The Bard's Tale App Reviews

Being an avid fan of the original "Bards Tale" series back in the 80s I was excited to see this come out in the App Store. Knowing better than to buy anything than X.0 I waited until the 1.1 version came out, and I am extremely pleased with my purchase. I finished the game on "normal" mode in a little over 20 hours, but I tend to like to explore - so you can probably do it faster. The thing I really enjoyed about this game is that it doesnt take itself to seriously. The main character (The Bard) is constantly bantering with the narrator, the songs will have you laughing in the first few minutes, and if you watch the things that drop from the monsters (e.g. Red hoods from the wolves, etc) youre in for a treat. In the end there are three possible endings that can happen as well depending on your decisions - all of which are hilarious. As a bonus they have ported over the original 80s version of Bards Tale (complete with . . .floppy disk utilities) just for fun. If you know what the Commodore-64 was, your in for a bit of nostalgia. If you’re not, then you’re going to get to see what 8-bit graphics were like. All in all a good buy, and one I would recommend to my friends

Having a blast with this classic game. The humour is quite good.

I found this game on iOS awhile back adn lvoed it, so I grabbed it for Mac as well, especially since I cold share save games betwen versions. The ambience is appealing, music is great and the humor interspersed is unique and fun. The controls work well, though I htink are better on iOS. ONE PROBLEM I HAVE though is it randomly locks up. At first, I thought it was just the smithy in Houton, but also the forest jail. So it seems to be related to cutscenes. While early on it is something that can be dealth with, Im sure later in the game it could be a serious problem. Hopefully the devs are aware and working on a fix. Later on today Ill fire up Instruments and see if I can help, because I really love this game. Even the annoying hangs and lockups in cutscenes, I think it is worth the 9.99 price. I could waste a lot of time in the oldskool originals, which are quite involved and sure to enthrall hardcore D&D fans that have some imagination. In closing, great game, but it needs some fixing to be perfect. (If the dev reads this, Ill use Time Profiler, since one occurance I thought was a lockup was simply bad lag. That can at least give you a lead on where to look)

I love this. Its been SO much better on my Mac than iPhone. Absolutely worth the $9.99. However, it keeps glitching/freezing up sporadically. Its starting to drive me crazy. Other than that, its one of the best--and definitely the most hilarious--RPG Ive ever played. Please fix the glitching??

Play for few minutes, hang, quit process, … repeat Pretty tiresome. This is on a iMac 2011 with OSX 10.7.5 Wait for someone else to say this if fixed before wasting your money.

Played a couple of hours on my phone and decided to get it on Mac since the game supports iCloud saves. I find the control easier (after fairly short learning curve) on Mac but the game now freezes repeatedlly for me in Chapter 3 (Kirkwall), on a mid-2011 iMac running OS X 10.8.2, very frustrating for an otherwise enjoyable game.

After playing this back in the day, it is fun to revist this wolrd. I recommend this to any RPG lover. Though, know what you are getting into. It is more Diablo (a linear telling of a story) than Dragon Age (Choose the story with actions). And I have had zero issues with any sort of locking up or crashing.

Very enjoyable game, great writing, good humor, fun galore. One thing I would like to see is a downloadble instruction manual, the web sit has the information printed in white text on a black background so when I tried to print it I wet may paper with so much black ink it stopped the printer. Or course while playing the game I wet myself with something other than ink. Well worth it… still playing and cant wait to see what happens next. How come this is not listed in the role palying game section in the ap store? So much nasty fun they are hiding it perhaps. Thaks for putting it together and kudos to the song writers, actors, programers and all. Thanks for th Beer Song, my new theme.

Love the humor, and the song at the tav. Great game play. good story line. on the other side it is the humor i like the mose bout this game. Hate it when your key cmd is all over the board. Makes it difficult for a gamepad. Fist RPG i played where the narrator made me laugh. Kinda wants to make me stand around all day listening to his comments.

The syncing of saved games between iOS and OS is rad!

Well, I just got the game to play the original Bard’s Tales, but the new one is pretty good too. A light snack to complement the hefty original games.

The only reason I scored this as high as I did was because some of the scenes and quotes were funny. The interface is awkward, and some of the fights are a little overpowered. The one thing that aggravated me was getting kicked out of town and then I cant go back and rest and get hitpoints back until I do his silly quest. Nor can you save the game, because you can only save at certain places in the game. That was what really aggravated me, because sometimes I have to quit and go (work reasons). If that happens, I lose my progress in the game. Ya, its just a game, but its still annoying as heck. Let me save whenever I want to! I was going to give this a 2, but the inclusion of the original Bards Tale was worth getting a star back. That alone is worth the price.

Actual rating is (-5 stars) Crashes consistently upon execution. This app used to run fine on this same machine, but with a previous OS. Refuses to run on Yosemite. IMO, the developers do not think this is worth their time. No update to this game has been made since late January, 2013. Junk This says it all: Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV) Exception Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x0000000000000000 Very easy for the dev to fix...

Tried it on both my iMac and a Macbook Pro and it crashes as soon as you click the icon.

Game fails to launch at all on my Retina MacBook Pro 15”, Core i7, GT 750M. Until they fix this, clearly it’s not getting any more stars. It’s sad too, for I was stoked to play this classic game again as it was a great game.

The command to enter new areas/open chests (“F”) can be overridden by moving into the space. This unfortunately has caused a bug, not allowing me to re-enter Houton. So I’m stuck about 30 minutes into the game.

Go shawty, it’s sherbet day!

idling the hours pleasantly. Haven’t opened the retro yet, which I played thirty years ago.

The game is bringing back the nostalgia in me. Just like the original for PS2 and XBOX but with much better graphics. Gameplay is fun and the controls are easy and respond accordingly. Awesome music and humorious situations. Well done and enjoy.

I orginally played the Bards Tale on PS2 many years ago and we stil talked about it a decade later. I was thrilled to see it released again on OS X. It has the funniest story line and the dialog has us rolling. It is a great game that everyone should play just for the pure fun of it.