The Bard's Tale Trilogy

A fun flashback to one of the first RPGs. It has gotten easier than it was originally when saving could only happen at the guild and if your team died it died. But still a fun journey back in time. Not sure how younger people will feel.

Hard to enjoy the scenery when your eyes have to stay focused on a step by step progression on a grid map. Fortunately there isn't much scenery to miss. I would enjoy getting out of town into nature to explore and find other towns, alas you're confined to the singular town and three things to explore: sewer, castle, tower which are all essentially identical in their confusing, disorienting design: just change the color and place the obstacles in different places. If you love solving such things you'll love this. I enjoy the battle system though having everything done but the final tower I haven't felt challenged by it at all. You can change magic classes and obtain all four spell books and all the spells before finishing the first maze. The challenge is the grid like maze and the myriad of traps, teleports and dead ends within the sewer, castle, tower structures - two of which are behind gates you can't access in any intuitive manner. Good luck figuring that out without going online. The bard is quickly able to play all his songs for free but they aren't very exciting buffs, his main go to are the abundance of instruments that do damage like throw fireballs. I'll recommend it for its classic feel but toss out a meh for the overall ride. Also final level of final tower send you to the beginning saying 'you must see further' ai say's it's cause I need the 'Spectre Snare' I'm told you get it after you enter but you must have it to enter. Ugh games should all have multiple ways to solve things so they don't ruin my dinner. I didn't even realize game 2 and 3 were included despite the titles obvious nudge. Two's pretense at land exploration is satisfying despite it being but a football field worth of exploring and nothing of significance changing town to town.