Tales of the Unknown: Volume I - The Bard's Tale

The Good
What I loved about this game was that it greatly improved on Wizardry's graphics. Now you had color, textures, and motion of the monsters whenever you had an encounter!

I liked too the fact that you could level up your spell casters (conjurer and magician, I believe) to their max spell learning level, and then have them change class, learning each other's spells. Now that made for some powerful characters! Then you could make one of them a wizard, the other a sorcerer, and max them out again, then switch classes again. Super neat! Eventually both your spell casters could cast every spell in the book!

The bard adds a nice touch too. He plays the tunes that protect and enhance the party, but needs to be liquored up from time to time :)

The Bad
Skara Brae reminded me too much of Southern California housing tracts - a numbing sameness of shape and color buildings in every direction. Any color house you want to look at, as long as it's spanish style - stucco, with a ceramic tile roof!

I really looked forward to getting into the dungeons!

The teleporters in the final levels of the last maze kicked my butt, and I never did finish the darn game.

The Bottom Line
A great dungeon RPG in the day!

The Good
This game had everything a fantasy gamer could want: fighters, paladins, wizards, elves, dwarves, and even hobbits! Dungeons, monsters, treasures - plenty of exciting challenges that unlocked the imagination.

The Bad
Getting past level 1 was almost silly - the initial game balance was a little bit out of whack.

The Bottom Line
Bard's Tale was a great game of dungeon-delving, a computerized D&D spin-off. I had loads of fun building my characters, creeping through tunnels, fighting monsters and collecting treasures. For role playing enthusiasts, the game provided the perfect opportunity to imagine warriors and paladins swinging their swords against the forces of chaos and wizards casting spells and pursuing power. Elves, dwarves, hobbits and humans united against evil - and it was all up to your party of adventurers to save the realm!

The Good
An original storyline, from a time where graphics weren't what drew people to play a game. Replayability is fairly high, even though the game takes place within one city (unlike later Bard's Tales). And, hardcore RPGer that I am, I like that this game (and others from the time) doesn't have an auto-mapping feature.

The Bad
Graphics are marginal (to be expected), and the sound is the PC speaker "beeps" and "boops".

The Bottom Line
One of the groundbreakers in the genre. Set up the field for BT 2 and BT 3, both great games as well.