Quick Look: Bound By Flame

Nice! I've been waiting for some videos before I decide if this is worth it. Thanks duders!

Successor to Mars: War Logs? Seems legit

I do not have high hopes for this game. Yet I love that it exists.

Private Bumpkin is already my favourite character in the entire game.

1:14:36 - responsability

Oh no, this does not seem like a very good game.

Oh man, is the main character voiced by the same guy who did Travis Touchdown?

The sequel to The Testament of Sherlock Holmes.

Robin Atkin Downes, yes.

I hope it's good! I want a current-next-gen game to play!

Nice! I thought that was him. That voice with that attitude really sounded familiar.

Main character voice sounds like someone from Diablo 3 somewhere.. Thats where my bet is placed.

This kind of reminds me of the Game of Thrones rpg.

@seikenfreak said:

That would be the male Demon Hunter class.

That video description can't get me watching this any faster.

I think RPGs are the one genre where I forgive games a whole bunch of shit, because I enjoy them so much.

Give me a mediocre RPG any day, and this looks pretty passable.

As an example, I really enjoyed Two Worlds, and think that Two Worlds II is an amazing game in some respects, while being horribly shitty in others.

Edit: Remembered another one: Rise of the Argonauts. Colossally bad, really enjoyed it.

Please! The Spiritual Successor guys. I was kinda waiting for this QL actually.

The voice acting is actually okay. It's not actively bad, anyway.

I might Gamefly this or something.

Also Brad, I'm pretty sure they give you the mats so you can spend them, man. Huge upgrade or not, just do it.

It should.

They shit these games out on an annual basis.

The Game of Thrones rpg, Of Orcs and Men, Mars: War Logs all pretty bad too, all following the same boilerplate formula. And every time their games are released on Steam they are full of cutscene bullshots that are never representative of the actual games. On a positive side they drop down in price to 5 bucks very quickly.

Looks kinda Witcher 2... Dragon Age-y with a hint of Souls? Could be nice, though the setting, characters and art direction are not even close to any of those games quality.

Maybe It'll be worth taking a look later on, during an Action RPG drought. Just not at full price, IMO.

[edit] Forget what I said -- Watching further in the QL, the combat seems Witcher level jerky -- this looks like unrewarding frustration in a can!

"What do you think so far?"

"Of the game?"

Probably my favorite part.

Think Witcher 1 - janky and weirdly interesting.

The design isn't really my thing and the thick outlines of the characters don't really help either.

More like Bounden Flame. Eh?

The difficulty of this game seems more of the artificial kind rather than due to challenging design. Giving the enemies a ludicrous amount of health, make it so they barely flinch, and can also kill you in like 4-5 hits is just the laziest method to making your game difficult.

Also, it appears to be a common criticism for how quickly your party member will fall in battle.

Brad mentions reviews a lot. Just an observation.

Could be. But I feel like in Witcher and Witcher 2 I'd forgive the combat because the story and characters where so good. Which doesn't look like the case here.

Game looks cool but as always....Brad sucks at video games.

Ahh, Brad. I guess he can't be blamed, some things about the game are less obvious.

The "outlines" around characters are just due to a bad Ambient Occlusion effect that creates a shadowy halo rather than doing its proper job of darkening areas where light can't reach as much. I disabled it immediately since bad AO looks worse than no AO.

By skipping dialogue to get to the "fighting," which seems to be a weird fucking obsession with RPG quick looks, we actually get less information than we should get. We'll see the combat eventually guys, show us some more story and actually let the VO play out, that's more useful than skipping through all of it. Don't worry, we don't have ADD, we won't close the video if you're not constantly punching something.

You couldn't pick up the loot because you weren't out of combat yet. You were locked on to the tentacle 20 feet away and you said "Let's not go this way!" which was basically saying "Let's not get this loot!" You get the loot once combat is over.

Battles go by a thousand times faster once you actually parry often. This isn't Dark Souls, it's not incredibly hard to do -- upgrade that parry skill and you'll be dishing out constant crits AND it opens up the window for parries even more, much better than blocking and waiting for an opening, which just doesn't happen for some enemies. Especially since you're not using much magic or many ranged attacks at all, which are also much better when upgraded, of course. Same with dodging in Ranger Stance.

I'm not 100% done with the QL yet, but it appears Brad doesn't use his AOE attacks, which just means hitting Triangle instead of Square, extremely useful for those situations where your party member is being attacked by lots of enemies and you've got like 4 enemies' backs exposed to you.

The game is actually surprisingly good if you know you're not getting some AAA title -- it's a mid-tier game at a mid-tier price ($30ish on Steam, not sure about the consoles) that the developers made very clear wasn't trying to compete with things like Skyrim and whatnot. Think of it like a low-rent, B-Movie version of The Witcher, but with (In my opinion at least) better combat, since so much of it can make you vastly more powerful by getting the timing down right.

Its got cheesy but enjoyable voice acting, the graphics are decent, it seems to run very smooth (On PC at least, QL looked like it was running decent on PS4 for the most part, too.) and if you're down for one of those fabled mid-tier games that everyone says are dead, you might enjoy this. It's some classic Eurojank fun.

Also it's like infinitely better than Mars: War Logs. I said infinitely because any quantifiable number still turns to 0 when multiplied by that piece of crap.

Plenty of people seem to be jumping into this game.

Sounds like they're so desperate for something, anything, to play on their fancy new systems that they'll let themselves get hyped for some Eurojank.

This will not be fondly remembered, not even as a foot note in the launch of the current consoles.

Yes this is definitely a Witcherlike.

Funny, I'm enjoying it on my PC, and I'm simultaneously playing Dark Souls 2, Child of Light and am patiently waiting for Transistor next week. It's a decent, fun little Eurojank RPG. Not every game needs to be "remembered" to be enjoyed. It's entertaining.

I weirdly dig the soundtrack to this game.... some interesting stuff going on in that regard.

This seems like a fun video game. Not legendary, but a fun pulp tide-me-over.

Rare that a game is just too dull to watch a QL of, but this is one of them.

@xbob42: Holy shit I forgot Transistor was coming out soon.

@xbob42: While your point is taken, outside of the AOE thing, which I guess should have been pretty obvious to anyone playing the game for a couple of hours, none of that stuff was the type of thing where I could immediately see what Brad was doing wrong. He is right in saying that there should be multiple viable strategies. If your only option to quickly get past battles is to counter every attack then it is just a poorly designed game. Even in super hard action games like Ninja Gaiden you don't need to counter every attack on the normal difficulty. It is required on the harder difficulties, sure, but on normal blocking and dodging is just as viable a strategy. This game just seems super hard without being super fun. Plus waiting and then countering does not make for super interesting combat (see Assassin's Creed) unless you spice it up with a lot of variety(see Batman Arkham). Also, it was Vinny who said that the outlines were an artistic choice. Brad told him it was unintentional. Vinny openly admits he doesn't know (or care that much) about technical visual stuff. And even people who do know a lot about graphics tech often don't get exactly what AO is, especially because it is rarely done quite as poorly as it was done here.

Seven hours in and this game is pretty OK. The demon-possession thing is sort of interesting and the crafting is deep enough. Some fight encounters are designed really poorly around the battle arenas, but otherwise it feels like a clunkier Witcher 2.

The female lead seems to mostly sleepwalk through her performance, but I think she voiced the main character in Syberia, so I'm looking past it.

I was about to write that I was surprised Vinny didn't mention Of Orcs and Men considering how the warrior/stealth split combat role thing was present in that game as well and was also made by Spiders. But then it occurred to me that pretty much no one remembers Or Orcs and Elves seeing how it was so ridiculously mediocre. Mars was offensively bad and the horrendous dialogue here resembles that a lot more than it does Of Orcs and Men. I have to wonder how much of the blame falls on Focus here considering the new translation of Mars removed a lot of the swearing and anachronistic dialogue.

@raven10: I understand where you're coming from, but you're also missing the point. You don't "sit and wait" to counter, you attack constantly, and counter mid-animation. The counters and dodging are usable at any time and as Brad said they are extremely responsive. He was dodging just fine, the counter has only a slightly smaller window and dramatically increases your damage done. You don't HAVE to use it, but it makes the combat about 10,000x more fun. If you're not using it, the combat's just sort of mundane, but being aware of multiple enemies attacking you and knowing when to counter (during which you're invincible, very important) is what makes the combat something more than your typical action RPG.

And appealing to other games doesn't mean much. This isn't other games, this is Bound By Flame, the combat is designed around the idea of you getting in there and knowing how to utilize your defensive abilities. It's not hard to use them, and they make the battles much more interesting, I don't see the problem!

@xbob42: would read again.

edit: Also really confused Brad wouldn't mention that this is like the olden days when we had mid tier games. Just solid games you can play if you're looking for something in a specific genre (at least what I pick up out of the QL). I guess that's why he likes it although "he really shouldn't" (which is a weird thing to say about games anyway, unless, maybe it's some weird Japanese game about schoolgirls or similar). I would also bet that the combat is better manageable if you use more of your abilities.

Freaking Brad with your "I'm dying constantly and I'm super weak but I'm not going to upgrade my weapons" mentality. You realize you're supposed to be showing this game off, right? It's not fun watching you die constantly and deal practically no damage. You have upgrade points, so use them dammit.

I just figured this out a few minutes ago while playing this game. The combat is much more manageable once you stop playing it like Dark Souls.

Kevin Van Ord said the voice acting was atrocious, but only the main guy seems all that bad..? That's mostly what he says too, not how he says it.

The game seems like it could be a bit better but I'm really digging the music.

Haha, I personally really like the voice acting for the main character, it's so absurdly B-Movie quality that it's charming in a silly way. Doesn't mean it's good, but I like it.

I'm a few hours in, and I'm enjoying it. If you are an action rpg fan then I think its a good buy. I plan on finishing it.

Well, they can't all be winners.

The game itself doesn't look great, but I love the way the interface looks at least.

A B-grade RPG where Travis Touchdown shit-talks his way through a fantasy land? I can get down with that. Will buy and play one day when it's on sale.

I beat this game in about 20-25 hours. The dialogue is probably the funniest thing about Bound by Flame. Vulcar channels Bruce Campbell by the end of the game. It's pretty comical.