S&S Review: Bound By Flame

Title: Bound By Flame
Format: PS4(reviewed), PS3, Xbox 360, PC
Release Date: May 9th, 2014
Publisher: Focus Home Interactive
Developer: Spiders
Price: $59.99
ESRB Rating: M

Bound By Flame is the latest RPG coming from Spiders and Focus Home Interactive, marking their first appearance on next gen, this is easily their best game yet.

All Screens Were Captured with the PS4's Share Function

Story and Presentation:
The narrative of the game puts you into the boots of Vulcan, a member of the Freeborn Blades.  The Freeborn Blades are tasked with protecting the Red Scribes, a group of scholars who have discovered a way to defeat the Ice Lords.  All the while you have a constant threat following you, the Deadwalkers.  As you can tell, the story contains all your inspirations from different types of medieval lore, with Game of Thrones constantly coming to mind.  With that said however, the way the game pans out make it entirely unique in it's own right.  Early on in the story, your character gets possessed by a mysterious demon, which creates an interesting duality between your human side and the demon inside of you.  This creates a number of intriguing dialog interactions and moral choices that will shape your outcome.  Also, the more you choose to side with the demon, your character's resemble the demon.  In the end, you'll be able to let the demon take full control of your body, producing a pretty cool new antihero.  The soundtrack is very well done, the orchestral score changes with each new environment you explore.  It always adapts to your situation as well, when you're in a heated battle, the sounds ramp up.  During your downtime, the music takes a more subtle approach.  It's a nice effect that works well.  Visually, the game is very impressive.  I played the game on PS4, and you can tell the devs took advantage of the extra horsepower.  The game runs smooth, and the diverse environments offer up a high level of graphical fidelity.  I came away pleasantly surprised by the game's presentation, and it's a major highlight in Bound By Flame.
Core Gameplay: 
The core gameplay draws a lot of comparisons to a number of different RPGs out there, Dragon Age and The Witcher quickly came to mind while playing it.  The game features real time battles, which will rely on tactical strategy rather than pure brute force.  The game's traps system is essential in every battle, and can quickly turn the tide during the more challenging fights, which you'll have a lot of.  This game is very challenging, even on the second to last difficulty setting, I found myself dying a lot.  Once you get past a tough battle, the game gives off a very satisfying feeling.  You'll travel through most of the game will a companion, and out of the four companions, each one presents a different fighting style to compliment your very own style of fighting.  Instead of choosing between your standard three classes like Mage, Warrior, or Rogue.  The game lets you change your stance which serves as your class.  Your Warrior stance lets you use two handed weapons, and lets you dish out the most damage.  The Ranger stance gives you two daggers and more agility to help you maneuver around the battlefield at a quicker pace.  Lastly, is Pyromancer, which utilizes the demon's fire powers.  This can be used with either stance, giving a ton of combinations for special abilities.  You can level up each stance with XP you gain my defeating enemies and completing quests, so you can definitely specialize if you wish.  The game is fairly linear, as you move on to each major area, it gives you main missions and side missions.  You can blow right through the main quests if you wish, but you're going to miss out on a lot of extra gear and XP.  There's a lot of meat here, so you won't be finishing the game too soon, which is a huge plus for those who wish to sink in a lot of hours into one game.
Final Thoughts:
This game really caught me by surprise, the game comes at a discounted price, but it offers more value than most fully priced titles.  If you're looking for a great RPG to play, I think you'll be more than satisfied with Bound By Flame.
+Rich, Diverse Visuals
+Great Orchestral Score
+Tough, Yet Satisfying Combat
-A Little Rough Around the Edges
-Some Questionable Writing At Times
S&S Rating: 8/10 @whatsPlay