Bound… by… Flame. This game came out in 2014 and was developed by Spiders, a French company also known in later years for games like The Technomancer and Greedfall, the latter which came out in 2019 and was actually enjoyable, in a weird and frustrating kind of way (the Backlog BBQ entry for that one can be found here.) And that, in a way, kind of describes Spiders’ games in a nutshell. They’re weird, janky, and overall very… average. Yet at the same time, there’s a draw to them that I can never quite put my finger on. They’re a guilty pleasure game. They’re that kind-of-attractive co-worker you’d totally bang but never openly admit to it. You know what I mean. It’s okay, you don’t have to say it out loud. We all just… know.
Okay, let me take a deep breath for a moment. In order to prepare for this write-up, I actually went back and did a quick re-read of the review I wrote for Greedfall. Just to kinda “get my bearings.” And man, I’d be lying if I said that review didn’t sound a hell of a lot like what I was going to write for this one. Spiders definitely has a style.
First off, before I shit all over Spiders, I have to say, I do appreciate what they create. They were out there making third person action-RPG’s in a time when (on consoles) there wasn’t a whole lot happening. Between them and Piranha Bytes, we’ve enjoyed a good decade or so of classic Euro-jank RPG gaming that never seem to do well in the ratings yet always seem to have a dedicated following. I myself am a pretty big fan of Euro-jank, having played a lot of the Risen series, Gothic, and Arcania. I even beat both entries into the Two Worlds series (the first game being the “Jank” poster-child.) I haven’t yet got my dirty mitts on Elex, but with the sequel recently announced, I just might have to give it a look.
I’m going to start by giving Spiders a little bit of a pass for Bound by Flame. It was obviously a small-scale RPG done by what was, I’m assuming, a pretty small team. We’ve become a little bit spoiled in this day and age by some of the offerings we’ve gotten since then, and even by Greedfall’s standards it shows that Spiders is learning and improving with each subsequent release. I can’t very well hold 2021 Spiders accountable for what 2014 Spiders cranked out.
But anyone coming into this game in the current year of 2021 and beyond would do well to listen and/or read what I have to say. Because it’s gonna save you some time. A second playthrough’s worth of time.
I Had To Start Over… at the Final Boss
I’m going to start this out with the most egregious sin that an RPG can ever, ever commit, and that’s the illusion of choice, both in your character build and in your story.
There are many, many RPG’s out there that have a pre-set story. Hell, it was one of the great things that differentiated Western RPG’s from the more traditional JRPG’s. Eastern role-playing games had very specific classes and a static storyline that progressed in a linear manner, whereas Western RPG’s embraced the freedom to create the character you wanted to create and make the choices you wanted to make.
Bound by Flame starts off with a whole lot of promise, informing you that you have the power to change the course of the story, but then, after the first major decision, quickly yanks that power away and sets you on a course that you may or may not want to go in. I made the first crucial decision (to let the demon have “more control”) with the understanding that I would be able to choose just how much control over the course of the game. In truth, once the demon takes over, that’s pretty much it.
But my really, really big gripe comes with the fact that the demon takes over with the promise of “more power.” Literally everything the demon does is motivated by the possibility of gaining back lost power. Power, power, power. It never shuts up about it. The thing is, it never really gets all that powerful. In fact, each “level” of possession comes with a buff and a debuff. There are two problems with this: One, the game never tells you these will exist. Two, the buffs are not worth the debuffs. The pros consist of a bit of magic regeneration and an extra couple of magic points. Magic potions are quite abundant, and pretty cheap, so having enough magic is never really an issue. The cons, on the other hand, are a 20% reduction in armor protection, and a -20 resistance to ice magic. Your character is fighting the Ice Lords. Literally all the magic in the game is ice magic. It’s kind of a big deal. On top of that, the hero loses the ability to wear a helmet due to the horns that now protrude from his/her head. So you’re down that little bit of an armor bonus too.
So the first strike was that I inadvertently chose a path I could not back away from. The second strike came from my own doing. There are three skill trees, and rather than pick a tree and stick to it, I spread the wealth a little too evenly. Therefore, at the end of the game, I was a “Jack of all Trades” and a King of None, to put it simply.
I managed to get completely through the game, only to realize at the final boss that my build just wasn’t going to work. Over a half an hour’s worth of spamming health potions and hacking away at the WorldHeart still left me dead with over 25% of the boss’s health still intact. That is no bueno.
After I calmed, and quite literally gave in to defeat, I decided to do the thing that I really, really didn’t want to do; I started over. From the beginning. Luckily, I knew which mistakes I made, and I wasn’t going to make them again. The first order of business was to tell the demon to piss off. In doing so, at every opportunity, I managed to keep my possession level at zero. This resulted in some story changes, mainly character betrayals that are dependent on whether you’re good or evil, but mainly it kept those debuffs off my character for good.
The second thing I did was dump all of my skill points into my Warrior tree. Despite Spiders never explicitly saying so, it’s obvious this is the tree you’re supposed to build up. It’s your “primary” fighting stance, (the other being the Ranger, which is negligible at best). Now, dodging is important, and only the Ranger stance can dodge, so it did require some love in the skill point department, and the Pyromancer tree required a few points as well to make magic regenerate and to give myself a few of the more useful magic skills, but by and large, the vast majority of points went straight into Warrior.
Fortunately, the game isn’t terribly long, and I was able to get through it fairly quickly, without all the guesswork of playing through it the first time. I knew where all the quest objectives were, so a lot of the pointless wandering was kept to a minimum. My second attempt at the boss still required quite a bit of potion spamming due to the somewhat cheap nature of the boss itself, but needless to say I managed to finish it off, and the battle only lasted a fraction of the time as my previously failed attempt. So, bottom line: Stay human. Be a warrior. You’re welcome.
And yet…
That was my main complaint for the game. Everything else were minor gripes, and as I said up at the beginning, the game isn’t great by any stretch of the imagination, but considering I played all the way through it, then started over and played all the way through it again, says something about it, right? I mean, there’s something catchy about the game, and I can’t put my finger on it. The graphics aren’t great. The story is serviceable but ultimately kinda dumb. The writing is weird and oddly self-aware; everyone talks as if they’re in a medieval play except for the main character, Vulcan, who talks like they’re in a Mel Brooks movie. There are far more questions than answers, and the entire game plays like it takes place in a much larger world, referencing things and entities that never actually make an appearance. Spoiler alert – the entire game is about humanity’s last stand against the Ice Lords and their undead army. Well, you play through the entire game and never even see the aforementioned Lords of the Ice. The not-quite-final boss might have been one of them, but I’m not a hundred percent sure that distinction is ever made. In the end he’s kind of a push-over and I was left wondering just what the big deal was. This was the guy we spent the entire game cowering from? I mean, he raised an ocean and covered the entire castle in ice, but the best he can do in a battle is split into three? Really?
The music, on the other hand, can be quite good in places, and the voice acting is pretty solid, despite some questionable writing (I will never, ever be okay with olde english dialog. It’s never not cringey.) “Dost thou flee-eth thy domain and leave thee sitting in thine own piss?” Nobody can be taken seriously talking like that. It’s why we don’t do it anymore. Just stop.
In closing…
Bound by Flame was a game I got on a deep, deep discount. We’re talking maybe four bucks. Not four bucks off, literally four dollars. It was firmly planted in the “Ahh what the hell” price range, where it pretty much stays. The game has practically been given away in almost every sale Microsoft has had for the past year. I grabbed it because I kept seeing it there and it was kind of like a lost puppy. You can only tell it no so many times before you start putting down newspaper in the laundry room.
I don’t regret the purchase in the slightest. I mean, it’s hard to at that price point, but still, I put in the time (twice over) and played it through. That’s more than I can say for a lot of games, so that’s something. Your mileage on Bound by Flame may vary, and honestly if you’re a stickler for combat, you’ll likely be unhappy with it, but there is some fun to be had here. It’s not a terrible game. It’s just not amazing, either, and graphically, it really shows its age. Despite its relative ugliness though, the game ran consistently well, so there’s that.
The game is currently sitting at a 56 on Metacritic, and I’d say that’s fair. It’s a very average game, and it doesn’t hold up quite as well as some other games in this genre.
I played this on…
Bound by Flame is a native Xbox 360 game, but I experienced it via backward compatibility, bouncing back and forth between the Xbox One X (for capture purposes) and Xbox Series S (for relaxed couch purposes). The game does not benefit from One X enhancements, so you’ll get largely the same experience no matter which of the four console generations you play it on (X360, XBO, XBO X, Xbox Series S/X). The Series S/X does benefit from Auto-HDR, but from what I can tell the difference is hardly noticeable.
Now, graphically the game is a bit of an ugmo, so if fidelity is a concern of yours, there is a version of the game on PS4 that looks like it has a few next-gen bells and whistles, such a better resolution, and lighting that doesn’t look like complete garbage. If you have a choice and absolutely want to give this game a try, the PS4 version might be the way to go.
