Our first glimpse of combat in The Bard’s Tale IV

Long time no see

The folks at inXile are showing off an early look at what combat will be like in The Bard’s Tale IV, a Kickstarter-funded game I admittedly forgot was in the studio’s pipeline but am glad to see again.

Take a look! But before you rush to comment about the rough character portraits (and yeah, they are rough), keep in mind that’s “still at a first pass” and “there are things we’re not in love with yet.”

As for the grid-locked combat itself, while this footage is slow and guided enough to get the point across generally, “One thing that is harder to see in the video is our input queuing system. When you take an action in combat, you can begin ordering another party member before the action has played out,” and “this keeps the flow of combat moving along faster than a traditional turn-based system.” Nice to hear, because after you reach a certain familiarity with a game, that stuff really adds up.

“There’s a lot more to talk about here, from the way elements like health, mana, and armor interact with each other, how channeling abilities and focus work, the way that temporary status boons can affect a character’s functionality, or how positional tactics can let you set up more devastating damage,” inXile added. “These open up a lot of subtle possibilities, but we’ll save more of those details for future updates.”

New Gameplay Video [Kickstarter]