Bound by Flame Reviews
The fantasy RPG is more than a little crowded, and breaking into that genre is likely to be a difficult task. With the help of Focus Home Interactive, the marketing campaign behind 'Bound by Flame' raised more than a few eyebrows, including my own. Everything about the game had me interested and I was more than a little excited to occupy my time with this new adventure in between some of the bigger AAA titles still to release. Not without its shortcomings, 'Bound by Flame' is still an ambitious title for developer Spiders. It sets an interesting, albeit familiar, tone, and delivers an enjoyable and addictive combat system. Unfortunately, this being a grand adventure, the developers should have realized the importance a well-acted character can have on the final product. Had the game been voiced by more qualified actors 'Bound by Flame' could have become a major sleeper title for 2014. Instead, these poor performances have left an unfavorable impression. It's worth visiting for the combat mechanics, but staying for the duration may be a difficult task.
A sad fact of life it may be, but go into Bound By Flame with low impressions and you're probably not going to come away disappointed. Those hoping for the appropriate stop-gap until The Elder Scrolls VI though will be left wanting. Bound By Flame is relatively harmless fantasy by numbers that is difficult to recommend beyond a budget-priced pickup, or if you're in the utmost doldrums waiting for a big release.
Bound By Flame had potential, its excellent crafting system and skill trees are a good basis for any RPG, but the unbalanced combat system doesn't do a good job of exploiting them. The characters and story are hard to care for when most characters lack any emotion and expletives are used in every other sentence. If you are desperate for an RPG to play in your wait for The Witcher 3, then Bound By Flame could satisfy your needs for a short period of time. Bound By Flame doesn't bring anything new to the RPG genre, nor does it improve on any existing elements. A short play-time combined with an uninteresting story and unbalanced combat makes Bound By Flame tough to recommend, it frankly just isn't a good game.
The game isn't bad, it's just not great, and I was expecting a little bit more than a generic western fantasy RPG with competent combat from the studio that brought us the tantalising Of Orcs and Men.
A cold experience
Bound by Flame looks like a budget RPG contender, and there are some nice ideas in the combat system and the Bioware-like treatment of the side-characters. Sadly, there's just too much about it that's generic, unpolished, badly animated, poorly implemented or uninspired. If you must have a fantasy RPG to play on PS4 then this might do, but there will be better around the corner, and this really isn't an easy game to love.
Bound By Flame would be an immensely likable game, were it not for just how slipshod it ultimately feels. Its individual components are well crafted, but when brought together, the result is something that just isn't quite right.
Originality is cherished in the video game industry. Just maybe not here
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.
Bound by Flame is playable, but it lacks anything compelling to keep you invested. When you aren't dealing with poorly balanced design you are yawning at its dull world and uninspired RPG mechanics. Bound by Flame is more akin to Spiders previous efforts rather than the many better action-RPG titles they attempted to borrow from.
If you're desperate for a game in this genre, then find a way to play Dark Souls II.
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.
For every great thing Bound by Flame does, it messes up critical gameplay components like the combat. There's this sense that the game can't get out of its own way, and only die-hard high-fantasy fans that aren't afraid of getting torched by a budget title should check this one out.
Bound by Flame initially seems like the type of game you would get if you threw some of the engaging and interesting game elements from The Witcher franchise in with the brutal difficulty of the Dark Souls series. In theory, this sounds like a gamer's dream come true. In execution, at least in the case of Bound by Flame, the end result leaves a lot to be desired.
Though Bound By Flame is an interesting game, it felt lacking. A little more could have made this game one of the best.
Bound By Flame defiantly has potential to work, but due to having so many problems the game ends up not reaching that full potential… well it doesn't really come close at all. The crafting system and level up system showed the game had promise as well as something going for it, but once you get deep into the game you start to learn what went wrong. There is still some fun to be had in this game, so if you are a fan of RPG's maybe wait until the price comes down to try this game as I can't recommend a full retail purchase unfortunately.
Bound by Flame by all accounts ends up being a rather mediocre experience. There are various systems and mechanics that work brilliantly, but are sadly overshadowed by a largely forgettable story and a flawed combat system that ends up testing your patience rather than testing your mettle.
Whatever caused it, our save was irrevocably corrupted and any chance of playing Bound By Flames beyond our review went down the pan with it. Not that this should be the death knell for your purchase decision too, you probably won't encounter the same game-breaking problem and maybe you haven't experienced the worlds of Westeros, Tamriel and the Northern Kingdoms. Good for you. Not only are you more likely to enjoy all the talking between every fight but there are four seasons of compelling HBO drama and several weeks of exhaustive, back to back playtime across two chart-topping video game franchises, once you're done.
In the end, I wish there was more to Bound by Flame. I adored the crafting system and have come around on the combat system once I mastering the act of parrying, but I still wish there was more. Spiders has turned down the swearing in the game (compared to Mars: War Logs), but Vulcan has his/her outbursts for no good reason. The game is dialogue heavy, and provides a ton of backstory on the towns, the people and the quests in the game; just don't look at the characters while they speak.
Bound by Flame is a rough and dated-feeling role-playing game, but those who can look past its flaws will find a relatively enjoyable experience.