Bad gaming: Bound by Flame

So back in like February or whatever I was planning around doing a March bad games month while doing various RPGs and the like. Then I played more than a few bad games, in a row, and just felt exhausted with gaming. It turns out in order to play bad games, you need to have played good games. Too many bad games and you just hate gaming.

Bound by Flame was on the bad games list, but I didn't work up the energy to get down to it until April, and even then this game... Well, it has a Mixed rating on Steam and that's often for a reason. There's lots of games on Steam that get an unfair rap, and lots that get a gushy rating when they're nothing special, but straight to the point I would say this game definitely earns its Mixed rating. And yeah, I realize I played this in April... I tried replaying it recently and it's just a no-go. So this is a review written in april of a game I was so frustrated with I didn't get to it until now.

Bound by Flame is sort of the generic behind the back action roleplaying game we're all quite accustomed to at this point. I think comparing it to the Witcher is incredibly fair, as the game feels like a discount store version of the Witcher 2. This isn't to say the game is innately awful, but it shares a lot of the jank in writing and tone that makes the Witcher charming. Here it sort of works, sort of doesn't.

The basic story is there's a bunch of rather untoward cold-fueled undead and you're a mercenary protecting a band of researchers at the 'temple on top of the world'. The undead don't look or act anything like the warcraft Scourge, if you're wondering, or at least they don't early on. You end up - I guess this is a minor spoiler, but it is on the box - disrupting their ritual and have a demon stuck in your soul.

See, they're cold undead, so you fight cold undead with a fiery demon. There's a bit of witcher in there, but taken to the next level and I'm going to say I actually like the core thrust of the fiction even. I want to like this game.




What surprised me, I guess, about Bound by Flame is the introduction is pretty short and not all that poorly voice acted. I expected something closer to Blood Knights, with hammy ridiculousness just spewing in every direction. No, the introduction is decent and the opening in engine cut scene isn't all that bad. Then you walk your guy back to 'base' - the first time you've had control of the character in several minutes - and you are immediately told to make and place some traps.

You can feel the jank pouring out of your keyboard and flooding over your desk, hoboy. The introduction to the game is bad. Like, really bad. You place traps, then you almost immediately get to struggle with the combat system, and there is little attempt at conveying how it works. You fight several enemies at once without ever getting a chance to get into the flow of things, so you end up limping through the entire introduction as you try to get a handle on matters. The best thing? The introductory cutscene for your character shows them fighting a single dude. Couldn't, you know, use this time to teach me how to play now could you?

Maybe I hit the wrong button. This game has that feeling all the time: Did I hit the wrong button? Is there something you're not telling me? Maybe, maybe.

Also, and this is a peeve of mine, the game does that moronic thing where enemies use range weapons as you melee them. Bows don't work like that and it makes the combat excruciatingly finicky. And, of course, you can't seem to skip cutscenes or dialogue with the control pad. It feels like I mash random buttons on the keyboard and it does, or doesn't. It happens randomly then I'm right into the boss fight and they are hitting me. Immediately. So I'm pushed for bad design.

Combat in general has just an extremely janky flow with it. I feel like there's an attempt here to build a rewarding combat system, but it's an attempt in sort of the same way a half-finished house is an attempt. There's four walls but the wind and rain are still getting in. You are meant to have access to two different stances, but frankly the game's control scheme is hectic and frustrating enough that just holding down a single control scheme is enough hassle. I'm not really certain if fights are difficult due to the crumbling house of sand controls, the moronic stance issue or if they're really just hard from the hectic jank. But they're either brutally difficult or snap easy, mostly depending on exploiting the AI and getting positioning right.

Positioning is a constant fight in this game. Actually, I'm going to be honest: everything in this game is constantly fighting with the game. It simply doesn't tell you enough, guide you enough or teach you enough. You're just in over your head immediately and sort of working backwards. You need to see enemy swings to parry or dodge, and the camera is more than happy to swivel around nonsensically til you can't see enemy swings. Also, the game thrusts AI companions on you early on and no, they did not write the AI to make them feel like something you want in your life. I'm not really sure why it's hard to get AIs to not rush in blindly. It seems like such a simple fix - the AI isn't "there" and won't engage until you do - but enjoy trying to set traps while the healer set to defensive (whatever that means) runs around randomly.

Graphically the game is not bad. It isn't a top tier AAA game, and the art assets aren't anything stunning or creative, but it's a little bit above average with a good somber feel to them. It's not Witcher 2, but it's definitely not Witcher 1 either, to put things in order. The game has this really cool addition to the crafting system, where each upgrade you hammer in changes your appearance. It's kind of a bummer not getting further into the game to see it unfold, because I really like the idea. That's honestly how I'd sum up most of the game.

The music is kinda neat, it's ... Different.

seriously, marshal winters??

All in all thematically the game actually reminds me of say, act 1 Diablo 2, moody in its nihilism but not repulsively grim dark. The spirit and theme of the game is there, it just isn't quite finished. Seriously disappointing in that regard, honestly, but like some of the writing just allows the floor to drop away. There's weird tonal shifts, like the big bads of the game have names like "Coldy McDoomperson" whereas everything else is stone serious.

I mean not that exact name, but just as ridiculous.

The UI and layout of the controls on a gamepad is ... Man, I don't even know how to describe. The game is innately, stupidly overcomplicated for what amounts to no real reward. It's a hack and slash punchy punch sort of game, except the backend is like 15 different menus that all overlap into a giant mess. You have talent trees and skills, an overabundance of equipment types, crafting you can do at any time and multiple loot windows. It is more complicated and harder to get the hang of than MMORPGs. There's depth here, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't feel like enough depth for the amount of complexity.

The UI essentially resembles Darksiders 2, but it lacks flow and it is hard to sort out. You can't go from all the menus to each other menu, so you can wander aimlessly through the options trying to remember which button press does what in particular. The end result is just more fighting with the game to try to have fun with it. Constantly fighting with the game.

Ultimately, this game is a pass more or less by default. The writing isn't great, and there's really no attempt to put it together in a way that is either easy to get into or feels anymore rewarding than playing either end of the spectrum within genre. You could play something like Blood Knights if you want a campy 'bad game' or you could play Dark Souls if you want 'hard combat' or you could play Darksiders 2 if you want to play a whirly-combat game. Or you could play Witcher 1 for basically this game but better. Yeah. I went there. This is just janky. If you've played other games, I wouldn't say this is outright terrible, but it doesn't justify actually buying and playing it if you have any other options.

I always feel like there's a lot of games I would consider playing if, you know, I didn't have a thousand other games to work through. This is very close to being a good game, but it has this slippery layer of trying to fight with it constantly that takes away from wanting to play it. Like I said, I want to like this game, but it's just not there for me. I've been trying to get back into it for months but it's just not fun every time I pick it back up. I'd load it up, walk around, do a fight and think - Why did I put this down? - then do another fight where the npc triggered a battle before I had a chance to get set up and then the camera locked in some awful position and I die while fighting with that and just alt-f4!