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

The Good
The graphics were incredible on my old C64, as well as the sound, excellent playability, as well as the character creation.

The Bad
Was repetitive sometimes

The Bottom Line
My first fantasy rpg, that is still cool to play to this day. If they were only as simple as this today....sigh

The Good
Back when I first purchased this game, I was taken with the cool EGA graphics. And when you met a monster, you had the cool moving image of said creature. Ah, the goblins who's lips curled, the skeleton who's eye-sockets lit up, the magic users who flashed electricity, etc. And since I'd just completed Ultima III, Bard's Tale seemed all that much cooler. The nifty nods to Tolkien (with the Mithril weapons and the Barlogs) were appreciated and the game as a whole rocked.

The Bad
Ah yes, the dungeon play sucked in the later levels. All dungeons were the same size (say 16x16 for example) but to give the illusion of more space (and to confuse the player), most dungeons when you got to one end would appear to continue to go on. Say you were in position 16,16 and you went on. You'd then find yourself (if you went east) in position 1,16. That combined with the "oh, your light went out" areas and "spin" areas made mapping dungeons almost impossible and certainly very tedious. The only way I and my friends ended up solving the game was to buy the cheat book since the book had all the dungeons mapped.

The Bottom Line
Bottom line, this game was a great RPG game for its day. I wouldn't mind seeing a "Bard's Tale Redux" come out using modern computer technology for the graphics, sound, and auto-mapping!

The Good
I throughly enjoyed the First Person View. I also like the night & day cycles, how the town felt large enough to feel like a town, and of course the many, many entertaining puzzels. Some easy, most insanely hard but fun LOL! The way the player's group or party was handled was done very well. And I very much liked how the player could get almost any monster to join the player's group - either through mindwashing, or from monsters asking to join. Customer service was also the most best ever for any game I have ever played. Including all of today's games. There was a knowledgeable guy always available a phone call away. He also played the game heheh. And knew it inside out.

The Bad
Some of the puzzies took a heck of a long time to figure out. The dungeon traps and barriers that would spin you around. And how some dungeons were magically pitch dark not allowing light to be seen or used. I didn't like any of this stuff.... but it added to the fun.

The Bottom Line
One of the earliest, and successful, dungeons & dragons, sword and sorcery, might and magic, type of world RPGs. Up there with Ultima, and Phantasie. Full of many original ideas. It has many game features that were revolutionary in its day - and that modern games can still learn from!