Last updated on January 2nd, 2026 at 09:56 pm
The Bard's Tale – Action Game Review
The Bard's Tale is a Action/Roleplaying/Entertainment game from inXile Entertainment, first launched in 1st December 2011.
It’s rated 12+ and currently has 638+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes The Bard's Tale Stand Out
1 RPG in 75 countries, including USA, UK, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Russia, Japan, and China!
Sync your saved games between iOS and Mac!
Includes classic games trilogy!
They said it couldn’t be done… a full-scale massive 3D epic role-playing game on iOS! See why it’s the BIGGEST iOS game ever made!
“The Bard’s Tale is easily the funniest game I’ve ever played, and I’ve played all the funny games out there.” – IGN
You are the Bard, a selfish rogue weary of pointless sub-quests and rat-infested cellars. Through magical song you summon characters to join your quest for coin and cleavage!
“Ready your weapon and bladder as you embark on this ridiculously addicting quest and the funniest adventure of the year, The Bard’s Tale” – Game Chronicles
Prepare to immerse yourself in over 20-30 hours of adventure, featuring:
• 50 enemy types (not counting bosses!)
• A vast world to explore with towns, wild forests, rivers, castles, towers, secret dungeons, snowy mountains, caverns, haunted tombs and more
• A full cast of bizarre NPC’s
• Over a dozen special boss enemies to defeat
• 16 magical characters to discover and then summon at will to aid you
• Over 150 unique items of weaponry, armor, instruments, tokens, artifacts and loot!
• More Song & Dance numbers than any other game, including a zombie dance-off!
• Over 14 hours of outstanding voice-acting from top Hollywood talent, including Cary Elwes (The Princess Bride) as the Bard, and the inimitable Tony Jay as the Narrator
But wait! That’s not all! Enjoy these great new additions in the iOS version:
New Features:
• Leaderboards—for accumulated Silver and Experience!
• Achievements—over 50 spread throughout the game!
• Autosave—option to save automatically when you near a save-book in game.
• iCloud Saves—option to save to iCloud, enables sharing saves across your iOS devices.
• Time-Savers—optional in-app purchases are available to pump up your Bard and save you time! (Note: All such items are attainable through normal game-play, with time and persistence, just as in the original console release.)
• Classics Games—includes original classic games The Bard’s Tale 1, 2 & 3.
• Supports 60beat® GamePad.
Universal App with Adaptive Rendering:
For a single low price, play on all your compatible* devices! The Bard’s Tale takes full advantage of your hardware to maximize your experience–including HD resolution and 60Hz video refresh on capable devices.** iOS adaptation by Square One Games.
“This game is satire in its sharpest form” – Cheat Code Central
Play The Bard’s Tale today!
- Compatible with iOS 4.0 and higher on iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPod Touch 3rd generation, iPod Touch 4th generation, iPad, and iPad2&3.
** HD on iPhone 4S/5, iPad2,Mini,3&4, iPod Touch 5G. Enhanced rendering includes: environment mapping, dynamic water surfaces, full shadow cast, and 60Hz display-refresh (with in-game “Battery Savings” option turned off).
Support:
We are committed to improvement. Please send support requests through The Bard’s Tale Support link below.
IT IS HUGE!
Please note: Installation over Wi-Fi can temporarily require as much as 3.4GB of free space on your device.
This Action game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, The Bard's Tale is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 14th October 2022
Recent improvements include:
Fix Original Trilogy install which was causing it not to be playable.
Fix videos being cut off on iOS 16+ ultra wide devices.
Download & Availability
The Bard's Tale is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get The Bard's Tale on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
We played this back in the 90s. We loved it then and more now.
One of the funniest ARPG there is. They should create more ARPGs like this.
How Ive never heard of this game until now? We came across TBT looking for a legit mobile rpg and was pleasantly surprised to find this port. The writing, voice acting and music are top notch, and Im loving the atmosphere. Also, thank you for including controller support! More games need to do this. Im still early into the game, but Im already hooked. Wonderful job, inXile.
The bards tale is easily one of the funniest RPGs ever sometimes it can be really challenging, but it can also be very easy. Its a very fun game. We wish you could customize your character though, and you could and you could customize your name but other than that, its a really good game and we find it very sad that not a lot of people know about it. We give it a five stars.
For a person that truly loves the RPG experience. The game is loaded with content and has enough side quests to keep you entertained for many hours. Speaking of entertaining, the dialogue in the games is so funny and Cary Elwes does an excellent job as the voice of the bard. This game is a must buy and is the only game Ive ever paid for (well worth it).
Im having way too much fun here. Love it.
Not for the low self esteem. Old school simpler style RGP, But with a lot of adult humor. (NOT for the younger crowd.) You get to choose how the plot develops for the most part. Lots of running around and destroying and looting everything. Narrator constantly is telling you how bad you are for all of your horrible decisions. Over all a great time killer for the sarcastic. If you hiding in your safe place right now because the world is not fair and giving you what you want without working hard or breaking a sweat Just NO!!! STAY AWAY from this game!!! Stay under your Powerpuff Girls blanket, in your Moms house, at 27, not paying rent because you still work at the pizza place. You cannot even figure out why you have not made manager in the last 11 years or find a girlfriend. Still wondering why all the other guys laughed at you for wanting to play Soft ball with the girls in the 6th grade.
Love this game. Its a streamlined RPG. You wont really have to deal with selling a bunch of loot or min/maxing your character. The gameplay is pretty straight forward. The graphics are pretty decent, except for the cutscenes. As far as we know, all of the bugs that are mentioned in other reviews have been fixed. We havent had any issues with the game. We definitely recommend it if youre looking for a simple fun adventure rpg.
The storyline is great, the sing alongs are are so funny, just and overall enjoyable game to play. Ive had the game for over two years and Im playing for the forth time and still have fun playing and discovering things we have missed previously.
Once you figure it out the game is really pretty good. We keep collecting diaries and we still dont know if they do anything but for a fun dungeon crawler its great.
Fun and funny but only has one save spot so you can easily miss key matters and cannot go back to redo so thats really frustrating.
We hate this game; even on easy mode its hard. We play to relax and enjoy. We dont care about challenges. Its very difficult to save the game and mobs will often times block you from doing anything. Spells take forever to cast. And you have to use the spells to summon guardians or buffs/heal very frequently. Its very very annoying and frustrating. The movement button is very buggy and you stop very frequently and will die quite often.
We purchased this game for nostalgia purposes to play the original we played as a kid. The Bards Tale 3 appears to get stuck once we put the character disk in and it asks us if we want to continue with our saved game. We have chosen both yes and no, and nothing happens. Maybe, we are doing something wrong. Can anybody help? We would hate to request our money back, but we could use help with this.
This is not optimized for iPadOS 16. Since you are selling it shouldnt work.
Great game. Ive always liked the newer version but part 1 of the original trilogy fails to launch. The screen fills with characters and the app crashes. Please have a look. Thanks! Would love to play through the original games on mobile.
We used to play this game a lot but then we kinda forgot about but then we saw it in the App Store and we just had to buy it. The game still keeps it charms and it makes this game like a Time Capsule.
Fun game, but we recommend not buying any of the in game items, once you buy them and complete the game you will lose them and wont carry onto a new save game.
It's good, but there are many errors in translating into Korean. Or There is a problem with the font used, so the screen shows the wrong translation. Fix bug Plz.
We originally bought this game on our computer years back. Loved it, lotta fun stuff to do and crude jokes to laugh at. Then we bought it for our iPad mini several years back. Ran great, had a lot of fun playing it on here. Now they add a patch that makes it incompatible with our iPad mini. So much for this purchase, can't trust a company to stick to the system requirements even on ancient games like this.
We play with sound off, and most of the subtitles are cut off by black bars. It makes the game unplayable because you cant tell what is happening at all.
Game needs to be updated, it hides text options and crashes when you try to purchase the bow at the shop.
Cutscenes arent showing us any options our options arent visible any help.
Game was great, but glitches multiple times in first 5 minutes not allowing continuation. Is this no longer playable.
Ive been obsessed with playing this game for years now! Everything about it is so very entertaining! The humor, the gameplay and the ability to control and collect party members (our favorite aspect of the game) keeps us coming back for more action. Easily, its one of the best games of all time! Kudos, yall.
We dont ever write reviews but when we saw this we had to. This is based off the 2004 Bards tale and does great justice, when we initially saw this on IOS we were hit with a massive wave of nostalgia, we grew up playing this and it was probably the first RPG hack n slash we ever played, we loved it then and loved it now, we even have a strict rule when doing in game purchases that we broke for this, and let us clarify you dont need to buy anything in game we just wanted the massive trip down memory lane, from some reviews it seems like no one knows or remembers this game was made well over a decade ago, but still after all this time we love it! It made our day seeing this game again.
This game was a perfect fit for us. It had the classic RPG feel of the older games we used to play and then some adult humor and wonderful musical hilarity. Tiny details make this game really fun. It reminded us of some other games we played that had the narration and we believe most people enjoy that. Thank you for the $3 game.
Having the sense of humor of a nine year old boy, we freaking love this game for the snark and crude humor. We dont mind the antiquated graphics or the simplified controls, its the best time waster Ive come across in a long time. We usually hate Bards, but long live this idiot, lol.
This game is probably the best game in the App Store next to titans quest. Its a must have great job devs.
This game when it first released on iOS all those years ago, we were in love and had many play throughs! Even now in 2020, this game still is supported with the iPhone XS! Get it, one of the greatest gems on the App Store.
Played this game as an adolescent and played this game as an adult it still holds up and its 3 separate games in for 3.99 not bad.
Great voice acting. Good storytelling. Good graphics and sound. One of the better games we have paid for.
This game is so funny, with fantastic voice acting. We have a couple of very minor complaints, but theyre really nothing compared to how much Ive enjoyed it. (Spoiler alert??:) Theres a few parts where we felt a bit trapped and limited by the choices availablefor instance when the bard couldnt understand the guy with the Scottish dialect. Even we could understand that he was telling us that the shadow axe was in the dungeon, and Im an American who usually has a hard time understanding thick accents, so having to go back . Also there are some bits that are just a bit too well hidden, and we were NOT happy when they killed the dog. Then again, we can appreciate the John Wick aspect of it.
Best RPG Ive played in a long time.
Hi All, This game is the greatest value out there. This is a great game and the originals make it even better. Now, we know some people are going to gripe about the graphics in the bonus feature of the 1980s BT3. What happened there is that the developers were porting the Apple 2 GS versions of the games (1 and 2) to the iPad. There was no GS version of the Bards Tale 3, much to our disappointment back then. Thus, they ported the Apple 2 plus/e/c version over. So, Apple 2 owners have the authentic ports they had back then. There was a better looking version of BT3 though – the Amiga version, but we have learned that it was buggy. Thus, including the non-buggy version of BT3 was a good call, even with the low quality Apple II graphics. (If you love the originals, the remastered versions for PC/PS/Xbox are practically perfect. There you can find pixel perfect graphics and a fantastic gaming experience.) This iOS app is a 5 star game, no question.
Wonderful game. Using a Nimbus and loving it.
Ive been wanting to play this game! Im glad we finally bought it.
Our favorite iphone game – just right in terms of character build, adventure plot, controls etc. Love it. When is the sequel coming out.
We have played many iPad games. This is the best game we have played on any mobile devise. Its a pity there are not many games like it. Most mobile game are games that pander to children. If they are not going to develop more full blown immersive games they should at least port more games. There are hundreds of old PC and console games that would be great on the iPad.
This game has at least 15 – 20 hours of gameplay for an extremely nominal outright purchase price. There are no micro-transactions to upgrade your character or equipment. There are literally zero attempts to get you to spend any money other than the initial purchase price which if we recall was around $2.99. This was a refreshing blast back to the days when we could just purchase a game without hitting the pay to win wall. The narration was very entertaining. The gameplay was not at all glitchy as claimed by other reviews. It was just an all around fun game without having to make a life commitment to daily quests and guild, etc.
Update as of 5/1/19. Still love this, especially the original Bard's Tale Trilogy! But after months of playing Im finally trying to leave the wilderness in BT 3 and its asking for an alignment value. We dont see a functioning code wheel with the documentation, and the ones Ive found online dont work. Anyone else have this problem.
Just stumbled upon this title and couldnt be happier. Its funny and entertaining one of the best rpg on an iOS. Thank you. A must have.
Great import… Fair price, especially if you didnt play it on the console three generations ago.
So funny and the gameplay is awesome with lots of humor.
This game has a fantastic story.Its also a wonderful dungeon crawler in general. The campaign gives you some choices which is interesting. The only downside to this game is that the controls are a little awkward and difficult at first but we really do think its worth the investment of time to get over that hurdle after that the game is super enjoyable and Ive played through a few campaigns.
They don't make them like this anymore.! Get it while you can.
This is by far the funniest game we've played. We love the Bard! We hope they remake more.
The commentary in game is hilarious. Works on IPhone 10, too.
Within our first 30 minutes of play, we know this game is going to keep us entertained. The voice acting is superb, the writing is wonderful and the mechanics are interesting (just a bit clunky though). We are happy with our purchase so far. Will update after more time with the game.
This was always one of our favorite games for the original Xbox. Love the main character and the combat and leveling up. Story is fun and funny. It runs great on iOS. Totally worth the price. It's a long game that will keep you busy for a while. Definitely a must buy.
We held off on purchasing Bards Tale initially because some of the graphics previews made us think it was just a port of an old Commodore 64 title, or some sort of satirical game, but it is actually an extremely impressive hi-res, 3D isometric RPG action/adventure, that ALSO includes the original BT trilogy. We dont know what we were thinking…but in all fairness, Id never heard of it or played it before. We guess you could say it is a little bit like DungeonSiege with a narrative, and lots of gags, humor and music woven in, but it really is its own creature. It is not an open world, and the quests so far have been pretty linear, but Im not that far in (we dont think), and remain hopeful that things may yet branch out a little bit. Well see. In any case, it is the best iOS game we have played bar none, and our current favorite. We think it is more fun than Baldurs Gate, Planescape: Torment, and Titan Quest, all of which we found kind of boring, not to mention overly-complex, which didnt really help us relax. No offense intended. Ive simply had a lot of fun with Bards Tale so far, and find it quite entertaining. We suggest you buy it. Update: Im playing the game on a 12.9 iPad Pro (256) running iOS 11.2.2, with no problems whatsoever.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.9.3
- Size: 1,730.06 MB
- iOS: 9.0 or later
- Languages: EN, FR, DE, IT, KO, PL, RU, ES
- Content Advisory: Infrequent/Mild Profanity or Crude Humor, Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence, Infrequent/Mild Horror/Fear Themes, Infrequent/Mild Alcohol, Tobacco, or Drug Use or References, Infrequent/Mild Sexual Content and Nudity, Infrequent/Mild Mature/Suggestive Themes
- Developer: inXile Entertainment
Last updated: 14th October 2022 | Genre: Action, Roleplaying | Developer: inXile Entertainment