A bit of full disclosure here: I’m well aware of the AAA franchises out there like Elder Scrolls, Dragon Age, and The Witcher, and while I own all of those games, I have yet to actually, you know, play them (my backlog is hysterical). Anyway, these dark fantasy open world RPGs are heralded for their production quality, and are essentially ‘the bar’ that all other games in the genre are compared to. So enter Bound By Flame, a new game by Spiders, makers of Mars War Logs, Of Orcs And Men, and a couple of Sherlock Holmes games. Bound By Flame (BBF) is not in the same class as the AAAs, but if you’re a fan of those games or action RPGs in general, it would be a mistake to not play it.
Obviously there are a lot of ‘tells’ even just going into BBF that are evidence that it’s not a “Skyrim-killer.” It MSRPs for $50, it’s developed by a small, but passionate group out of France, and it hasn’t been hyped or advertised to hell and back. Pre-play BS aside, the game’s small footprint upon installation on the PS4 (only about 6GB) and the relatively scant character creation element might only further your doubts about the game at the outset. Even the first couple hours are a little dry, showing signs of potential of the experience going either way. Fortunately, and to my delight, I found myself really enjoying the game after that first hour. I became very comfortable with the mechanics and the gameplay elements. The combat was challenging, but fair, demanding attention to detail and punishing would-be button-mashers. The crafting was surprisingly deep and fun. I loved that I was regularly (every 1-3 hours) obtaining a new Level so that I could upgrade my Skills, spending points across a variety of disciplines from exploration to combat to crafting. I became more interested in subtle, and not so subtle mysteries in the plot and my character progression was steady and satisfying, for reasons I will elect not to spoil. While never a major concern to me in the first place, BBF’s cosmetic issues became less and less important the more I played. I came to find the cursing and a good portion of the dialogue snarky, in a good way. It was unusual, sure, to hear the characters use some language that you generally would never associate with dark fantasy RPGs, but in its own weird way, it works. At no point does the cursing get out of hand like it did in Killzone 2 or Kane & Lynch, by the way — and when it’s used, it’s usually funny in that tongue in cheek sort of way.
So let me take a step back now and breakdown my experience with BBF in more detail. The story behind the game involves the rise of the Deadarmy, brought to “life” by the seven Ice Lords. Their goal is to end humanity, and they’re well upon their way to success. The Freeborn Blades, a mercenary group, are contracted by the Red Scribes, a non-combative sect of sorcerers, to protect them so that they can perform a lengthy ritual that will hopefully turn the tide of this lop-sided war. As the powder master (explosives expert) and a relatively new member of the Blades, Vulcan (the protagonist) quickly finds himself at the forefront of the struggle. Fortunately you’re not alone, and while there is no multiplayer/co-op in BBF, in many cases, but not all, you can fight alongside an AI, known as a Companion, that you can direct to be more aggressive or passive. The Deadarmy is teeming with re-animated fallen warriors, but these aren’t zombies, thankfully. Instead, you’ve got Deadwalkers (weapon-wielding skeleton warriors) and ghosts and a variety of other creatures including some great bosses like the Werebeast and Tormentor. Combat is one of BBF’s strongest elements thanks to Stances and the well-balanced challenge. You can switch stances seamlessly by pressing R1, which toggles Warrior Stance and Ranger Stance. Warrior Stance is sort of the heavy weapons category — swords, pikes, the good ole brute force, two-handed weapons stuff is used here. In Ranger mode, dagger-like weapons are used for swift attacks that deal less damage by also afford you greater agility for dodging. You can also go stealth by pressing R3 and avoid battle altogether sometimes or at least get a damage boost with your first, undetected attack. In addition to Warrior and Ranger, Vulcan obtains Pyromancy abilities. The Warrior, Ranger, and Pyromancy disciplines all have four or five main upgradeable categories on which to spend your Skill Points. Dealing more damage, performing a charged attack sooner, increasing your Interrupt chances, becoming more deadly in stealth, increasing the duration of Pyromancy spells, all of these things and more can be upgraded as you go. Moreover, the upgrades in BBF are actually interesting — I often find myself mulling between several options, and deciding if I should spent one point now or save up to three for a bigger upgrade. The upgrades are more than just combat based too, but suffice it to say that I enjoyed having a lot of good options to consider.
This appreciable depth extends into Crafting as well. Fallen enemies often drop materials that you can collect with the press of a button, and these can also be found on side quests or randomly in the world, or purchased at merchants, not to mention a few materials can even be purchased with Gold while you’re “in the field.” Anyway, these raw materials can be combined with others, at any time, to make intermediate materials, such as taking Raw Metal and turning into Steel, and other stuff to make Heart Dust, and so forth. You can craft explosive traps, health and mana potions, and bolts for your crossbow, too. Armor upgrades are an important consideration as well, with multiple parts of individual armor pieces available to upgrade (three separate sections for the chest armor alone). These upgrades give both offensive and defensive boosts like +1% Physical Damage or perhaps you create a small, wearable token that gives you an extra 10% protection against Dark Magic. It’s easy to see what materials are required versus what you have in stock. Furthermore, you can Recycle items you no longer want or previous upgrades that you’ve decided to replace. Recycling is one of those other non-combative Skills, called Feats, that you can upgrade to become more proficient at, too.
I found the Crafting and Upgrading elements to be interesting and nicely done because there was always multiple worthwhile upgrades I wanted to strive for. And while there is a lot of depth and customization available, I never felt like I was having to fool with managing my inventory too much either, like I recall doing in Dungeon Siege 3, for example. Furthermore, getting new weapons and armor is also not really a common occurrence, so upgrading what you have is balanced very well with the challenges you encounter. Some kind of maintenance or damage mechanic might have been good to see, however. Speaking of challenges, BBF, on Normal, achieved a great balance in difficulty. It’s somewhat uncommon to die in normal battles, but the boss encounters can be pretty stout. Fortunately checkpoints are well placed, in-game cutscenes that play before such encounters can be skipped, and load times are in the sub-ten second range. BBF drops in saves at good intervals, and you can also save your progress (in a separate save slot) at anytime, other than when in the middle of battle. A tactic I found myself using was to go into battle, die, learn what I needed to change (be it equipped inventory, my shortcuts, the Companion’s tactics, crafting extra potions, etc), and then after the checkpoint reload but before going into battle again I would make all of these changes and then create a new savegame. This way, I could have all of my changes at the ready for the next time I died yet still have the checkpoint save to fall back on if I needed to.
BBF utilizes a “morale” system that alters your relationships with NPCs to a pretty significant degree. These choices come up in conversation and may seem pretty subtle at first, but the dynamic and the results are actually pretty compelling and gave me some pause for thought. It gives the game added replay value as well because I’m curious how things would have played out had I done things a different way, such as new quests being made available or relationships with the female Companions being different. These decision points come in conversation, and there is a lot of voiced dialogue exchanged between you and the NPCs. Most of this is optional, and while some of the voice-acting isn’t pleasant to listen to, what’s being said is generally pretty interesting. At some point I chose to stop exhausting all avenues of conversation with every NPC, but you do so at the risk of missing some interesting info, and perhaps more importantly, some humor too. Whether this humor is completely intentional I’m not sure, but the use of cursing and some of the passive-aggressive tones are actually pretty funny and give this game a certain charm, actually, that you rarely find. So while the characters themselves are pretty typical in their appearance and personalities, the conversations can surprise you with their tone and attitude. In strange sort of way, I liken this hard-to-explain dynamic to something like the unique characteristics seen in Deadly Premonition, although BBF does not have this intangible ‘it’ factor to the degree that Deadly Premonition does.
Moving on, I thought Spiders did a nice job with the controls, too. I didn’t note the in-game term for it, but L1 is a sort of pop-up menu that actually pauses the game allowing you to access inventory items, pyromancy skills, your crossbow, and AI commands. You can easily assign shortcuts to the main face buttons, such that you can press L1+Square to fire your crossbow, perfect for a quick ranged attack on a foe to stun them. Even cooler is that besides this button mapping method, you can simply swipe the touchpad in the direction of the button to use the function assigned to the shortcut. So if I wanted to use the crossbow but didn’t want to press the button, I just swipe my thumb to the left, and pow, bolt fired. If I assign a defensive pyromancy skill to L1+X, I can just swipe down to use it. This is actually pretty cool and works well. Oh, I would add that the light on the DS4 flashes at times too, I think just during battle and I believe to indicate an unblockable attack, but I’m not sure. Anyway, other controls are less intricate, such as R1 for toggling stance, R2 to block/parry, down on the d-pad to bring up the inventory/crafting/character sheet, X to sprint (no cooldown meter and Vulcan can run really fast, which is great for getting to where you’re going quickly), and so forth. Being able to pull up a mini and fullscreen overlay map is helpful, and I liked that the legend for understanding the map was simple and instantly intuitive. The main quest is marked simply with a “1” and all side quests are marked with “2,” and there are several other icons to indicate interesting NPCs and things like that.
To this point I have had a lot of neutral or positive things to say about BBF, but there are obviously some bad points too. I’ll start with some of the negatives in a bullet-style form, just as I noted them during play. First, you’ll encounter some invisible walls — places that look like they should be completely accessible yet they simply aren’t, which is a design flaw. On the other hand, there were times where by fireball attack literally went right through targeted enemies, doing no damage or causing no impact at all. These moments are irksome, but not game-breaking, and are rare. The Companions that come to battle with you are sometimes just props; if you stand back and watch them, you’ll notice that they might be making the sounds and animations of combat, but they aren’t too effective. In the worst cases, the AI will get themselves killed by being stupid, or in the case of one boss battle, they’ll get spammed with attacks that keep them from ever getting back up. As far as I can tell you cannot revive or otherwise provide HP aid to the AI, and they will revive automatically once you have cleared the immediate threats — but note that should they die during a boss fight, they are down until you defeat the boss. The death of an AI is not a game-ending condition, but their stupidity is aggravating at times. It’s often up to you to decide which AI to take into battle with you, so it’s important to note their abilities, and as mentioned previously, you can tune the AI’s combat approach simply by talking to them briefly to tell them to be more offensive or defensive, and this does help/work. Even during battle, when you can’t talk to them, you can change their combat approach by pressing L1 and then R2 for a sub-menu. Within this sub-menu, you can find more detailed directives besides being more aggressive or defensive; with Edwen, I could tell her to use more curse spells that essentially paralyze an enemy for several seconds or pit them against one another, giving me the ability to attack uninterrupted. I thought it noteworthy that fallen items cannot be picked up during active battle, even if you can see them; their prompts disappear until the battle is cleared, and you also cannot easily escape most battles. Also, practically all level design felt just a little bit cramped in terms of size and complexity.
Some of the other negatives I jotted down early on were things I eventually erased after putting some more time into the game and getting more comfortable with it. The combat system is deeper than it first seems and I have to say it’s satisfying and engaging, even though there are not elaborate combos like in a more action-oriented game. But getting used to the Stances and the timing for parrying and dodging and also getting comfortable with Interrupts is vital, but it’s something you gradually pick up after just a couple hours or so. The Crafting and menu navigation is somewhat similar, it takes just a little bit of getting used to and then it makes sense and works well. Outside of gameplay concerns, the presentation has some drawbacks. Poorly lip-synced cutscenes, which I can very easily overlook, are noteworthy. I also did not like a lot of the background music, in some areas it was cringe-worthy, in other areas it was good. The graphics have a modern look to them, but they’re also somewhat cel-shaded; the cel-shading isn’t anywhere near as obvious as something like Borderlands, and oddly it’s not something I noticed all of the time. Cel-shading is not inherently a bad thing. Regardless, I think BBF looks good, but on a technical level it will pale in comparison to upcoming titles like The Witcher 3, for what that’s worth. Still, the art direction isn’t bad, resulting in some items and characters that look great, and, I experienced no framerate issues, always a plus.
And with that, let’s get to the summary…
