Compare the episodes of the Bard's Tale series

[elodman]

Greets to thee, faithful to the BT series.

Thy impressions - gained through long play-experience, and not trivial manual info - would be welcome on the different episodes, - without any bloodshed in arguing.

Which episode do you find the most enjoyable / competent and recommend?

(Important it is for me, as I am possibly able to do one (re)play only a decade, before losing interest.)

rumors:

BT1:
- imbalance issues later on (tough breathing/ magic using/ level draining/ stoning enemies)
+ automapper tool on Apple II

BT2:
- imbalance issues later on ( "incompetent fighters") - maybe only on 8 bit versions?
+ improvements over BT1 (archmage, ranged battles, more cities, etc)
+ "automap" on Apple II gs

BT3:
- a great disappointment overall ( many random encounters ) - on 16 bit only?
+ skill statistics

Thanx if you can help in the selection.
Byte.

[tpth]

One of the things I like about the series is that each game had its own distinct character. With that said, I find myself coming back to BT1 most often - I find it's the most coherent game of the three, perhaps because it's also the smallest in scale. I get what you mean about late-game imbalance, but I kinda like how no matter how strong your party is, the last two levels of the Tower are a struggle — it's meant to be dangerous up there, and it feels that way.

I really like parts of BT2, but the idea of having an entire set of new monsters for every level is too much — even the designers seemed to lose interest (there's a monster called an "It's My Bud", for Chrissakes, and several levels of Oscon's Fortress are pretty much empty), whereas all the monsters and combat challenges in BT1 seemed well-thought-out and logical, as did the difficulty progression. Still, some parts of BT2 (the first level of the Crypt, for instance, and the last level of the Destinty Stone) are amongst my favorites of the series.

BT3 could have been great — the scope was epic, and the level design was much more varied and interesting than the first two games — but it was hamstrung by bugs on the PC. The C64 version is much better, though, and I'm looking forward to one day playing through the fixed PC version that was posted here recently. It's really difficult to start BT3 without transferred characters, though — slogging to Brilhasti is tedious and time-consuming.

Hope this helps.

[Ether]

It was hard for me to decide between BT1 and BT3, but for me, the best one is Bard's Tale 3, since it adds on the most features, such as saving anywhere, automap, displaying ability percentages. It also keeps the ranged combat, adds elemental damage, and makes the Thief actually useful.

Now, if I only had time or desire to just play one, I would go with the Bard's Tale. Even though it has it's faults, it has that first time charm, and it feels natural starting from the beginning with Level 1 characters. Starting with Level 1 characters in BT3, going to the starter dungeon/Catacombs, and watching them advance to level 50 or so just seems....odd.

I liked BT2 - it actually has the best basic plot of the 3 - but it does have it's issues, as TPTH pointed out quite well.

[Mordred]

I think i like BT3 most, too.
The epic scale of the quest line and to become gods at the end.

But what i like most, are technical things:
* Ability to save anywhere. (but you can have this with emulators in bt1+2, too)
* (auto-)map
* see detailed stats for crit/hide chance
* see amount of uses left of an item
* no need to do curious order of leveling a mage (ending with Co or Ma, because leveling a Wi above 13 is too expensive like in BT1...)
* more space for items
* see spellPoints and(!) max Spell points on main page (on msdos)
* bard songs grow stronger (lower AC by 15 oder bring 15 HP per turn...)
* possibility to put special monsters into the character roster (tried to get the best HP version of each )


negative side of bt3:
- no garth to sell (and see ) all items found (i see garth as my personal stash to equip my army/city )
- useless monk at higher levels
- you need a rogue, but i would prefer to use a third mage

[Mordred]

another +1 for bt3: you can cure oldness/withering

[Brian the Fist]

Hmm. Not sure but did the HEAL spell in BT2 not also cure that?

[caars]

Hmm. Not sure but did the HEAL spell in BT2 not also cure that?

It didn't; at least not in the Apple versions. Even the Dreamspell - which actually could cure the Ston condition didn't heal Old. Heck, I remember how excited I got reading the BT3 manual (on the way home from the store chomping at the bit to get it installed on my state of the art Apple IIe) that there was actually a spell that would let you cute that damned Old condition.