Bardbarian – Review (PC)
You know how the Pokémon games have that music that never gets old, even though you can hum along to every single different tune? ‘Bardbarian’ is kind of like that. But with rock.
You play Brad, the thickset, blonde haired, bushy bearded barbarian who is tasked with protecting the town’s Crystal from the hoards (and I mean hoards!) of goblins and other ghastly ghoulies who want to destroy you and the town. But, instead of hacking and slashing your way through them, you play epic solos on your axe (well, they call it a lute, but i’m calling it an axe because it looks like one and double meanings are fun) to summon upgradeable, unlockable followers who do all the fighting for you.
The followers themselves are each unique and unlocking them is very exciting – some of them heal you, some build turrets, and as you progress some are just badass. You can spend gold collected in-game on upgrading them. You can only choose a few to take out with you at a time – you can have plenty of copies of them on the field, and especially at the beginning they die often – so you need to choose carefully in order to succeed in protecting the town. Everything is very well balanced, including the enemies, and finding winning combinations of followers is very rewarding. However, I did find that by the time i’d earned a few new followers, the starting three had been upgraded so much that I didn’t use the new ones for a while. By the time i’d unlocked the majority of them, there were some that I hadn’t used at all, but it hadn’t affected my gameplay at all.
It’s kind of a strategy RPG mixed with a tower defence mixed with a shooter. You dodge the attacks of your adversaries, which are glowing red blobs of doom, and guide your group in and out of danger as they shoot their respective projectiles. To summon a follower, you shred a neat solo using ‘notes’ which are earned by standing still or killing things. You can also use solo powers, granting a temporary boost to speed, defence or attack, and if you kill five enemies in a row you can use your ‘Stun Solo’ which stuns everything on the field for a few seconds.
Gameplay is fast paced, guided by the rhythm of the soundtrack and having to constantly dodge projectiles. This was originally a mobile game which has been converted for your PC pleasure – it has the simplicity of an app but it is definitely enjoyable on a larger screen, with bright, attractive graphics. The enemy projectiles are easy to see, red against the green field, so really you have no excuses if you or your followers get hit. The main mode consists of a single day filled with twenty waves of enemies – this might sound straighforward, but each is harder than the last and if you’ve played the Zombie mode on any of the Call of Duty games you’ll understand what I’m talking about. The guitar-hero style mini-map at the top is really helpful for knowing where your enemies are, as the field is fairly big and there are three places the enemies can come from.
There is also Survival Mode, which sets you in a smaller field and your allies appear at random – you have to click on them to recruit them if you want them. Basically you have to survive as long as you can, unlocking achievements as you go and honing your skills for campaign mode.
Pros:
- Really fantastic soundtrack
- Bright, cheerful graphics
- Fast-paced, simplistic game play
- Blend of genres works brilliantly (Strategy, Shooter and RPG all in one!)
- Plenty of content to keep you busy for hours
Cons:
- Takes a while to get to the point that you survive
- Some followers go unused