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Bard's Tale demo now available

Try out the Mountain Tomb level from inXile's tongue-in-cheek RPG.

Two year's after The Bard's Tale was first announced, Brian Fargo's quirky RPG is almost here and its European-publisher Ubisoft has released a demo to celebrate.

The Bard's Tale sees you playing as the titular hero, a roaming troubadour who can play magical tunes to summon up creatures that will help him in his quest. But this is no quest for fame, glory or some old mystical amulet or other - the bard is a self-centered opportunist whose only concerns are "coins and cleavage", apparently. In other words, it's an RPG with a sense of humour.

The demo contains the Mountain Tomb level from Chapter VI: The Mountain Pass. You'll find yourself trapped in an ancient Viking burial complex and must find your way out whilst avoiding an awful lot of traps, pitfalls and undead norsemen.

You can download the demo from 3D gamers here. It weighs in at 325MB and you'll need an 800 Mhz processor with 256 MB RAM.

The Bard's Tale gets its belated European release on PS2 and Xbox on March 25, with the PC version following on April 29.