Lately, I like giving a chance to less-known titles by smaller developers. Bound by Flame is one of them. It certainly is not an AAA title but somehow still received bad reviews, which I think it does not deserve. Perhaps there are too many AAA titles recently, and so people got carried away and reviewed Bound by Flame in a similar way they review AAA games, but the truth is this RPG isn't trying to be one. Whoa, there's a lot of "AAA"s here.
Bound by Flame takes place in Vertiel, a land on the brink of destruction and under the mercy of evil forces known as the Ice Lords. You play as a mercenary who's accidentally gained a demonic influence and must choose whether to embrace or reject it. Truth be told, I can't shake off the feeling that this is probably the game that the developers were not aiming high for. Instead it's more like a testing material - a game that they use as a way to see how well they can do in the industry. Besides, these guys are quite new, so you can't expect too much from them. With that said, let's begin with the cons, starting with the worst: level design.
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| This is just the beginning... |
The level design of Bound by Flame is highly questionable. It feels like the level designers are either not trying their best, or just deliberately made it so, so that 70% of the people who play this game can flatter themselves of being able to design those levels 10 times better. I understand that this isn't an open-world RPG, but why must they come up with designs that would fit better in a Pac-Man game? The most unforgivable one is the level design of the base camp of the second act, which is a challenge to traverse. It's a fucking base camp, why is it so hard to put everyone on a wide, open center?
There are flaws that are too obvious to be ignored, the voice-overs particularly. I mean, people talk like jerks and assholes from our time, with cursing and vulgarity courtesy of the 21st century. F*ck, sh*t, you name it, they speak it. Yes, THEY - princes and sorceresses and warriors wielding swords and daggers. Your character is the ultimate cursing machine (he even beats this cocky character here). Often times Bound by Flame tries to be humorous and depending on who you ask, it either frustrates you and fails miserably, or ends up being amusingly stupid and humorous in a way it's not intended to be. For me, it's the latter. Trust me, it's like laughing at the way someone laughs instead of the joke they're telling you.
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| Kindly read the subtitle in the screenshot above. |
Then there's the Demon, supposedly the most interesting aspect of the game but isn't so. If you choose the demonic path, you'll see how rude this friend of your choosing can be. While everyone else speaks words and phrases that are out of place and time, the Demon tries too hard to counter-act that by speaking in some kind of style out of a literature book. Surprise, he ends up being more out of place! Really, whatever the demon speaks of, it's not important. You won't be missing much if you skip his dialogue, trust me. It can be summarized as follow: "Listen to me, free me, I want my power." The end, lovely lovely.
Contrary to what you may have taken out of the trailer, the paths you choose are pretty straightforward. But the demonic path is more interesting for a change. Overtime, your voice changes, you'll grown horns, and flames engulf half of your body. But it doesn't take long until the demon begins to lose its significance. The way NPCs react to it also says it all. I'm amazed on how unmoved they are by your physical changes. At first, they're so worried about it as if it's the end of the world, while some of them regard it highly as an advantage to use on the bad guys, but later on, (as if no longer taking the matter seriously) they are all like, "Hey what is your demon's opinion? Yeah, I agree with your demon. Blahblah (starts talking about something else." Hey look, I have horns and covered in flames, people!
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| He's upset nobody's ever noticed how evil he looks. |
But believe it or not, I found it's easy to forget about these flaws because Bound by Flame can be really fun. Now, let's move on to the goodness: combat system. If the world of Rapture is the star of Bioshock (at least that's what I've been hearing), then the combat system is that of Bound by Flame. Once you get the hang of the combat, it's really fun, depending on the way you play. If you keep hitting and slashing those monsters with your sword using the same combinations or tactics, of course the game is going to get monotonous. You have to mix things up. As for me, I played as a rogue-focused character with a lot of tricks under his sleeve, such as back-stab for melee and fire orbs for ranged attack.
There are of course, many other more interesting abilities and skills that you can apply in battle. One such ability is the rogue's Speed Demon which lets you move at a relatively higher speed than everyone else for a limited amount of time, which will be very useful for the last boss fight (you should see that coming). When activated, everything else around you seems to slow down, giving you the opportunity to go all out offensive or gulp some health potions if you're low on hitpoints. Make the best out of the awesome combat system by mixing things up, and you're going to have a pretty good time.
I must admit that while Bound by Flame's combat is solid enough for a B-tier game, I can't help but think it would have been a lot better with some improvements. For example, active abilities are so few compared to passive ones. But I won't ramble much about this though. Like I said, the game's combat system is fine. It certainly is not the best; as a matter of fact, it is far from flawless; but with some more improvements, it can be more interesting.
Bound by Flame is a short game for an RPG, which is okay because this is uncharted waters for the developers. You can finish it within 12 to 15-hour range. If it feels too long then, that's due to the enemies' ridiculously high hitpoints. This, in my opinion, is the game's biggest flaw. Why the developers chose to make it so, is as highly questionable as the level design. The enemies are blessed with naturally high hit points which is a curse to the players. The enemies' thick skin somehow will make you feel like your character is not hitting strong enough, giving the impression of a weak hero. Sword and dagger-wielding heroes aren't supposed to feel weak.
Unless you're an expert and very patient as well as experienced, your experience should be best under Easy difficulty. When playing on Normal mode, you're going to need a lot of patience because either the enemies hitpoints are significantly increased or you attacks do less damage. Under Normal mode, even if you mix things up, it's still going to get monotonous because it takes so long to finish off the enemies that it exhausts you off all of your best tricks. Every fight will feel like a boss fight. The thing is, the enemies feel tough not because they're smarter but because they have more hitpoints and they attack damage increased.
Average player like me? Do yourself a favor and kill your ego by playing Bound by Flame under Easy difficulty because that's already hard enough. You'd want to play a fun, playable game, not a frustrating and monotonous one. To be completely honest, I enjoy modesty and normally play under Normal or Medium difficulty. I never wanted a game to be too easy or too hard. Nevertheless Bound by Flame is the only game in recent years I had to play under Easy difficulty for the sake of playability. It's a promising game that you won't want to miss just because of its difficulty.
Albeit forgivable, there aren't many enemy types, but one thing is for sure, skeleton soldiers are the game's staple troops. One of the most frustrating of them all is the skeleton with two shields, one on its front and another on its back. You'll fight lots of these skeletons. What makes a fight with this chump so unnecessarily frustrating is that its shields won't break. They seem to grant the skeleton 100% physical resistance, making it ridiculously hard to finish off such an extremely generic enemy.
Even if you slip through his defense, you won't do a lot of damage anyway because of his high hitpoints. I have, however, developed a rather effective technique of fighting these skeletons, but after a while it feels like a boring routine instead of a welcomed challenge. Nevertheless, it's the only effective way I know on how to deal with these lame minions.
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| You'll meet various but not so memorable companions. |
Visually, the game looks decent enough, but not as updated as today's RPGs. But it's not like I give much shit about graphics anyway, so there's that. Also there's no lip-synching, but hey it's not the end of the world. Maybe the characters speak so foully that their lips refuse to follow. Whatever the reason is, at least it makes the game more amusing, which is fine by me. But I hated the that during cutscenes, the game keeps showing my sword which I rarely used instead of my preferred dagger, but oh well. Technically, the game is very stable. No hiccups, no freeze. So, you could say that Bound by Flame is very technically polished. But in terms of gameplay and story, there are a lot of obvious flaws, which Spiders (the developers) probably didn't struggle too hard to fix as they did the technical flaw.
All in all, I think Bound by Flame is a pretty solid game. It's interesting and promising enough to keep me playing until the very end. Yes, it has very obvious flaws and I was aware of them all the time but somehow was able to forgive them. The crafting system, which I forgot to talk about, is also decent but lacks variety. Despite the unnecessarily high enemy hitpoints and horrible level designs, the combat system is surprisingly good and the story and voice-acting, depending on who you ask, can be so amusing that it actually ends up entertaining you instead. Expect better and more awesome titles from Spiders.
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P/S: With a little more serious attitude and narration, I hope. Ha-ha.
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