For as much as it is possible to accept the roughness of the original trilogy – even in its recent port – the same appreciation could not be made of a title released in the late 2010s, i.e. at a time when accessibility and usability are central. The Bard's Tale IV is a game that looks very messy: visually, it has some charming moments, but relies on a dated and rather unpleasant 3D, while the animations are rather poorly finished. The universe has that disappointing je-ne-sais-quoi about it, so much so that it's not very pleasant to walk slowly through the dirty streets of Skara Brae, with only a few small nods to the lore of the previous games. In the spirit of the old-school formula, a few cryptic puzzles are offered, and admittedly there's a good balance between the old-school 1980s feel and the more recent video game puzzle trick: this is, without a doubt, this title's best achievement. For the combat, however, it all feels a bit disappointing: in the vein of Legend of Grimrock, it offers combat that is too easy in its mechanics, so that the difficulty only comes from particularly tough enemies – this is the argument of the quest in Haernhold –, which only adds to the frustration. What really drives the point home is the game's technique; even in this reworked version, various technical problems continue to pile up. Between unwanted glitches that can lead to soft-lock, latent imputs that are imagined by the game, framerate drops and random crashes, it's really unpleasant to wander around in this world where everything goes too slowly. In this regard, the game is exclusively designed to be played without the movement grid, which is both inelegant and nauseating, as the camera management is catastrophic. If the writing is rather forgettable – and too easy, in the way it brings back all the great antagonists of the series, without giving them more importance than that –, the soundtrack is rather good and the Scottish accent of the dubbers is particularly charming. However, The Bard's Tale IV doesn't manage to seduce, because of its too big wanderings, both in the game-design and in its technique. It's a sad observation on a venerable series that charmed gamers in the 1980s.

Decent combat system. Some very good music, though oddly placed at times. Alcoholic Bards. Some very good puzzles for hidden items or upgrades that require you to pay attention to what is said and to environment details. Main characters tend to all be fairly amusing.

Too many repeated time wasting puzzles that amount to nothing more than busywork and don't even make sense in world. Equipment gives different ways to focus a character but some just aren't going to be very useful. Puzzle weapons are a cool idea, but almost never interesting to solve and the weapons tend to be weaker than the other equipment you will have. There are multiple hidden weapons that have entire areas that you need to go through to find them, ones with an important place in the lore of the game's world, that are for some reason still too weak to be useful. Very inconsistent tone of the story, with a terrible first impression (even seeming to struggle with keeping a stable framerate in the opening section), and certain parts of the game seem like plot was either cut or events were moved with no explanation for remaining details. Overstays its welcome with you long having gotten all the abilities and the equipment you are going to use, likely about four or five areas before the end, with a long time spent having to fight pitiful enemies and bosses. Extremely buggy requiring frequent reloads, which was odd for something that seems so mechanically simple. Characters would just no longer be able to be chosen in combat, character would absorb the abilities of other characters and lose theirs in battle, abilities would randomly be unequipped, the menu button would stop working, enemy placement would be a space or two beyond what should be allowed preventing me from even seeing or clicking on some of them at times, crashes at game over, crash at new area loads, crash at quest completion, and would crash during certain dialogue events.