Spiders’ Bound By Flame is an excellent action RPG, that while flawed, proves that a big budget isn’t necessary to create a great open world experience. Though there are some flaws, they’re outweighed by the overall fun factor of the game.

Bound By Flame is a 2014 action-Role Playing game, it is developed by Spiders and published by Focus Home Interactive. It is available on PC, Playstation 4, Playstation 3, an Xbox 360.

Enemies of all shapes and sizes are present in Bound By Flame.

Bound By Flame is the first title from both Focus Home & Spiders that I’ve played (at least from memory anyways), and I have to say I wasn’t really disappointed with my overall experience with the game. Though there was some choppy dialogue and limited character creation, the open world and the balanced difficulty made the game challenging, and most importantly of all enjoyable as hell.

Magic is useful and difficulty is quite balanced. Never let enemies group attack you though.

THE GOOD: Bound By Flame is absolutely beautiful, the engine used in Bound By Flame did an exceptional job of bringing the game’s world to life. The balanced difficulty made the game a challenge, sometimes too challenging if you got attacked by a group. Lucky your companion AI is smart enough to at least attempt to help you eradicate the issue, though even with your companions helping groups will  destroy you if you let them.

Boss fights bring an extra challenge.

The music was a great listen, I would sometimes find myself stopping my character in it’s tracks just to listen to the music for a few moments. Combat was nice having you switch between two stances known as warrior and stealth, and you could upgrade both as well as your pyromancer powers. There’s different weapons throughout the world that you can find and purchase from shops. Along the way you’ll meet other companions, usually via the main quest, though some will be met by side quests. Health potions and mana are used to restore HP and magic. But you should use both very scarcely as they’re pretty hard to find at certain points of the game.

Don’t waste your consumables like an idiot, use strategy.

The demon was a rather interesting character, his back and forth banter with the player character was pretty entertaining to see. Depending on your decisions on the main questline (and I suppose side quest, as there are choices made there at times), the demon will influence your appearance such as skin and face alterations. Though your character’s weakness to frost damage will increase if you continue to agree with the demon’s suggestions.

Decisions. decisions.

THE BAD: The dialogue is rather choppy, it’s really the only thing that makes the game feel amateurish. Well that and the fact that your character’s name choice is virtually ignored by the in-game character’s name. The limited character creation was a bit annoying as well, though hopefully Bound By Flame is popular enough to have a sequel produced so these issues can be rectified.

The demon’s influence makes you super weak towards frost damage, think about using it’s suggestions carefully.

OVERALL THOUGHTS: Bound By Flame is an excellent place holder for those waiting on the likes of Dragon Age: Inquisition or The Witcher 3. The open world is fun to play around with, and the balance in difficulty helped branch the game out. Spiders made it a point to give players scarce use of their side items such as health potion and mana. The music and overall experience of Bound By Flame isn’t anything to gawk at. However, with success comes failures and in Bound By Flame’s case the dialogue was rather annoying. Character creation was pretty limited, and it was odd that your chosen name was pretty much ignored by the in-game world. Still if you’re looking to feed your action-RPG fix while waiting on the aforementioned titles, then Bound By Flame is the perfect choice.