Bound by Flame Reviews
Simply by staggering across the finish line first, Bound By Flame may seem to be an attractive proposition for PS4 RPG fans, but don't be fooled. With its shonky cut-scenes, its outdoor sound effects that play indoors and its linear maps, this is in no way a current-gen experience. It's a budget offering at a premium price - and a poor one at that.
The combat is fun in parts and the characters grew on me, but so much more of Bound by Flame is tedious, frustrating, and unpolished.
While parts of Bound By Flame are messy, its combat is strong enough to keep the fire stoked.
Bound by Flame doesn't put too much weight on the important choices you think you're making, but its rich customization options and smart combat system are sure to give you that power you're looking for.
Fun combat, customization, and decision making overpower the cliché plot and monotonous enemy lineup
Bound by Flame is a rickety role-playing game that bites off far more than it can chew.
Bound by Flame is a generic mess
[W]hile Bound by Flame has heart, it ends up being a forgettable dull experience.
Like so much of the game, it dreams of being epic, but ends up just feeling slight – RPG action that would love to be in the same company as The Witcher and Dragon Age, but instead has to sit with the likes of Game of Thrones: The Game in the pile of adventures that are better than they feel they have any real right to be, past their terrible openings at least, but which offer little reason to burn money or the midnight oil on.
Like Of Orcs and Men before it, Bound by Flame is an uneven mishmash of decent new ideas and painfully generic genre tropes that struggle to gel, yet somehow it blunders through to deliver a mostly enjoyable adventure. Bound by Flame had a great deal of potential but it feels half-realised, and this is simply not the epic adventure we were promised.
An embarrassment on all fronts.
Meanwhile, the attempts at humor and being "gritty" come off as juvenile. And in a market saturated by far more interesting fantasy adventures, we need a far less generic story to work with. There's a good game hiding within Bound by Flame. It's just not this one.
Bound By Flame is a frustrating game to write about as it is frustrating to play. It's not a terrible game, though, but an uneven one that could have used a lot of extra development time. It prizes the idea that you can play your own way, but it is heavily biased toward one style.
A Frankenstein's monster of other people's ideas, that if not for the sleazy script would be laughable in its desperation to include every fantasy cliché imaginable.
It's not a long game by any means, requiring about fifteen hours or so depending on how much you decide to explore, but sometimes you just don't need 40 or 50 hours to kick ass and take names. Sometimes you need a set of dull armor, Vulcan's attitude, and a demon to kickstart your hunger for meatier storytelling and content delivery. Bound By Flame is the midnight snack that sates, but leaves you wanting something a bit more savory. But when the snack is this tasty, you may find yourself coming back for a second helping a lot quicker than you might think.
Bound by Flame is far from perfect, but underneath a few rough edges, a memorable journey awaits, defined by an unpredictable storyline, and decisions that have a meaningful impact on the story. Not having to just be pure good or pure evil is interesting, the demon is always there even if you want to do the right thing and be a good guy. Hopefully this is just the first step into the icy world of Vertiel.
If you can look past the poor narrative and weak character dialogue Bound By Flame is a solid action RPG. The combination of fire and sword is an exciting duo which flows seamlessly in battle. However, you can't help but feel that, with the PS4 in mind, Bound By Flame has been rushed to fill a gap in the market.
Originality is cherished in the video game industry. Just maybe not here
If you've been burning with anticipation for a fantasy RPG on Sony's newest console, Bound by Flame may be worth a look – but be sure to keep your expectations lukewarm. Much like its lead character, the release is a conflicted creation that's eager to prove its worth, but fails to set its ambitions alight. Not quite a product forged in the fires of Hell, Spiders' latest isn't a bad game, but it's never going to be much more than a flicker of light in a dark age of absent RPGs.