Bound By Flame

It’s not a long game by any means, requiring about fifteen hours or so depending on how much you decide to explore, but sometimes you just don’t need 40 or 50 hours to kick ass and take names. Sometimes you need a set of dull armor, Vulcan’s attitude, and a demon to kickstart your hunger for meatier storytelling and content delivery. Bound By Flame is the midnight snack that sates, but leaves you wanting something a bit more savory. But when the snack is this tasty, you may find yourself coming back for a second helping a lot quicker than you might think.

Bound By Flame has one huge strength: the harmony between its entertaining combat and role-playing systems. Granted, its weak storytelling does weigh it down, and its performance on PS4 is a bit of a bummer, but the strong core of its gameplay powers it through to transcend these flaws. Bound By Flame’s combination of progression and action ultimately make it greater than the sum of its parts.

Bound By Flame was almost made to be divisive. If you love gameplay above all else, then this will be an enjoyable experience for you. But if you're more of a story-driven gamer, then it would be wise to steer clear of this particular title.

Bound by Flame is the PlayStation 4's first foray into the magical land of fantasy role-playing games. Over the last few months leading up to release, developer Spiders has thrown numerous trailers and screenshots online, and although you can never judge a finished product from its media, it's worth pointing out that this particular title hasn't quite measured up to the lofty expectations that its attractive videos and pictures have created. There are no doubt a lot of good ideas here, and some are executed fairly well, but when all's said and done, the title never really manages to ignite.

Those looking for a semi-solid RPG for the PS4 have found one. Emphasis on semi, though. Here is our Bound By Flame review...

Though Bound By Flame is an interesting game, it felt lacking. A little more could have made this game one of the best.

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Every show we saw Bound By Flame at had us believing this could be the studio’s breakout RPG. But at those shows, we only saw the game… we never played it. That should have been our first warning. Bound By Flame is a generic, poorly designed, and almost offensive experience that I would only recommend ever picking up when it’s $5 or less during a Steam Sale.

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Spiders has quickly established itself as one of the more prolific RPG developers around. But has the speed of release affected the quality of its first PS4 entry? Probably.

Spiders wanted Bound By Flame to be their big breakout hit but penny-pinching on theirs or their publisher’s side will hold them back. The combat system works pretty well once you get over the lack of a roll button and it actually gets very satisfying as soon as you get used to it, as well as level up a bit. Despite the lack of a real resolution the story is pretty intriguing and compellingly bleak, although I wish there were more actual choices rather than “you’ve used magic too much, ...