Bound By Flame

very good adventure game, combat system are good too. with skill tree and secondary missions. this game could be hard for kids.

The game is at best 60% finished : of course there are multiples ending (3), but the game feel unfinished in many ways. Graphics are decent (for a game released in 2014) Tutorial is ok. Best parts of the game is the combat system (which needs timing) and the crafting system which is simple but effective. It's totally possible and even recommended to use an hybrid build : warrior/pyromancer or assassin/ pyromancer (since many opponents are weak to fire). Loved to have the possibility to apply fire to weapons ;-). Only grip : the cost in mana of the last ability in each branch... Points not ok : - Gold is almost useless, only used to buy a weapon iirc and some cheap basic ingredients to make health potions (almost at the end of the game) - Romance is somewhat broken : the main character can't romance a companion of the same gender :/ (you can romance at best 2 characters in one playthrough) - The last combat isn't fun at all, it's just like i was playing others bosses in easy mode (and i played the game above the normal difficulty). Having a challenging ending opponent is ok, but this .... - Companions are almost of the time useless in combat, they are dying too fast (especially above the normal mode). I don't understand what the devs were thinking O.o (except for the 1st companion you get in the swamp, which have an healing spell). - Story is somewhat interesting, but the impression i got : there were missing some pieces in the whole story. However the interesting point if you choose the human path or the demonic path you don't have the some side-quests after a point, unfortunately it's not totally well developed. - Too any choices in dialogs are dull, since they have no impact :( Conclusion if you are interested by the game, buy it for the combat system & crafting. (forget the companions :o) and not for the story. Alas less and less game have a good combat system. Hope this small review helped you in your choice to buy or not the game, have fun !! :-)

I've always had an eye on this one and when it got released with a nice 75% launch discount I thought I could finally give this a try. Only played a couple of minutes now, but I am quite disappointed, to be honest. I know you have to keep your expectations in check when it comes to such relatively low budget productions, but this really feels and looks like a cheap game, even considering its age. I wanted to like this, but there are so many good games out there that spending valuable gaming time with it feels like a waste. Give it a chance when you're in dire need of a 3rd person RPG fix and have absolutely nothing else to check out. Apart from that, there are way better options. I'd much rather start the umpteenth playthrough of TES Oblivion or finally start Dragon's Dogma (to name just two better alternatives here on the platform) than play this any further.

I typically really enjoy lower-middle market european games, but Bound by Flame is unacceptable to be available for purchase. The engine is fundamentally broken, with loading screens taking several seconds on a powerful 2023 PC, the "High" texture quality causes severe graphical issues where the world disappears and shadows slide around the game as you turn, and the shaders for certain UI elements do not work properly without mods on AMD systems. The punishing difficulty is not acceptable for the significant amount of input lag, input storage, and inaccurate hitboxes. The leveling is interesting and each new skill and perk point feels very impactful, but the writing, presentation, and moment to moment combat feel bad 90% of the game. I am currently on the final boss and unsure if it is worth the time to learn it so that I can tell my brain "I never have to touch this game again." If you're wanting an older Spiders game, I recommend Mars: War Logs over Bound by Flame.

UI elements replaced with yellow/green colored glitches throughout the entire game. Random flashing textures. Alt tabbing freezes the game so badly that you need to force restart your PC. The modern state of this is incredibly bad. I didn't know GoG sold games this broken.