP character did take 14 damage, however); the Fire Horn really is that good.

By the way,, it might be worth checking whether the Fire Horn needs to be equipped to be used. It does in the DOS version, but it does not in the Apple 2gs version (as I discovered on a failed attempt where I forgot to equip it!).

It's worth noting that these challenges are very unilke the rest of the game. Being a high level will not help, as any combat that arises in the snare is going to be easy (and there are no random encounters in the snares), and your spells won't work. Rather, the challenges are more like what you would find in an adventure game.

By the way, in BT2 DOS, there is a bug with the final snare; once you complete it, the game still thinks you're in the snare and won't let you pause or save. However, using APAR to go to the Adventurer's Guild (which is allowed because, since you aren't actually in the snare, you aren't in an anti-magic zone anymore) will clear the snare flag and timer. (I didn't check to see if you could still run out of time and have your party wiped out, but at that stage of the game, the cost of recovery is very small; just spend some of your cash reserves to revive your Archmage and use Heal All to revive everyone else.)

It seems that some people are misremembering how that healing song works in Bard's Tale 1, so let me clear how it works in the versions I am familiar with:
BT1 DOS: Heals your party each round for the remainder of the battle. Does not stack.
BT1 2GS: Heals your party at the end of the current round only. Not very useful, since you need to wait for part of the song to play (even if you turn off sound); outside, the fastest way to heal seems to be using magic and then Roscoe's (since temple healing requires you to wait for the chant). Playing the sound outside of battle won't provide in-battle healing.
BT2 DOS: Heals your party each round, and works during battle if sung outside of battle. Does stack.
BT3 8-bit: Works like BT2 DOS.
BT3 DOS: Worls like BT1 2GS, except that playing the song outside of battle will heal you every round during battle. If playing both in and out of battle, I believe you get double healing for one round, but I think you might not get any healing for the rest of the battle, but I am not sure.

(Perhaps someone could look at how this works in other versions of these games.)

As I said in my last post: No. This is not what happens to me, not in my "real" game (male human bard), not while testing just now. New game, male half-elf bard, stuck into A-Team, attacked Samurai statue, first round Wayland's Watch, sang fine, second round Seeker's Balad, "lost voice".

Dude, you come across like you have an axe to grind (with Krome?) and it's not a pretty sight. You have some good feedback, don't let it get burried by getting upset at people. Just saying :)

How about, you end the song after the "Dona eis requiem" and avoid the repetitive 2nd "Dona"? Would cut some of the time and some of the annoyance, while keeping the overall spirit of the chant.

Is there any way for you to enable original graphics in the legacy mode (may be for portraits where possible)? That would be really nice.

I have to say that I greatly enjoy playing the Remasters so far.

I can definitely understand the reasoning behind some of the changes discussed here, especially those concerning the more "exploity" ones and ultimately agree with them. While I can understand that they might appear rather integral to the game if you have extensively played the originals (and admittedly I didn't), I still consider the overhaul a rather sensitive concession/modernization.
Also, there will be legacy mode, so...

Regarding Restore vs Flesh Anew: Pretty much the only reason for Flesh Anew is getting rid of Poison on mutliple characters, which iirc Restore will not do, will it?

As for the party attack/ Bardsong-healing trick (or exploit actually) - from a risk-reward, design-oriented point of view it does make more sense if the players pull it off by sparing one (weak, potentially more so through magic) monster and having your party defend while passing time.

Except that Restoration also cures poison and insanity.

Except that, in removing this, they also removed the ability to use intra-party combat for experimentation.

I also see the 396 berserker fight, which apparently can only be done once in the remaster, as more for fun and experimentation than for actual leveling up; there's a faster spot in the Catacombs that you can use, which apparently respawns even in the remaster.

By the way, currently there is one issue that is keeping me from even trying the remaster; it apparently doesn't yield the CPU in its idle loop, causing the CPU to get hot; as my desktop's cooling is currently broken, that is likely to make the game unplayable for me.