Bard's Tale 3: Thief of Fate Download (1990 Role playing Game)

The Bard's Tale III: The Thief of Fate is the final game in this first person, turn-based RPG trilogy of magic and monsters. The god Tarjan, thwarted in the first two episodes of the tale, revengefully reduces Skara Brae to ruins. You must now track him through seven dimensions to destroy him and rid the world of his evil intentions.

You can import characters from the two previous games, or create a new party of six from seven races and eight unique classes, although starting characters can later switch to five additional classes as they learn new skills and abilities. The game screen is divided into three sections: a graphical representation of your character's first person viewpoint, additional information in the form of text blocks, and statistical information about your party members.

In typical RPG fashion, characters advance by earning experience points by slaying monsters and finding powerful magic items to equip. In essence, The Thief of Fate is a larger and improved version of its predecessor, The Bard's Tale II: The Destiny Knight. Unfortunately, the puzzles are less diverse, with most falling in the "find and use the appropriate item" or "cast the right spell at the right time and place" category.

Despite the somewhat weak storyline, the game delivers more than enough dungeon crawl gameplay to compensate, and as such, is ideally suited for fans of the The Bard's Tale series.

OVERALL RATING: 6

This sequel begins in Skara Brae - recently reduced to ruins by Tarjan, the Mad God of game one. A series of seven quests must be solved before you can track him down and do him in. Missions involve a wider variety of puzzle types due to a new command that permits you to use objects and artifacts. Other improvements include auto-mapping, new character classes, magic spells and dungeon levels (84 of them!) that vary in size and shape. You also get to visit more exotic lands than in the previous installments, for each quest takes place in its own universe: a forest world, a frozen wasteland, and one that's linked via time warps to different times on earth, from ancient Rome to the Nazis' Berlin. Characters from the previous games may be imported into this one.

Ever since the original Dungeons and Dragons board game came out, role playing games (RPG) captured the imagination. But with RPG board games there was always a lot of calculating, making notes, rolling dice, collecting cards... involved. There were many things you have to take care of, but would prefer to not have to. This is where computers came in.

The computer took care of all the complex calculations, of all the variables and the most important thing; you didn't have to worry that it would try to cheat you - like some human players tend to. Thus the RPG genre got transferred to different computers quite early on.

The Bard's Tale trilogy is one of such great RPG games, that people simply loved to play. The games got ported to PC a bit later still the complete trilogy is available.

Although Bard's Tales are classical RPGs, they are somewhat different then the rest. First of, you don't get to customize your characters. You need a party to go on a quest, like with every classical RPG, but you only get to select the race and the position of the party member. There are no skills, wisdom, magic or any other points you get to distribute either randomly or intentionally. You only create characters and make up a party to go on the quest. If you were satisfied with the characters you used in the previous games, you can also import those, so you don't need to create new party members.

The mighty city of Skara Brae has suffered the wrath of god Tarjan, who has left nothing but rubble and ruins behind. And it is just outside these ruins you set up your camp and start the quest. Unlike the previous two games, this one will bring you more puzzles to solve and you'll need to finish seven quests altogether in order to stop the mad god Tarjan. And these quests will take you to wondrous new places, never before seen in this trilogy (which even includes real places from the human history).

So if you're looking for a classic RPG from the golden era of computer gaming, the original Bard's Tale are the right thing for you!

Part of the The Bard's Tale Trilogy

The third and last of the Bard's Tale series. Bigger and more advanced. Have fun!

How to run this game on modern Windows PC?

People who downloaded Bard's Tale 3: Thief of Fate have also downloaded:
Bard's Tale 2: The Destiny Knight, Bard's Tale 1, Bard's Tale, The, Betrayal At Krondor, Magic Candle, The, Diablo 2, Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness, Baldur's Gate