Bards Tale III - Electronic Arts - RRP varies
                     (RPG for PC and Amiga)

                  PC version reviewed by MerC

Bard's Tale III (The Thief of Fate) is the third and last in the
Bard's Tale Trilogy. The second two were not released for machines
such as the Atari, but for the PC they are available as a budget
package at around œ25, which includes Tales of the Unknown and the
Destiny Knight. Be prepared for a bit of fiddling when loading on
to your hard disk, as one of the loading files is corrupted, so it
will not run as it is. It only needs you to put in the missing
label in one of the .bat files, which should not cause too much
difficulty.

Thief is easily the best of the three, with improved sound and
game management. You can now actually save a game from a current
position, one of the most inexplicable omissions from Bard's I.
You may import a team or character from a limited number of other
adventures.

Though the interface is distinctly dated, all the games have
graphics, with minimal animation, and sound. Thief has a stereo
sampled intro which works on all the usual sound cards. The
graphics do not take advantage of SVGA, and so the game is ideal
for lower spec machines. Combat is by "dice roll", though you do
have some control over your characters' actions. Once into battle,
you will eventually want to choose your options, place the action
in fast mode and sit back. The character portrait animation is
irrelevant to the action, as might be expected in a game from the
80s. Spells are important, and though a large number of them are
superfluous - you will find you can get by perfectly well without
using more than a handful - you will need a reasonably full
spell-book to get you through The Great Ice Keep in Gelidia.

As you enter the wilderness, you find yourself outside the Refugee
Camp.  This replaces the Guild of the earlier games. Eventually
you will need to map the whole area outside the city, as the named
locations such as the Verdant Grove, Dwarven Mines, Vale of Lost
Warriors, Cold Peak and others have significance later on, as it
is from these places you cast the teleport spells.  For now you
should make your way to Skara Brae, which you find in ruins. Near
the entrance there is a storeroom with useful items. The other
things you need you find after fights. There is no trading or
buying, so no Garth or Bank and you can't recover dropped things.
There are only a couple of other places you need visit in the
ruined city:  the Mad God's Temple and the scant remains of the
Review Board.

The first task is to enter the MGT, then seek out and kill
Brilhasti ap Tarj. Whilst you are doing this your characters are
developing, and one at least needs to rise through the various
types and stages of mage, until the level Archmage is reached. A
minimum of three mage-type characters is required.  The Old Man in
the Review Board determines your fitness or otherwise for
advancement, which is via experience points and cash.

One of your mages is going to have to sacrifice much of the power
gained to become a Chronomancer. This is necessary so that your
group can teleport to the other cities in the game. Each of these
has a couple of items you have to collect and return to the Old
Man. He holds on to them until you collect all twelve. He then
dies, but before doing so has left your valuables in the store
room - so he tells you, and I found them at first. However, I
accidentally dropped one, and on rebooting and restoring from a
previous position, found that no matter where I looked I was
unable to find them again. This might have been due to something I
did, but to finish the game, I had to poke the requisite hex
values into a game save file. Six of these articles are vital to
rescue the gods, and the other six are useful weapons or armour.

On the whole I found this to be a reasonably priced package, with
plenty of interest and problem-solving. However, you need to be a
Bard's Tale enthusiast, as there is a large degree of
uncontrollable combat which may not suit all tastes. Lower spec
machines are catered for by being able to change the graphics
capabilities, though EGA is not much fun.


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