Bound By Flame

All I have to say about this game in 2026 other than its probably very annoying if youre bad at parrying is that if you miss those kinda linear ass arpgs that were coming out on the 360/ps3 this might scratch an itch cause thats the only reason i played this and it delivered on that, pretty cool 6/10

souslike entao passo

Bound by Flame: Prologue, or at least that's what it feels like this should be called, a game that even on release should have been priced no more and £30 as a taster of the world and to gage interest in the world. Honestly if it had then maybe it would have been viewed better. But for me, it's a hard one to review, I absolutely did enjoy my time with it, but when recommending games I try to think more of "is it worth the time investment", there are so many games out there, so many great games, complete stories and ongoing sagas, ultimately I'm drawn to say no to recommending this game in spite of my enjoyment of it, because a) It does feel like a prologue, and b)the studio and IP is likely dead in the water with them being going and no follow up done in over a decade anyway. Is it worth 67 pence on sale? Yes absolutely. But is it worth the 20 plus hours learning of a world you'll never get more from? Probably not. Main reason I got it, is my past enjoyment of Technomancer and after hearing of the studios closer I wanted to see what else they done, games are certainly cheap enough now to buy. Few of the criticisms, the map design...frankly I though was fine. Yes generally pretty small but honestly wouldn't have wanted them bigger to waste more time per map. The supposed "edgy dialogue", I'm honestly struggle what they mean, unless they are calling the attempt at old English with thy and thou and hast, "edgy" these days, frankly there's far worse games for "edginess" darkness for the sake of being dark or just downright sounding like a teenager wrote them, which are massively popular (Diablo 3, Borderlands, Most souls likes). And yes the combat is hard, even on easy its slightly challenging not mash a to win (but it's not that far from it), if you pick hard for ego or vanity or completion because you must have all the achievements....that's on you, not the game, they give you the option to make it easier and don't punish you for it with endings being locked out or something, not all achievements should be handed to the player in the tutorial, otherwise what's the point in having them at all then. Honestly a lot of it seems to be the high bar set for this small to middle sized European studio that didn't really even make that many games overall, while many triple A billionaire companies in American slide under a far lower bar. My biggest disappointment (which was my own fault for assuming), was romances being gender locked, I picked a guy and was hoping to romance the knight but only found out to late you have to be the opposite gender (and I ended up upsetting all the women, XD) I wish they went more with a story that went against the expected and peoples preconceived notions at the end regarding the "demon", but all in all I enjoyed my time in Vertiel, wish there was more, that we saw the new world, Mathias still lives (and should have been datable), but given the unlikely hood of seeing more of what really felt like a taster of the world, no unless you really want to spend the 67p, sadly I don't think the studio will even see that though, just the publisher who drove them into the ground. As I said though I think its how you "spend the time" more than "spend the money" and I feel if your looking for an RPG to invest that in, look elsewhere. Played entirely on Steam deck without issue, no crash, frame rate, controls, all fine.