The Bard's Tale

• Charisma is the least useful attribute. It gives you cheaper stuff but after the early game money shouldn't be an issue.

• Max value for each attribute is 20, but there's +3 token for each of them so you shouldn't put more than 17 to any of them. Max character level is 21.

• There's a dog companion you can get in the first town (I missed it).

• You'll miss some bonus tokens and stuff, but the game isn't very difficult (on normal at least) even without them and you should be able to find most of the important loot without trouble.

• The last shop is in Stromness and you won't need money after that. The point of no return comes soon after.

• Weild a bow and never stop weilding a bow. Every other weapon is a trap designed to make you stop weilding a bow for some reason.

• You will end up with tons and tons of summoning crystals by end game, but their only real value is princess 1 which instantly heals you and all summons to full as well as restoring MP.

• Money is basically meaningless and you will be rolling around in it by mid game.

• Get the dog. Get the feat so the dog can attack. There is a point later where you'll feel like the dog is gone forever but a dungeon soon following it will give you the dog back.

• You will have tons of useless feats by the end, but you want to upgrade your dog then the bow. After that click on whatever bit of text sounds most interesting.

• You can get all three endings because the game makes a save right before the end game.

• Randomly after cutscenes the game de-equips you of your weapons, typically also then immediately dropping you into a fight. You'll have to go back and re-equip your bow because your fists are weaker than glass and slower than dances with wolves.

• Level Vitality first, then dexterity, then rhythm, then who cares at all, really.

• Warriors and Paladins are virtually identical. They're good starting out but lose utility in the endgame.

• Hunters and Monks start out weak-ish but become very powerful. Hunters will one-shot everything by the end game and Monks end up the most powerful melee class in the game.

• Rogues are worthless. You need one to win BT3 though, so if you're going to do the whole trilogy make one then and ignore them in the interim.

• You don't strictly need a Bard--there's one "door" that only a Bard can open but with powerful enough spell-casters you can teleport past it. They're extremely useful support characters though so you should probably have one.

• Conjurers learn some really important spells: Trap Zap (disarms traps, replaces the entire Rogue class), Magic Compass (shows what direction you're facing), Levitation spells (required to go through some portals), and most importantly, Apport Arcane at level 7 which is a teleport spell.

• Magicians are less useful than Conjurers at the beginning but you should still have one. They have the Mystic Shield spells (permanent lowering of AC), but most importantly the Restoration spell which is a full party heal.

• Sorcerers you can't start as but can class change into. Most of their spells are less useful but they have Mind Blade (best overall damage spell in the game) and Sorcerer Sight (shows secrets in the dungeon) so you'll want to have one of your Magicians or Sorcerers class change into them soon.

• Wizards you also can't start as. They have powerful summons but unless you're playing with the Misc Differences Legacy option on an additional character is more useful than a summon. They're the only class that learns a resurrect spell.

• Your party probably should have 3 casters or 2 if you have the "Misc Differences" Legacy Mode option turned on.

• Once any spellcasting class hits level 13, they'll have learned all the spells they can and you should change their class. You shouldn't class change before this point because you can't go back to any caster class you've previously been. The best overall strategy is to reach level 13 in all 4 caster classes and have your final class as Conjurer or Magician--whichever one you didn't start as--since they have the lowest XP requirements to gain levels.

• The early game is brutally unfair. Be prepared to die a lot. Run into a group of Barbarians at LV1? Party wipe. Don't be afraid to savescum, you'll need to in the early levels.

• Overall, magic is king in this game and past the midgame any non-caster (outside of perhaps the Bard) is more of a meatshield than anything else. This applies to enemy parties too so you're usually better off targeting magic using parties first.

• In terms of Legacy Mode options, you probably want to select Use Unequipped Items. It prevents you from equipping stuff during battles, but lets your Bard use offensive instruments they're carrying without having to equip them first, which is very useful.

• Dungeons are not made to be completed all at once. Play a floor (or part of a floor) at a time, then leave to heal/restore MP and then come back.

• There are a lot of magic items that have special effects when equipped or used (e.g. a Bardsword gives a Bard unlimited songs when equipped). Unfortunately the game gives you no information or obvious feedback for most of them so you'll have to look them up online to see what they do.

• The game had an odd quirk: the monsters don't have a running hitpoint total. If a monster has 50HP and an attack does 15 damage, that attack has a 30% chance off killing the monster, otherwise it does nothing. This will result in some odd behaviors; tough bosses will sometimes go down in one hit, other times a monster may seem to be bugged and take forever to defeat. This has probably been replaced with a standard HP system in the remake.