Yesterday we reported on a new Tegra-based game heading our way called The Bard’s Tale and that it would be arriving sometime in Q3 2012. Well what we couldn’t tell you yesterday is that it was actually slated for release today, and guess what? It’s available now on both Google Play and Tegra Zone. Developed by inXile Entertainment, this new Bard’s Tale game is, as they say,’ loosely inspired by’ the old Bard’s Tale series of games that originally started getting released back in 1985 for the Apple II.
Obviously we won’t be treated to those stellar graphics the original games came with and instead we are handed over a new 3D adventure RPG that features plenty of humor, sometimes crude humor, with some solid visuals and plenty of action and RPG goodness. You will be playing as the Bard, a wandering adventurer who is out to find one of two things, plenty of coin or plenty of cleavage. To be honest, you’d rather have both.
The Bard’s Tale Features:
• 50 enemy types (not including bosses!)
• A vast world to explore with towns, wild forests, rivers, castles, towers, secret dungeons, snowy mountains, caverns, haunted tombs and more
• A full cast of bizarre NPC’s
• Over a dozen special boss enemies to defeat
• 16 magical characters to discover and then summon at will to aid you
• Over 150 unique items of weaponry, armor, instruments, tokens, artifacts and loot
• More “Song and Dance” numbers than any other game, including a zombie dance-off
• Over 14 hours of outstanding voice-acting from top Hollywood talent, including Cary Elwes as the Bard, and the inimitable Tony Jay as the Narrator
• ALSO TO INCLUDE A FREE DOWNLOAD OF THE ORIGINAL BARD’S TALE TRILOGY!!
• Leaderboards — for accumulated Silver and Experience!
• Achievements — over 50 spread throughout the game!
• Autosave — option to save automatically when you near a save-book in game.
• Time-Savers — optional in-app purchases are available to pump up your Bard and save you time! (Note: All such items are attainable through normal game-play, with time and persistence, just as in the original console release.)
• Includes the original classic game The Bard’s Tale I: Tales of the Unknown! 2 & 3 coming soon!
One interesting feature we touched on in yesterday’s article was the fact that events in-game are effected by the way you talk to NPCs. When talking to them, you have the option to be nice and talk civilly, or you can get all ‘snarky’ with them and be a bit of an ass. The choice is yours. The Bard’s Tale sports 20-30 hours of gameplay if you go right from start to finish without doing anything else in-game.
When you purchase this game for your Tegra-based Android device, whether it’s a Tegra 2 or Tegra 3 chipset, you will also have access to download the entire original trilogy for free. However, all three original games are not available right away. Instead the first Bard’s Tale: Tales of the Unknown, is available while the other two will arrive in the near future.
If you are ready to stare at a lot of pixel cleavage and make money, you can grab The Bard’s Tale off of the Google Play store, through Tegra Zone, or through our Google Play synced catalog for $5.99. There are optional in-game purchases available if you want to speed things along but none of them are needed to play through the game. You get the full game when you buy it, the in-game purchases are just there if you’re feeling lazy. One a side note: You’ll need to free up about 3.5GB of space for this game.
Update September 20th, 2012 8:54am: It looks like this game is available for all Android devices right now and is also fully Xperia Play optimized. The Tegra versions just have more visual effects of course.
Google Play Link: The Bard’s Tale
