Ah what a dissapointment, from the trailers I had high hopes for the game but unfortunately all of it fell flat within the first couple of hours of play. I didn't even have the morale to finish the game. This is probably only for the most hardcore of RPG enthusiasts and ones that love difficult mechanical mastery. It feels like a watered down version of Dark Souls. It's not nearly as challenging, but then also its not nearly as polished or fun either.
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Story: Where to begin? Do you like in-cohesive stories that don't know what era their from? Well look no further we've got dialogue that includes talking like your part of an Shakespearean play, a modern day thug, and your middle school bully. Seriously this is probably the worst aspect of the game. It's only compounded by sub-mediocre voice acting. There were times when I wished the characters would just shut up and I could get on with my crafting or fighting. This game has a major identity crisis just about everywhere. The demon's little blurbs are probably the only consistent form of intelligent jibber jabber that came out of an individual's mouth in the game. The game had a clear story goal that was to defeat the Ice Lords and save humanity... and the elvish. But, through the poor dialogue all of the story was lost. For making me endure a hellish creative writing nightmare I had to give BBF a 3/10 for the story.
I don't own the rights to this image. But, boy is this appropriate
Gameplay: This may be the one redeeming factor to Bound by Flame. Progression and leveling in this game is done in a manner that provides almost full freedom of choice to the player. Leveling your skills as well as crafting is all up to you starting at level 1. A simple but innovative crafting system allows you to customize your equipment in numerous manners. Facing a boss that has tighter attack patterns? Add attack speed to your weapon to allow for shorter, faster combos. Lots of enemies that you want to cleave? Add critical bonuses to help you deal massive damage to large groups. The combinations are quite numerous. However, combat is debatably bogged down by this. I wanted to like its open action combat but key inputs are slow and unresponsive, targeting is messy and clunky, and the partner AI is as dumb as rock, maybe even worse than a rock. There were moments in combat where my partner made me want to facedesk repeatedly. It tried admirably by even its redeeming factors have its problems for a good attempt I had to give this section a 7/10. It's not completely unplayable but, you need to love frustration or headaches to journey deeper into the Ice Lords domain.
Graphics: It could have been worse. I really enjoyed the character as well as weapon designs. Even the enemies and environment were well thought out. But, using last gen textures and corner cutting geometry really didn't impress me. I was expecting something far showier and more in line with Dark Souls. But, the environment was either too bright, too dark, or too blurry to really enjoy. I tinkered with gamma as well as other video settings to no avail. The nice thing is that despite everything in my game being dialed up to maximum there was no noticeable framerate issues. Meaning, the hell that was making my character block an attack was visually smooth. It was a good attempt but nothing I would brag about Graphics receive a 6/10. It's consistent but not impressive.
I don't own the rights to this image.
Sound: Almost as bad as the story, the voice actors they chose really didn't do the job. Most western voice actors tend to read their scripts without feeling. Also engaging in awkward punctuation and disrupting the overall intended feeling of the dialogue. The VA isn't entirely to blame in this sense as the writing in this game was horrendous. However, their poor reading of the already terrible dialogue only served to compound the issues that were at hand. Weapon as well as action SFX were ok. They weren't nearly as good as they could have been but they were bearable. If all the characters spoke in the metal sword clinging in this game I think it would be both hilarious and probably still a better vocal experience. The game BBF receives half marks for making me suffer the voice dialogue. It almost would have been better served they just used text to advanced the story, 5/10.
Overall score came out to a 5.2/10. I can't give this game high marks, I just can't. I'd only recommend this game to those who want to be tortured. Even then, I recommend you play more highly polished torture like Dark Souls 2. If anyone is still reading this and wants to buy the game then I've provided a link
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