The Bard's Tale IV: Director's Cut on Steam - User reviews, Price & Information
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The Bard's Tale IV: Director's Cut is the triumphant return of one of the most iconic RPG series of all-time. Delve into a tactically rich combat system that rewards creativity, solve puzzles to gain treasure and advantages, and discover a beautifully crafted world.
The Bard's Tale IV: Director's Cut is a rpg, turn-based and dungeon crawler game
developed by inXile Entertainment
and published by inXile Entertainment and Xbox Game Studios.
Released on August 27th 2019 is available on Windows, MacOS and Linux
in 6 languages: English, French, German, Spanish - Spain, Polish and Russian.
It has received 1,235 reviews of which 954 were positive and 281 were negative resulting in a rating of 7.4 out of 10. 😊
The game is currently priced at 6.99€ on Steam with a 80% discount, but you can find it for 0.56€ on Gamivo.
The Steam community has classified The Bard's Tale IV: Director's Cut into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
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System requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows 10 (64 bit)
- Processor: Intel Core i5 2500K or equivalent
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 or Radeon HD 7970
- Storage: 29 GB available space
MacOS
- OS: OS X (10.13)
- Processor: Intel Core i5 3.7Ghz or equivalent
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 or Radeon HD 7970
- Storage: 60 GB available space
Linux
- OS: Ubuntu 18.04 or equivalent
- Processor: Intel Core i5-2500K or equivalent
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 or Radeon HD 7970
- Storage: 43 GB available space
User reviews & Ratings
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
Cabbage? Carrots? Potatoes? Well, it seems they burned all their money on the soundtrack and voice acting. It’s a solid piece, reasonably well put together for what it sets out to be, but it doesn’t surprise me at all that—even carrying the name of a classic IP—the game remained buried among the handful of Kickstarter titles that spearheaded the modern CRPG revival. The game has nothing particularly remarkable about it. It offers a passable experience, but without much personality or sense of humor (which I believe is an important detail for fans of this franchise). Don’t expect a highly customizable RPG with interesting interactions and a gripping story full of choices and charismatic characters. At best, the writing is just very dry and incapable of making you care about anything (even if it comes with decent full dubbing), much less feel like you're visiting a well-realized and efficiently presented fictional universe. And your agency is completely superficial. What we have here is a very simple, on-rails adventure. A game that boils down to a repetitive and not very immersive dungeon crawler with a questionable sense of pacing, packed with abstract and tedious puzzles that grow increasingly intrusive, and poorly developed quests that exist mostly as an excuse for you to navigate badly designed maps—which would be a nightmare to traverse if not for the guidance systems. The low production values scream at you the moment you leave the main menu. A weak presentation, terrible graphics and animations, amateurish and disjointed art direction, and a world that feels practically lifeless and impossible to take seriously, doing a poor job of hiding its artificiality. Performance is also terrible—something that was very common in indie RPGs at the time, including the console ports. Modern machines can brute-force their way through the game without much trouble, but I’m sure the hardware of the time struggled to maintain 30 FPS with visuals that were already below average. It feels extremely dated, especially when compared to modern iterations of the genre. But, ironically, what saves the experience is precisely the fact that the game is simple. Because everything is so shallow and straightforward in its goals, there’s little room to get frustrated by the lack of polish. The execution is practically that of an ’90s dungeon crawler, with the addition of a very solid and well-balanced combat system (by far the best part of the game), in which you easily fall into a satisfying and easy-to-digest progression loop. The tactical challenges the game offers—within its very limited character and equipment customization—are more than adequate. And it genuinely pains me that this system wasn’t further refined and applied to another franchise. Even the combat interface feels more appropriate to the game’s budget and manages to do much more with less, streamlining things in smart ways, emphasizing what actually matters. The exploration is quite unengaging, as are the stories the game presents, but you can kind of just keep going without caring. It's not bad enough to be a deal-breaker. I wouldn’t say it’s worth the investment—especially in terms of time—but I can safely say that the ease with which you get pulled into the game’s core activities, combined with the addition of a song that lets you skip the more irritating puzzles, makes it hard to lose focus. It’s a mediocre game, but one that delivers what it sets out to do in large quantity and without too much unnecessary time-wasting. Now, whether what it delivers is actually good enough, I honestly can’t say. This is technically my second run, now on a more appropriate platform, but after putting in a few hours, I’m not sure I feel like continuing, because my overall impression has been kinda neutral. Not good enough, not bad enough. It seems like the kind of game I could play a little bit at a time until the end, and then I wouldn't remember anything about it. Except for the music, of course. It almost seems like a crime to waste such a good soundtrack on a game like this. But I’ll say one thing: those hours flew by. And for a franchise that has never been known for having good games, this one isn't far from its peak.
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A heart-warming, beautiful adventure that beautifully balances modern gameplay with retro charm and simplicity. This is probably among my favourite 5 games of the modern era. A step back in time to an era when games were relaxing, fun charming, rewarding and built with love and care for a particular audience, rather than to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Cannot recommend this game enough. If you love the combination of puzzles and the forward thinking strategy of turn based combat, you've found what you are looking for.
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this is one of THE MOST underrated games ive ever played, hands down. no debate. the soundtrack is my will to live. i LOVE it so much, captures the vibe perfectly, even if you're just exploring or fighting an interdimensional mage. the gameplay is amazing, too- a bit jank at times but not game breaking at all. i'm usually more of a fan of open-world games, but this game still gives you plenty of secret exploration opportunities. also, it has turn-based combat, so instant W. i also love how thought-out the puzzles are, they've made me rage many times. very fun! wringneck is my goat forever and i will NEVER get rid of him.
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Bard's Tale is a mostly linear first person rpg with turn based combat. As far as i know the game had performance issues back when it released and still in some places (even though) rarely i still get some stutters. That said for me personally the game was a great experience. Combat was very engaging, Atmosphere and especially the songs imo were great. Story was nothing to write home about but it was so well done for me that i enjoyed the game up until the end. Pros: *Nice soundtrack/music *Different party setups *Combat *Atmosphere Cons: *For me this wasn't a deal breaker or anything but ofc gfx are dated but for me it still looked beautiful. *FMVs are cheap which for me added to the charm but it's clear that they didn't have a high budget. *Some minor bugs *rare Stutters *Gfx are dated (still looked beautiful to me) *My biggest criticism: The loottable especially end game seems horrible. Sometimes you fight through somewhere and clear a hard puzzle to reach a chest that has a carrot or other worthless stuff in it or you get low lvl gear in many areas etc. More variety in gear would have helped aswell. The game additionally has a lot of puzzles which you might hate or like but the devs implemented a mechanic that you can activate with a new game that let's you almost skip all puzzles in the game. All in all i enjoyed the game alot and I wish there would be a sequel in sight but that doesn't seem very likely (Devs work on a different game called "Clockwork Revolution".) 8.5/10
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SHORT REVIEW This review is for the Bards Tale IV: Directors Cut. Make sure you buy the directors cut version and not the original Bards Tale IV: Barrows Deep. The Directors Cut is the "bigger, improved and (very importantly) much less buggy" version of the game, it has more content, fewer bugs and it seems to run smoother on newer computers. The game is enjoyable for the first 20-25 hours but outstays its welcome as it is apparently a 60+ hour game so this is one of those games I really wish steam had a “neutral” rating for. PLOT: This is a 4th installant of the The Bards Tale series set two centuries after the events of the original three games. The main plot is okay but not great and is actually extremely linear. COMBAT: The combat uses a turn based combat system on a 4x4 grid. It gets extremely repetitive after a while and is badly balanced with some horrendous difficulty spikes. GRAPHICS & SOUND: The graphics are nice but not exceptional, this was not an AAA game at the time of production and it is six years old at the time of writing this review as well. The sound on the other hand is very nice and atmospheric but the voice acting isn't the greatest if I'm honest. REPLAY VALUE: Average. As a party based RPG there is some replay value in trying different character and party builds but plot wise the game is actually very linear so there are no real choices that affect the outcome. Its a long game and as I've already said it out stay its welcome so whilst there is some replay value the question of whether you want to replay it might be a different matter. For achievement hunters it can all be done in a single play through. ISSUES AND BUGS: The game runs “straight out of the box”. The directors cut has far fewer bugs than the original but it does occasionally crash to desktop (probably once about every 10-15 hours of play?). ACHIEVEMENTS AND TRADING CARDS: Full integration with the Steam platform. VALUE FOR MONEY: Poor. Don't get me wrong it's not a bad game but it is several years old and is, in my opinion, overpriced. Look out for discounts in sales and keep an eye on the price as the sale prices seem to be completely messed up with the directors cut (which is usually more expensive) being cheaper than the base game. LONG REVIEW This is a 4th instalment of the The Bards Tale series set two centuries after the events of the original three games. The problem with this game is that whilst it is for the most part enjoyable for the first 20-25 hours it becomes very repetitive after a while and outstays its welcome. Other than the combat getting stale the overuse of some of the puzzle mechanics also get tedious with the “faerie golf” puzzles being a particular offender. In this instance it definitely would have been a case of “less is more” as it feels like unnecessarily padding the game at times. There are also some really bad game balance issues. You can go through a number of fights pretty easily and then run into something ridiculously tough. In the end I got completely bogged down with one fight I just couldn't get past. The answer seemed to be I needed to use weapons which drain spell points. Great, I haven't found any and the equipment drops are random so I can't get any! Basically okay for a while but overly long and bloated with serious game balance issues.
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Frequently Asked Questions
The Bard's Tale IV: Director's Cut is currently priced at 6.99€ on Steam.
The Bard's Tale IV: Director's Cut is currently available at a 80% discount. You can purchase it for 6.99€ on Steam.
The Bard's Tale IV: Director's Cut received 954 positive votes out of a total of 1,235 achieving a rating of 7.41.
😊
The Bard's Tale IV: Director's Cut was developed by inXile Entertainment and published by inXile Entertainment and Xbox Game Studios.
The Bard's Tale IV: Director's Cut is playable and fully supported on Windows.
The Bard's Tale IV: Director's Cut is playable and fully supported on MacOS.
The Bard's Tale IV: Director's Cut is playable and fully supported on Linux.
The Bard's Tale IV: Director's Cut is a single-player game.
The Bard's Tale IV: Director's Cut does not currently offer any DLC.
The Bard's Tale IV: Director's Cut does not support mods via Steam Workshop.
The Bard's Tale IV: Director's Cut does not support Steam Remote Play.
The Bard's Tale IV: Director's Cut is enabled for Steam Family Sharing. This means you can share the game with authorized users from your Steam Library, allowing them to play it on their own accounts. For more details on how the feature works, you can read the original Steam Family Sharing announcement or visit the Steam Family Sharing user guide and FAQ page.
You can find solutions or submit a support ticket by visiting the Steam Support page for The Bard's Tale IV: Director's Cut.
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Additionally, we incorporate data from the SteamSpy API, which offers insights into game sales and player statistics. This helps us present a comprehensive view of each game's popularity and performance within the gaming community.
Last Updates| Steam data | 19 April 2026 00:34 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 22 April 2026 09:13 |
| Steam price | 29 April 2026 04:27 |
| Steam reviews | 27 April 2026 21:53 |
If you'd like to dive deeper into the details about The Bard's Tale IV: Director's Cut, we invite you to check out a few dedicated websites that offer extensive information and insights. These platforms provide valuable data, analysis, and user-generated reports to enhance your understanding of the game and its performance.
- SteamDB - A comprehensive database of everything on Steam about The Bard's Tale IV: Director's Cut
- SteamCharts - Analysis of The Bard's Tale IV: Director's Cut concurrent players on Steam
- ProtonDB - Crowdsourced reports on Linux and Steam Deck The Bard's Tale IV: Director's Cut compatibility
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34.99€
6.99€
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34.99€
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34.99€
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34.99€
2.26€
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Game modes
Features
Online players
13
Developer
inXile Entertainment
Publisher
inXile Entertainment,
Xbox Game Studios
Release
27 Aug 2019
Platforms
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