Its roots are undeniable. The minute I started playing Bard Tale, I was like, "Damn, this feels just like Dark Alliance... but with a soul." If you've ever seen that game in action, then you'll know that this is a very good thing. Few PS2 games sport that level of visual polish, and the engine just lends itself perfectly to the sort of action-RPG pace that Bard's Tale is going for.
He might not be loveable, but he'll make you smile for sure. Perhaps at his own expense.
What was unexpected, though, was just how much personality has been crammed into the game. Granted, I'm yet to get too far in into it, but even with in my limited amount of time spent, I've experienced enough instances of this to be duly impressed. Pretty much every bit of dialog in the game was written with a wry hand, and as a result, even the most ho-hum bits of exploration are often accented with clever color commentary. At one point, upon returning from bathroom break, I found that the game's narrator had taken my idle period as an opportunity to tell a rambling tale about how my character shacked up with a peasant girl, had a bunch of mediocre children, and lived happily ever after. The same is the case with regular exploration; even the normally banal act of wandering through the forest, and killing wildlife feels much less staid cause of the humor that permeates pretty much everything.
The character development system, surprisingly, seems like it's coming along pretty strong, which was a pleasant surprise. Your character has six statistics, whose values you can increase every time you increase a level: Strength, dexterity, charisma, luck, vitality, and rhythm.
