Overall most helpful review

Posted on: June 3, 2023

ValderisVandala

Games: 1478 Reviews: 118

Good game but with problems.

First of all, I want to say that this is a fun game that you should give a try despite the many negative things I'm about to say about it. Vision issues: When walls are not visible you really can't see them, this is an issue when you need to see them in order to position your ranged units to be able to target the enemy. When walls are visible enemy units and even your own units can be completely hidden by them and they obscure where you can position yourself. Wall transparency is dependent on which unit you have selected, only walls that are close to the selected unit are transparent, everything else is not. This is a turn based game with no backsies and you have to move your units in their initiative order, so sometimes you just have to blind chance it. Also, enemies can trigger combat outside of the player's vision range and you'll have no idea where they are coming from. This is because you cannot move your camera beyond a certain limited range from your selected character. There is the issue of not knowing what items, stats and abilities do, these things are not explained at all anywhere in the game. But the most insidious issue is one of enemy level scaling. Luckily you can avoid this issue because the game offers two scaling modes, one allows you to play the game normally, the other kind of stealth ruins your experience. The option where enemy level is determent by your entire band's collective level causes your own leveling to slow to a crawl, which means you can't easily gain manpower, which is a stat that determines how well you can progress in the game because it deferments how many units you can have, how many things you can unlock like shops and item upgrading, etc. It does not make the game unwinnable mind you but it does make it not fun. Item upgrading feels tedious, broken, and ass backwards. Unfortunately I've run out of words to explain why, so you'll just have to take my word for it, sorry. Also these are not the only issues the game has.

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Posted on: November 22, 2023

Olaf_Merchant

Verified owner

Games: 532 Reviews: 6

Surprisingly good, albeit heavy on fan service

I was somewhat dubious of buying Bastard Bonds at first due to the art direction, but I am glad I did. Underneath the veneer of buff bears and overtones of homoerotic fanservice lies a strategic gem not too dissimilar to Ogre Battle or Final Fantasy tactics. The game tosses you into the boots of a convict, and you decide by your charges what sort of character they are- you may be innocent of the crimes laid out against you, or guilty as charged. After being reviewd thusly, you can make your character sprite and use 10 points to determine your starting skills. Each character has similar skill trees, but there are exceptions to available spells and special traits, depending on race. Only humans and orcs are initially open for the player, but you can recruit further people to your band of bastards from random encounters or enemies, albeit this is highly situational. The game features a pretty large, open-ish world and despite the combat being simple, strategy and wise planning are key features to success, as it should be. You can further specialize your casters to healers or damage dealers, your melee into tanks or heavy hitters, and your lithe rogues as critical stackers or dodgers, and anything in between. The game's in-world locations are highly varied and have a great deal of thought put into them to differentiate them from one another. Haunted spas, vampire pleasure camps, horrible meat dungeons, abandoned homesteads or demon-infested villages, and so on. The musical score is varied enough not to be repetitive, and pleasant to the ears. Negatives- Walls can block vision and sometimes pathfinding is subpar, requiring you to backtrack so as to get all four party members together again. Also, enemies tend to blindly charge at you, unless ranged. Finally, the beefcake factor is a bit of a love it or lump it. Expect many pixelated dongs. Lastly, the camp feature is fun, but could use a lot more tooltips. Has a lot of moments where you might need to consult a wiki.

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Posted on: September 24, 2023

TheOtherRobot

Verified owner

Games: 313 Reviews: 2

Fantastic RPG. Utterly blown away.

I didn't have huge expectations for Bastard Bonds. I remember seeing a Sseth video a while ago, and the only thing I really remember from that was that it was very gay and gritty. The soundtrack is incredible. That's one of the first things I noticed. The character customization is pretty dang good, although there aren't many hair options and the only beard option looks pretty bad. You can use any 80x64 PNG to replace your character or any other character, and can edit your character's existing sprite too, though. Obviously how feasible that is depends on your sprite art skills. The combat is simple, but it works well and keeps the game moving at a fast pace. I think this game really has the best level-up system of any RPG I've played, although I didn't fully understand it at first. It's very clever. That's one of the bigger flaws of this game. Lots of stuff isn't well explained. You will probably have to look at guides for some stuff (but there are many worse offenders in this area on gog). My biggest frustration is probably in regards to vision and walls. Walls often block your view, even when you've toggled wall transparency on, because they're just a little too far from you. I wish the game just had less walls or shorter walls or something, since they can be a pain. Anyways I really like it. It's an RPG that keeps a very good pace, so as someone who is bored by many RPGs before really getting to the meat, that's a big plus.

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Posted on: June 9, 2026

mp_99

Verified owner

Games: 87 Reviews: 2

So old school, it feels primitive

The maps are neat, exploring can be exciting, the characters are probably well written, inventory management is a pain. I played "the wrong way" and the game is rather rote for me. I've played for 50 hours; and I'm probably done. I recruited characters as I encountered them, and my stronghold was always at capacity. Going over the wiki, I now see several encounters would have yielded a recruitable character, had I had stronghold capacity; however as I didn't, I missed out. And these are 1-time chances. I get that sometimes, game design calls for withholding from the player, for denying some things. However, if this self-denial limits the best aspects of the game, the OCs, and instead gives the player the rote parts, generic NPCs with repeat & no custom dialogue, then the game is sabotagging itself. Inventory management is very tedious, repetitive, error prone, and so very click-here-and-then-there. I had to trek to and fro the stronghold to dump loot and upgrade weapons, often times while trying to clear the *same one map*. And this would de-spawn special event characters, again removing the chance to recruit them. Seeing the figureine jumping around nodes in the map for all the travel gets old... The story is ok, I guess? For something that so prominently announces its "Adult Themes", it doesn't delve into edge-lord territory, nor fan service. If you're the type of player that pokes their nose into every corner, there's a fair number of nice surprises. I just wish in some aspects, the game took itself less seriously and gave the player some QOL improvements... keyboard shortcuts for inventory management? for sprite movement? 2nd chances for recruitment by meeting up at the brewery? If you're reading this and it feels relevant, look up the map of where the recruitments happen, and don't go there unless your stronghold has capacity. Which is something a player should definitely know beforehand

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Posted on: February 17, 2025

VenisDamalo

Verified owner

Games: 3 Reviews: 1

Challenging

I'm not super good at games so I was really struggling in the beginning but I worked it out eventually and I'm having fun

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