What the current generation of consoles are missing is a good RPG, and that’s exactly what Bound by Flame provides on the PS4. Not a great RPG, but definitely a good one that’s worth your time.
In Bound by Flame, you play as Vulcan, a mercenary for hire in the Freeborn Blades. Traps are your specialty and you never miss the chance to exhibit your quick wit and silver tongue as much as your combat prowess. A guild of magicians called the Red Scribes have attempted a ritual that’s gone horribly wrong, and you’ve somehow ended up with a demon living inside of your body. It’s offering to give you power beyond your wildest dreams, but at the cost of your humanity. You may need this demon’s help to defeat Blackfrost and the Ice Lords, but how important is your humanity? Will you suppress the demonic influence, or unleash the fury?
Starting off in Bound by Flame, you’re tasked with creating your character. Oddly enough, no matter what you decide to name your mercenary, the game will still refer to you as Vulcan during dialogue scenes. There are also no additional races to pick from, but you can choose your gender and select from 5 or 6 different faces and hairstyles to customize your appearance a bit. Vulcan is also rather short with people, curses a lot and comes off as sarcastic most of the time, but you have no way of altering their personality outside of choosing to go demon or human.
Character customization isn’t Bound by Flame‘s trump card, but how you decide to play does alter certain dialogue options and presents a drastic change in your appearance; think being extremely evil in Fable for instance. It also offers a solid crafting system that allows you to change the statistics and appearance of various pieces of weapons and armor, so the customization does go beyond just the character’s face.
You don’t have to battle the Ice Lords alone, as Bound by Flame offers a great cast of companion characters that are full of personality. It does offer a story that’s easy to follow and full of light-hearted dialogue, but be warned that it does feature more than a handful of F-bombs and sexual innuendos. At one point in the game, after you’ve killed a boss monster’s concubines, your busty, sarcastic witch companion suggests that the boss will have to start using his hand now.. and that’s when I knew all bets were off. Still, its delivery is comedic and charming on the same level as Risen 2: Dark Waters.
As a mercenary, Vulcan is well versed with many different weapon types. Combat in Bound by Flame allows you to switch between using giant 2-handed weapons, daggers, a crossbow, explosive traps and various fire spells, but much like the character customization, it’s not perfectly executed.
Swordplay seems rather sluggish at times, but offers the ability to block and parry attacks, while using daggers allows for a more stealthy approach. Daggers allow you to prowl around enemies undetected and open up with high damage sneak attacks, but while they do offer more mobility, their overall damage is obviously lower. Using both of these in combination with your fire spells and traps is the best way to deal with enemies, but I never ran in to a situation where I felt the use of traps or crossbows was ever necessary. The options are there if that’s something you’re interested in doing, but if they were absent from the game completely you’d never even notice.
Aside from the general hack-and-slash combat, Vulcan has 4 different fire spells you can use, like bathing your weapon in fire to increase its damage or hurling fireballs at your enemies. I found the fire spells fun to use when they actually worked, but each one has such a long cast time that a majority of my attempts to use any of them ended up being interrupted by incoming attacks.
As you level up, you can allocate points in to three different skill trees focusing on improving your effectiveness with 2-handed weapons, daggers or fire spells. You’re also given a separate set of Character Feat points to spend on passive upgrades like a larger health pool, better chances of finding loot or reducing the materials needed to craft traps and potions.
I really enjoyed the idea of what Bound by Flame offered with its skill trees, but since the game is only about 15 hours long you’re severely penalized for experimentation. For instance, you’re required to allocate so many points in to each tree before you’re able to purchase its main ability — like slowing down time, or summoning a fire spirit to aid you in combat — but since the game moves along at such a fast pace, it wasn’t until the final act that I had finally reached my comfort zone with each attack type and knew what I wanted to do.
There were moments in between where I’d start to like using 2-handed weapons, but had to decide if it was worth investing points in to the skill tree or just putting them in to daggers where I felt more comfortable. I could have also alleviated my problem with fire spell interruption by allocating points in to the Pyromancer skill tree, but again, at the cost of not improving my favored daggers. Being able to reallocate my skill points would have been a most welcome addition, but since there was no turning back, I always did get the feeling that each point earned was an invaluable resource, and I like that a bit.
I do think Bound by Flame would have fared better had it been a longer game, thus offering more time to experiment and more points to earn and allocate, but I wasn’t completely turned off by its shorter length — by RPG standards, anyway. While it does offer decent customization and a decent combat system, what really blew me away was the absolutely stunning enemy design and one of the best musical scores I’ve heard in a game this year.
Most, if not all of the enemy designs are completely brilliant. During your time in the land of Vertiel you’ll run in to gigantic armored guardians, dragons, patchwork concubines and horrendously disfigured undead beings that are almost Silent Hill-like. I was so impressed by the different enemy designs that I couldn’t stop taking screenshots with my PS4. Olivier Deriviere, who you may know from his musical contributions in Assassin’s Creed IV: Freedom Cry and Remember Me, completely nailed the atmosphere and delivery in Bound by Flame and I feel that its soundtrack is up there with some of the best in the business.
Overall I did enjoy my time with Bound by Flame and I could easily recommend it to any PS4 owner who is in dire need of a new RPG. I did run in to some technical flaws, like NPCs referring to my character as “he” while I was playing a female, but I still found it to be a fun experience that was full of great enemy designs, an astonishing soundtrack and sometimes charming dialogue. I just wish it were a bit longer.
Recommended for fans of: Hack-and-slash RPG’s, Nier, Risen 2: Dark Waters, Dragon Age 2
Bradley Keene is an avid gamer & aspiring writer from Baltimore, MD that handles news, reviews and editing here at What’s Your Tag?. If he’s not writing or knee-deep in a video game, he’s usually watching low-budget horror films or following Orioles baseball. Follow him on Twitter, Twitch or contact him by e-mail. Love gaming? Join TEAM XBRO today!
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AMG! YOU ARE USING A FACE AS YOUR ICON! IT MUST BE YOURS!
Bound By Flame is actually on my radar, so its good that you enjoyed it. I’ll likely pick this up on a steam sale.
Lol yeah, I switched it earlier today. I see a lot of places really pounding this game in the rear with low scores, but maybe I’m just easy to please. It was definitely a basic game, but it was interesting enough for me to finish it off and want to do another playthrough at some point for trophy purposes.
It’s a mix between the ridiculous dialogue of Risen 2 and maybe the combat of Dragon Age 2? It’s a budget title, so you can pick it up on Steam today for $33 I think.
I’m looking for that cheap ass $5 pickup. It worked for Shadowrun Returns, it works for everything.
Anything is possible on Steam
Reblogged this on Reviewer Discretion.
Thank you, kind sir!
I hear that the game is really easy. You cannot die as Vulcan lives long and prospers.
I died a few times actually, but it was more so due to the camera during a specific boss fight than anything else. There are 4 difficulty levels though, so if you wanted to ramp it up, the option is there. I also found the final boss encounter to be slightly challenging on the default setting.
As an RPG fanatic I’ve been seriously considering this game. I don’t always mind the slightly shorter RPG to fit in-between the slightly larger more overwhelming ones, so long as I feel like I’ve had my moneys worth. It’s a shame to hear that the swordplay is a little sluggish as it was partly the combat that drew me to the game. The story and skill trees sound really cool though. I like games that make you feel like it really matters where you choose to spend your points. Perhaps when Steam drops the price a little I’ll give it a go.
The swordplay is supposed to be a little sluggish I think, since you’re swinging giant 2-handed weapons, but even still it didn’t feel fluid enough to me. I did enjoy the dagger gameplay a bit, but even that was really just mashing the attack button and doing “perfect dodges” to riposte. The combat was just decent and basic, which is really the entire theme of the game aside from the enemy design and the soundtrack. Keep in mind the story is faster paced, so you never get the full reason as to why things are happening, and there are tons of F-bombs and sex jokes. It’s not for everyone, but if you’ve played something like Risen 2, you know what kind of humor you’re walking in to.
If you check the gameplay video in the review, that shows the dagger and stealth combat, but unfortunately I didn’t record much with 2-handed weapons.