A Bastard's Tale Demo

A Bastard's Tale is a fascinating side-scrolling fighting game that features a unique gameplay mechanic that hasn’t been used before.

It is difficult to put A Bastard's Tale in any given category, and it looks like side scrolling fighting game seems to be the best one, although it doesn’t really explains what’s happening on the screen. Sometimes developers either stumble upon a new gameplay mechanic, or they set out to build that hasn’t been made before. This is what happened with A Bastard's Tale and the developers from No Pest Productions knew right from the start what they wanted to and how to do it.

If you think about it, this kind of gameplay is somewhat similar to another very old title named Karateka, which had the same basic idea, although it wasn’t as complex as this one. A Bastard's Tale takes it to another level, which also means that it’s a lot more difficult to play.

The players control a knight which advances and faces various opponents. They are weak at first, maybe a few peasants and some animals like bulls, but they get better over time. In any case, you need to hit them before they hit you, and that should be easy enough.

The problem is that the control is very precise, meaning that you can hit from right to left, from left to right, and from up to down. Also, the blocking maneuver can’t be done with a single button, but a combination of both the right block and the attack direction. It will take a while to get used to.

It’s hard to play with the knight, but once you master the moves somehow, you will find that every kill is satisfying, although a successful block will get you pretty excited as well.

The only problem is that the graphics don't always allow users to see where the blow is coming from and, to compound the issue, the game is in 2D.

The best solution to experiment with the unique system used by this game is to get the demo and give it a try.