When I was buying random bundles over the last couple of years I ended up with this one. I've previously looked at Tree Fortress' Jump Jet Rex and how I found the charming style rather deceptive in the difficulty.

Bardbarian is much more shallow, but has some difficulty spikes to it. Unfortunately, I just found it rather bland.

I'm happy to go on record and say humour about bodily waste is one of the lowest and worst form of comedy. Brad the bard having his morning piss is in no way amusing unless you're 5. And even then, I'd hope said 5 year old me would screw his nose up at it.

It is in this manner that we are introduced to our hero. Tired of grinding experience and looking for loot (funny) he brushes his teeth and has a slash (not). Shortly after this he fashions a lute out of an old weapon and uses the power of rock music to defend the town.

Right away you are told to use a controller by a tutorial goblin, though a keyboard and mouse is an option. I'd like to say that not only is a keyboard and mouse an option, it is a highly competent one for any soul who has used a PC. You can use WASD for traditional 8 way, or hold the left mouse button to get a circle the Bard will walk towards. Easy! Silly goblin.

Thus proving that kobolds are superior.

Brad has no direct attacking powers of his own. The core of the game is an avoidance runner set on a single panning field. The aim is to protect a town crystal from invading hordes of monsters on the other side of the screen.

To do this, Brad can shred out a riff on his lute and summon various fighters to him. They'll closely follow him around the field and take shots at monsters in their range. There's a variety in the types of troops with different attack, range, and reload values, but you'll start with the 3 main fighters. You can summon 1 of each, or three of one type.

Like Brad, they come with their own HP. I never saw them directly targeted, monsters just lob projectiles in you direction. The trick here is learning how they follow you and rotate behind you as you try to avoid enemy attacks. It's a game of getting close so they can launch their own attack and choosing when to sacrifice one to a bullet so that the rest of the team can survive.

Once an ally dies, you can resummon it or a different one to better suit the current play field. They're meant to level up, and I did see indicators that this happened plenty of times though I experienced little change in how effective they are..

Your summon points are music riff notes that are gained slowly over time. Staying still allows you to accumulate them faster. It is also possible to find them instead of gold from fallen enemies.

A second option to summoning, especially when you have a full party is to use your music for a short boost. This can temporarily increase your attack power, walking speed, or general defence.

And oh my are you going to be mashing that attack boost at times...

The blandness and repetitive nature of this game are not helped by just how many hit points the various hero monsters and bosses have. Which is a lot. FAR too much. While you are kiting around them to keep them from the crystal your attacks come off as tiny pot shots, barely hurting the big bad.

And while this boss moves forward, you better hope that the only other spawns are basic units that need 1-2 hits otherwise the grind Brad is trying to avoid suddenly becomes much much more real.

There are two points to follow on from this.

1) The repetitive nature is far too much. While new enemies are unlocked over time, there's little difference in how they behave. Usually just a AOE attack, or a multi radius shot. The Charger-Stomper was very welcome and at first caught me unawares, but there's little to keep you here playing.

2) Upgrades. This genre and as with many mobile port games, love upgrades. And so do I, the player. Here you have an upgrade shop on death. Allowing you to put the coins you have collected into making your summons stronger, or increasing base stats of you and the town.

Towns people are meant to join in, but all I could get to work was the 'town dog' who collected loot for me.

The small amount you can put into ally attack does help on the bosses, but only by a little amount.

There's just so much grind to get enough gold to do something useful that I got bored rather quickly on replaying the levels over and over to get anywhere with it. Give me some abilities! Let me do something new and cool!

While you can start at certain levels if you beat the bosses, it is still worth playing at wave-1 just for the extra gold to progress through the game quicker.

I really didn't enjoy this one. There's just nothing really here to keep me engaged and wanting to continue.

The two mini games are better than the main game. An endurance wave battle in a larger play area, can get hectic fast. And the avoidance runner where you have no troops and a single 1 HP was also fun.

But the main game? It is a pass form me.

Game Acquisition: Bundle Stars (RPG Heroes 2 bundle)
Platform Used: Steam
Tweet Threads: 1 - 29 August 2017
PC Used: Scorptec Venom 2009 MK2

OS: Microsoft® Windows® XP, Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista® Home Premium, Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise (including 64 bit editions) with Service Pack 2, Windows 7, or Windows 8 Classic
Processor: 2.33GHz or faster x86-compatible processor, or Intel Atom™ 1.6GHz or faster processor for netbook class devices
Memory: 1024 MB RAM