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At the very start of the game, the player is asked to name their character. It doesn't really matter because the most it will ever be used is at the top of dialogue boxes. Every other character simply calls your player by his default name, Vulcan. So, it's already off to an odd start with this identity crisis, one that could have easily been avoided by never verbally stating the main character's name through spoken dialogue or by simply never giving the player the option to choose a custom name. The main issue here is that this is only the start of a rather lengthy list of issues that plague this game.
I refuse to say that the game is resigned to its fate due to a lack of effort on the part of Spiders, the game's developer. For its part, the studio did an admirable job of trying to blend some of the most popular elements from some of the best games over the past few years. If they are at fault for anything, it is perhaps for being far too ambitious with their goals for Bound by Flame. The core game includes a huge focus on action with a number of the typical RPG elements added for good measure. It even borrows some conversation elements from games like Dragon Age and Mass Effect. This simply implies that there will be varying outcomes to a number of encounters depending on the responses you select. Though more often than not, most of the conflicts in the game are solved through battle rather than through spoken word.
I will give praise to Robin Atkin Downes for his performance as Vulcan. He is one of the very few beacons of hope for this game's voice acting. Many other performances feel phoned in and actually seem to be of lesser quality when compared to Downes. I'm not sure why the actual audio quality seems so much higher for Downes' recordings but that's just how it comes across. Even if the rest of the performances weren't of questionable quality, the writing is borderline comical or cliched for most of the game. I seriously cannot tell if this was done on purpose or was just a total fluke. It also doesn't help that the facial animations don't correctly correspond to the actual dialogue being spoken. Sometimes a character's face and mouth still stop moving long before the words are finished being said. It's jarring but at least they made some effort to animate the mouths for the dialogue, which is more than I can say for a few other games out there. Vulcan himself will often violently erupt at some of the non-playable characters depending on the dialog options selected. It may not help all that much that due to a bit of an “oopsy” at the start of the game, Vulcan's mind and body are slowly being consumed by a demon. Perhaps the strangest thing about that is that many of the NPCs don't really react to this possession or the fact that Vulcan can now control fire. That seems like quite the odd thing for other characters to sometimes just shrug off time and time again.
The more Vulcan succumbs to the demon's wishes, the more Vulcan will actually start to resemble the demon that resides within. It's merely another way of showing a karma-like system in an RPG. The more evil you are, the more demonic your form becomes. Fortunately, these aren't just cosmetic changes. As you grow horns, you will find that you cannot wear helmets and thus lose out on some defensive bonuses. On the other side of the coin, you will have more magic and magical abilities to wield in battle. Naturally, the more evil you become, the more you will impact those in your party and impact interactions and dialogue with various NPCs. The thing is, due to the relatively poor dialogue and vocal performances, you really won't care too much about their wants or needs when compared to your own.
Speaking of magic, there are multiple skill trees that you can specialize in throughout the course of the game. The three most basic allow Vulcan to either specialize as a warrior, hunter, or mage. The warrior stance and skills are more focused on dishing out damage with large swords and the potential for health regeneration over time. The more nimble hunter class includes some rogue-like abilities with a focus on darting in and out of combat while dual-wielding weapons. The mage class focuses on slinging magical fireballs at your foes and utilizing various fire abilities. The game does allow you to adjust to either of these combat roles on the fly during the course of the battle, though it will certainly come across as awkward at first. Start off by setting some traps and perhaps shooting a few arrows at a foe before switching to a heavy sword for a little close fighting. Then fall back with a fireball to finish them off from afar. This combat system will take some getting used to here. It never fully clicked with me until after the first couple hours of gameplay. You will constantly need to keep on your toes during battles in this game as they can go from laughably easy to insanely difficult from one encounter to the next. If you are prone to throwing controllers out of frustration, perhaps Bound by Flame isn't the game for you. There are some very unfair fights thrown at you throughout the course of the game. Even on lower difficulties, the game will still pose quite the challenge thanks to enemies that are legitimately difficult. Of course, some of the added challenge is also due to issues with poor AI, hard to read attack animations, or simply as a matter of bad luck.
Even with a few faults, the combat system is one of the game's highlights. When you get into a flow and a rhythm, there is nothing more satisfying than stringing together chains of critical hits, stealth kills, dodges and sidesteps, all of which lead into a flurry of attacks from one foe to another. However, one screw up could potentially lead to yet another checkpoint load when you inevitably die, and you will die time and time again. The combat could have actually been quite a bit better if the lock on system wasn't completely broken. Upon a foe's death, the target lock on will simply disappear, forcing you to manually acquire your next target. Now, I'm coming from a good 31 hours of Dark Souls 2 where the lock on system worked quite well. It flowed from foe to foe the moment one was defeated, so it was incredibly difficult to adjust to this new lock on system used in Bound by Flame. Despite all of these issues with the combat, it is still a high point working in Bound by Flame's favor. That is assuming your AI companion doesn't completely ruin it for you.
Throughout your journeys, a variety of friendly AI companions will fight along Vulcan's side. If only they weren't completely terrible. Just as you can bring up a menu to micro-manage Vulcan's combat abilities, you can also bring up a menu to give orders to your companions on the fly. These typically fall under a few standard offensive and defensive abilities. In general these companions are quite useless, except for taking the heat off of Vulcan for a few moments. When I give the order to attack from afar, I don't just mean that you should stand there while being ganged up on by three enemies. I want you to actually run away from the immediate threat when in danger as any good AI companion should. Perhaps situations like would be less frequent if the party command system was more robust. This is a scenario I encountered far too often with some of these companions. It's perhaps a good thing that your companions are instantly revived after battle because they will die a lot, and I do mean a lot. But all is not lost, as over time you will be able to develop relations with some of these companion characters, intimate relations. Again, given the rather poor dialogue and disappointing audio quality for many of these characters, you may find these situations more of a snooze fest than anything too titillating.
Perhaps even more curious is the fact that your companions will sometimes simply disappear. They will be by your side up until a cut-scene begins and suddenly they're warped into position after all is said and done. It's a bit jarring but as with many other things in this game, it's eventually something you just come to accept and move on from. It's one thing to not have much of yourself invested in the game's story due to the writing and dialogue, but it's another to further strip away any remaining vestiges of immersion by seeing characters warp in and out of scenes that they rightfully should be a part of. Even more curious are the times where story elements will pretend that you were alone in certain situations when it was very obvious that you had a companion and a witness with you the entire time.
It must be mentioned that there is a crafting system included with the game. Depending on the type of person you are, you may be thrilled to hear that a huge number of glowing objects can be examined and plundered in this game. Usually, these will hold crafting materials or gold that Vulcan will hold on to. Use the crafting materials to upgrade your weapons, upgrade your gear, create healing potions, create traps, and much more. Even defeated foes drop tiny sacks of materials for you to pick up. Sadly, each fallen foe drops an individual pickup, meaning you will spend most of your post-fight time mashing the loot button to pick up everything in the area. This can become incredibly tedious over the course of the entire game, especially when you run into those cases where you have to be in one specific spot to pick up an item that you can clearly see at your feet. The loot drop system could have been streamlined and I doubt there would have been even one complaint about it from anybody.
It is apparent that Spiders put a lot of work into their environments and texture work. Many of the textures used in the game are beautifully detailed, including many areas that most players will simply never notice. The color palette is generally quite bright, ranging from lush green forested areas to more red, hellish type landscapes. I did notice quite a few instances of object pop-in during the course of playing the game. Many of these were for non-critical world objects such as bushes or tents, but it was always jarring to see an object randomly pop into existence ten feet in front of my face. There also seems to be a rather poorly implemented attempt at ambient occlusion used in this game. In a few cases, objects and characters will display what appears to be a thick outline around them. It almost appears as though these objects or characters are cel-shaded at a glance but upon further review, it is merely the badly implemented AO rearing its head. Yet again, this isn't an “all the time” situation, but when it happens it is very noticeable. Finally, while the framerate on the PlayStation 4 version of the game is decent, there were quite a few times where the drops in framerate were very apparent. I have no idea how the PC version of the game runs, nor do I have any idea for the other platforms, but the PlayStation 4 version does suffer from framerate drops. I did not notice any cases of screen tearing but if you are a stickler for a constant framerate, you may want to reconsider Bound by Flame on the PS4.
Without a doubt, Bound by Flame has a lot working against it, but priced at $49.99 (USD) for the PS4 version and just $39.99 (USD) for every other platform (360, PS3, PC), this is a game that is almost too difficult to score. Sure, there is a ton of bad in this game, from the audio, to the AI, to many story elements, some rather stiff animations and more, but there is also a lot of fun to be had. Perhaps I've enjoyed my time with Bound by Flame for all the wrong reasons. Perhaps it was wrong of me to want to keep playing just to see what absurd things Vulcan would do or say next. Perhaps my enjoyment of the game came from the charm and the understanding of what Spiders was looking to accomplish with this game. In the hands of a larger studio, a game with the scope of Bound by Flame could have easily been a game of the year for many people and I have to admire that Spiders is reaching for such lofty goals. I would have liked to have seen them tone back on what they were striving for and wished they had spent their time refining and perfecting a handful of gameplay elements instead of trying to become the one game that has everything.
The main story should take most gamers roughly 10 hours to complete and that includes skipping large sections of dialogue throughout. When you toss in the absolutely massive number of optional side-quests, you're looking at a tremendous deal here. Even with the notable flaws, there is a lot of potential. There is no doubt in my mind that this game will be very polarizing when it comes to both professional reviews and with the gaming public. Even I started off quite disliking the game but eventually came to just have fun with what was offered. The game sits in that weird price range that isn't quite a full-priced title but isn't quite yet in the “budget” territory for most gamers.
My honest feelings on Bound by Flame are that if you go into it with no expectations, you will end up being pleasantly surprised. If you go into this thinking it is a new competitor to The Witcher or Dark Souls, then you will end up being sorely disappointed. Even with its numerous faults, I had fun, and once all is said and done isn't that ultimately what playing games is supposed to be about.
Overall: 6/10
Gameplay: 5.5/10
Audio: 4/10
Visuals: 7/10
Value: 9/10
Gameplay: 5.5/10
Audio: 4/10
Visuals: 7/10
Value: 9/10
Related Information
Title: Bound by Flame
Platforms: PlayStation 4, PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
Rated: M for Mature (Blood, strong language, suggestive themes, violence)
Website: http://www.boundbyflame.com/
This review is based on the PlayStation 4 version of the game as provided to us by Spiders and Focus Home Interactive for review purposes.
