10. The Bard’s Tale

The Bard’s Tale gameplay walkthrough

The defining characteristic of this RPG is its attitude! In The Bard’s tale, be prepared to follow the path of “coin and cleavage” instead of the usual “save the world” direction. Be prepared to take this Action RPG a little more lightly than the other titles on this list.

The Bard’s Tale is really funny and includes lots of satire and mocking of the RPG genre within which it exists. So it makes perfect sense that included in the 14 hours of hilarious Hollywood quality voice acting is dialogue performed by actress Cary Elwes from The Princess Bride!

The Bard’s tale is in many ways a spiritual successor to that classic movie, as the game is a humorous spoof on the genre it’s part of.

The bard you play as in action RPG tale is tired of existing in an action RPG. He is a suave and selfish man who is sick of pointless side-quests and repetitive dungeon crawling.

Being an ARPG, The Bard’s Tale is played in 3rd person within a 3D environment full of active combat(no turns or pausing), and without character classes and inventory management. The game definitely reminds me of the Fable franchise. But, there is a special feature in The Bard’s Tale that we don’t see much in Fable or other ARPGs : dancing, LOTS of dancing. You’ll encounter 50 enemy types (plus unique bosses), 150 unique items, tons of bizzare NPCs, and more song and dance numbers that any other game (including a zombie dance off).

Communication is done through  “Snarky or Nice” dialogue options, and your 20-30 hour journey through the vast world of towns, forests, rivers, castles, towers, secret dungeons, snowy mountains, caverns, haunted tombs and more will be shaped by these dialogue decisions.

How do you reply: “snarky” or “nice”?

This guy is just begging for a snark-attack…