Bound By Flame: The PS4's first RPG?

Summer can often be a lean period for games releases, with both of the new consoles suffering from a drought of new titles since their release. To make things worse, RPG's just don't seem to get published as often as they used to, especially when compared to the heady days of the PS2 era when they seemed to come out every other week.

So, Bound By Flame enters the fray as one of the first 3D, voice-acted RPG's for the PS4 - and there's no doubt that it fills a hole for me as an RPG fan. 

In fact, the game is an amalgamation of many great western RPG's I've played over the years. The combat is a watered down mix of Dark Souls with a smattering of the multi-weapon combat used in the Witcher series. 

The crafting reminds me of Two Worlds II, and the game borrows heavily from one of my favourites; Dragon Age: Origins in a number of ways, including the style, characters, enemies, the pause button, trap-making and more.

The trouble is, it never seems to amount to more than the sum of its parts. The developers should be commended for aiming for a game with a large scope, but for the most part, it's highly unpolished. 

Take the load times for example. It can take an absolute age to get through parts of the game and the areas aren't exactly large when compared to the minutes spent waiting to play, which breaks immersion and impacted on my overall enjoyment. 

The dialogue is woeful - with the added bonus of plenty of spelling mistakes in the subtitles, including getting the name of the main character wrong, ("Okay then, Volcon") which is pretty inexcusable. Who translated this game? It feels like the localisation was rushed, but it soon becomes a common theme throughout the game, especially towards the ending which is pretty much shoehorned in.

It's pretty short by RPG standards, with the last areas devoid of any of the (scant) details found earlier in the game. The companions are hardly fleshed out, and while I liked the 'choose your skill' levelling system, it would have been nice to have a few more choices to mix it up later in the game. 

The weird thing is, despite everything I came to enjoy Bound by Flame. The combat is passable, the story and dialogue is ignorable, and underneath it all lies the foundations of what could have been a truly great RPG, despite the fact that it looks nothing like what you would expect of a PS4 game. 

Instead it's just an okay one. A game I would recommend to fellow RPG fans, but only if they adjust their expectations accordingly before they buy it, whilst preparing for some extremely ropey experiences in-between the actual fun.  

A saving grace is the demonic aspect of the game, where you have the choice between gaining more power at the expense of your humanity, or preserving yourself against the entity at the expense of power. Unfortunately, near enough every decision is obviously good or evil, with no ambiguity to be found, but you pick enough evil choices you actually spout horns, which is admittedly a nice touch.   

Overall I have mixed feelings about the game, but it was enjoyable in some parts, so for fans of the genre it might be worth a cut-price buy. Might.