I thought The Bard's Tale 4: Barrows Deep was an excellent dungeon crawler when it came out in the fall of 2018, but not everyone was quite so satisfied with the experience. I enthusiastically stand by my assessment—I enjoyed it throughout, even though the ending was a bit of a bummer—but if you're on the "disappointed" side of the divide, inXile is working on a "Director's Cut" version of the game that might give you a reason to take another look.
The Director's Cut is an outgrowth of the 2.0 update that the studio announced in December 2018. "As the scope of the patch has expanded (and continues to), we decided that it warranted a more formal title than 2.0. When released, it will turn the game into The Bard’s Tale 4: Barrows Deep - Director’s Cut," inXile's Paul Marzagalli explained in a Kickstarter update. "We are introducing several new features, most notably the previously mentioned DLC and an engine update, a larger undertaking allowing us to further improve performance and optimization."
The update will incorporate a free new dungeon, with a new plotline and enemy types, that was also announced in December, along with new master-crafted gear and dwarven weapons, updates to the game engine that will improve performance and stability, better art, additional character portraits, better localization options, and "expanded balancing efforts across the entire game," including combat, the economy, and character abilities.
Inventory filtering is coming (finally), a new "Song of Exploration" will enable players who don't dig the puzzles to skip past them entirely, and of course the obligatory "and much more!" is promised as well.
InXile currently expects to have the Director's Cut update ready for release in June. Alas, with the good news comes a spot of bad: Because inXile is "unable to finalize the Mac and Linux versions of the game and continue to simultaneously make such sweeping changes to it," those versions won't be released until the Director's Cut patch rolls out.
