Bound By Flame - Review Roundup

I was going to wait till later but decided what the hell. Here are a bunch of new reviews for Bound By Flame that range from good to very poor.

Game Informer  - 8/10

A skilled player doing no sidequests and blowing through dialogue can complete the game in about 10-12 hours, but this is sacrificing a ton of content both in the quest, exploration, and relationship-building categories. When you invest the time to master the challenging combat and explore the world, Bound by Flame is a solid romp with rewarding tactical action supported by rewarding boss battles and plenty of ways to see your choices reflected in the world around you.

Games Radar - 3.5/5

If you go into Bound by Flame hoping to play a choice-laden game where every selection you make slowly shapes the world around you, you’ll be greatly disappointed. While you do get some say in how things play out, the outcome will no doubt be the same and your decisions don’t seem that important in the overall development of the story. It’s the rapid-fire decisions made mid-battle and the rich customization options at your disposal that truly let you make the game your own. You do have a demon on your side, after all.

IncGamers - 6/10

I enjoyed my time with Bound by Flame, short as it was. I feel that more could have been added to most aspects of the game, and many of you might agree. This makes DLC seem likely, and a good sized addition to the game could make it feel more complete.

This being said, I think most people will find some enjoyment in Bound by Flame, and while it may not be the best action RPG ever made, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to start my second playthrough.

Gamespot - 4/10

By RPG standards, Bound by Flame isn't a very long or expansive game. If you don't consider the battles you must repeat, the adventure is around a dozen hours long, and there is no world to explore, unless you consider a few medium-size levels made up of twisting hallways to be a world. Bound by Flame shoves too many ideas into its cramped boundaries, thus giving none of them the room they deserved to blossom, and thereby allowing the flames to burn the joy away.

Polygon - 4/10

I tried everything I could think of to get myself to care about Bound by Flame, but eventually I tired of doing all the heavy lifting myself. Between a stale plot that goes nowhere, poorly handled characters and a clunky, boring combat system, there was nothing left for me to hang onto, no momentum left to help propel me. Bound by Flame is worse than just generic; it's a mess of a game pretending at greater ambitions.

And the worst of the bunch from Video Gamer that gave the game a 2/10.

While it features the basic building blocks of an RPG, the presentation they’re wrapped in is offensively shoddy. Graphically it sits somewhere between Morph and that Starship Troopers CGI cartoon you saw once in the 90s. The voice acting is atrocious, especially if you opt for the female lead, who seems to have been directed to sound like Roseanne Barr at her most sarcastic, at all times, no matter the tone of the scene. But you’ll come to regard the horrendous cutscenes as welcome breaks from the tedium of fighting the same forever-respawning handful of enemies for hour after endless hour. Quests are plentiful, but almost every one is of the fetching kind, and that goes for both sidequests and story missions.