The tale of the Bard begins

After having quite a break from any serious gaming time I trotted out the consoles for a bit of work over the weekend. After a few rounds on the course with Mario followed with some serious smashing with his Bros. I decided to turn my hand to 'Bards Tale'. I'd bought the game months ago but with all the other games I had on the go never got around to starting it. Last night I hastily created my character eager to get into some dungeon hacks (as the only RPG action I'd managed since 'Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance' was 'Shining Soul' on the GBA).

Somewhat predictably, for a bard, your adventure starts off in a tavern where the well endowed bar maid (see above)seems to have a rat problem. It was at this point my high expectations for the game looked in jeopardy as the age old cliche of the rat hunt reminiscentt of BG:DA) reared it's head. Fortunately this is where the gave begins to shine for no sooner as I was thinking 'Rat hunt that's a bit cliched', my character voiced the exact same opinion.

The big difference with this game over all the other RPGs that I've played is that whilst it still holds all the tried and true elements of you standard dungeon hack it doesn't take itself seriously at all. For example randomly breaking barrels in one town (which you normally associate with treasure gathering) will result in one of the townsfolk confronting you and then offering you silver to break other villager's barrels as he's the local barrel binder. All the banter with the characters is done with well executed elements of comedy keeping the whole experience light harded. Let's face it there's nothing more enjoyable than a game that isn't afraid to poke fun at itself.

One of the most amusing elements though is the chance to befriend a puppy that will tag along with you as hack your way around. As you're treking through the forrest he growels at passing birds, occasionally running off to chase them etc.

As I've only just begun the game it will be interesting to see if the game manages to keep up the same level of comedy and amusement the entire way through or whether it manages to fade back into the games it pokes fun at.