From simply reading the description of this game I knew that I would enjoy it. A Bastard's Tale is a difficult side-scrolling swordplay game set in medieval times. You play as a noble knight (or a bastard maybe) who bravely walks across the land, facing foe after foe, always pacing forward. This isn't any old cowardly platformer game: there are no guns, items, upgrades or anything like that. You can't jump or run (which makes sense as you're wearing full plate armour), not even a shield. Instead this is a true gentlemen's game of noble swordplay. You valiantly pace across the land, horizontally across the screen from left-to-right, with sword in hand, trying to outsmart your enemies and progress to the next level. Thankfully you have a health bar which allows you around 5 hits, which makes sense given your armour. Most enemies have health bars too (usually they have way more hp than you).

The game is split into 5 levels of increasing difficulty: village, farmland, wasteland, forest and castle. The game mechanics work like this: you can swing your sword left, right and overhead. You can also block left, right or overhead. Aside from walking, the only other move is a kind of dodge, a backward-roll. Similar to Dark Souls, every move has to be chosen carefully as the animation plays out in full before you can make more inputs. Each enemy behaves very differently and the key to this game is figuring out how to defeat each enemy, and memorising the attack patterns. In many situations it feels like a puzzle game, leaving you perplexed until you figure out how to approach each enemy. Dying is also a big part of the game, learning through repetition, and you'll almost certainly die the first time you meet each new enemy. Each level has maybe 8 or 10 enemies, the last of which is an enemy knight who feels like the "boss" of that area.

The game is presented in very beautiful traditional pixel art. The amount of detail in the backgrounds is really quite stunning; often you'll see rabbits, deer, reptiles or insects moving around through the trees, or buildings and other features in the distant parallax scrolling. The environments and characters are all fully-animated, and that becomes important as you need to watch your enemies carefully to anticipate their attacks. For the most part the game has a very traditional medieval setting, aside from very occasional fantasy creature you face (there's an ogre, and a couple other weird humanoid things). I was really expecting to find a dragon at the end, but alas, maybe in NG+?

I really can't find much to complain about with this game. Upon loading it up I was immediately addicted and found myself returning to it and slowly mastering each level until I finally beat it. There is also an "endless" mode which has you facing a continuous stream of increasingly-powerful enemies (although throughout the game you only ever face one at a time). If you like tricky combat games, or if you feel like a rewarding challenge, this game hit the spot perfectly. I'm looking forward to attempting NG+ and possibly unlocking some more of those achievements. Five stars awarded to this little gem without a doubt. Here's my final report card for my blind run, see if you can do better! :P