These days, where the attraction of independent games is increasing, the interest in some game genres has started to increase in direct proportion. It is not known whether it is due to the need for nostalgia or the boredom of the games that have dominated the market for a long time, the Metroidvaina style has been quite popular for a while. The number of recent examples of this genre, which indie game developers eat a lot of bread, is quite high. It must be admitted that many of these are productions that deserve praise for their gameplay, visual quality, sound and music design.
Take The Messenger, for example. It is a humorous or humorous, high-quality production that first involves the player in its 8-bit world and then surprises with 16-bit. Or Dead Cells, where those who don't play these days are stoned. A great Roguelike Metroidvania with its colorful world, challenging gameplay and satisfying fighting mechanics. Then, sir, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night or Hollow Knight. The examples are innumerable. The fact that there are so many quality productions of the Metroidvania genre on the market naturally raises the bar quite a bit. So how close is Bookbound Brigade as yet another Metroidvania to this highly elevated bar?
Pluses
+ Smile-making storytelling
+ Dialogues
+ Fairytale atmosphere
+ Not bad platforming items
Cons
- Bad map designs
- Delightful fighting mechanics
- Repetitive gameplay
- Absence of fast travel system
System requirements
MINIMUM:
Operating System: Windows 7 SP1+
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-5005U CPU @ 2.00GHz
Memory: 4GB of RAM
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti
DirectX: Version 10
Storage: 1 GB available space
Sound Card: DirectX-compatible
SUGGESTED:
Operating System: Windows 7 SP1+
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6600K @ 3.50GHz or AMD Ryzen 5 1600 Six-Core
Memory: 8GB RAM
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 or AMD Radeon (TM) R9 380 Series
DirectX: Version 10
Storage: 1 GB available space
Sound Card: DirectX-compatible
Our story begins in a magical realm called the "Literary World". A tremendous balance prevails in this land where all the stories that have been written become reality. The source of this balance is the sublime book called “Book of Books”. Come on, it doesn't take long for our precious book to be stolen, as it is 'preserved' in an environment similar to a public library, like a diary. Thus, we, as Bookbound Brigade, pursue the book.
As you can guess from this cute story of Bookbound Brigade, there are many real and fictional characters we already know in the game. It is possible to interact with Don Quixote, Gulliver, Julius Caesar, Pandora and many other names. In addition, the characters we control throughout the game are names we are very familiar with. Arthur, Dracula, Dorothy, Robin Hood and Sun Wukong are the main members of our team. With Cassandra, Queen Victoria and Nikola Tesla joining our team later, we can manage eight characters in total. There are some humorous dialogues between the characters. Most of these dialogues are far from funny, but they don't make the game unbearable. These are cute dialogues that usually make you smile. They have no intention of upsetting you.
As we progress through the story, we encounter some lost characters and we send these characters to our library in safety. Here we can talk to the characters we rescued and thus we can get side quests. The side missions in the game are far from diversity. Most consist of errands set up to find the lost equipment of these characters. Among the other characters we encountered, those included in our team bring new features.
Each character that makes up our team has their own unique abilities. For example, thanks to King Arthur, we can equip shields and protect ourselves from flames and lightning. Thanks to Dracula, we can double jump, and thanks to Queen Victoria, we can roll like a wheel. In addition, we can improve our team in general with the skill points we earn. These improvements serve to increase our health, energy and attack points or to fill our health and energy bars faster.
The basic combat mechanics of Bookbound Brigade are pretty uniform overall. We can break this monotony with the techniques we can use by putting our heroes into certain formations. For example, by switching to the "Tight Cloumn" format, we can stack our characters like Bremen Town Musicians. While in this formation, we can raise our enemy from hand to hand, starting from the lowest hero, to the highest hero. Our hero at the top sends the enemy towards the enemy a short distance away with one last smack. The purpose of using this technique is to stun our pine split enemies and inflict serious damage to them by using tiny enemies attacking us. Mechanically, as good as this sounds, it can be difficult to implement from time to time.
The commands you apply for the formation may not be perceived during the action. You have to press the same keys one after the other for the command to be detected. This can be frustrating at critical moments when you need to change the way your team is lined up. In sequences where you face large groups of enemies, you often have no idea what's going on. The reward you get after these sequences is always the same. A chest with lots of life points and memory pages.
Although the boss battles are difficult for you at first, it doesn't take long to defeat the boss after you solve the attack pattern. Since the fighting system of the game does not have much appeal, it is possible to get bored during most boss battles. The main parts where Bookbound Brigade puts the player to the test are usually the platform parts. Platform parts are sometimes very enjoyable, but sometimes they can be frustrating. In any case, I can say that the platforming elements of the game are better than the combat mechanics.
If we talk about the visuals, it is possible to say that the character designs are quite cute. In addition, the environmental designs look as if they came out of a picture story book written for children. The visuality of the game makes you feel that you have stepped into a fairy-tale world in the first place. Although the fairytale atmosphere offered by the game warms the heart, it must be said that the visual quality is quite average.
Environmental designs, which seem pleasing to the eye at first glance, begin to become ordinary and lose their meaning as the game progresses. You see that the tone of the game changes a little when you move to different sections, but the map models are very similar to each other. This situation makes you think that the whole game consists of several maps that are similar to each other after a while.
Another problem with maps is the lack of fast travel points. When you lose your way on large maps, you have to walk the path you came from again, which is one of the biggest shortcomings if you ask me. By the way, let me not go through the map screen without talking a bit. Although the map screen looks very understandable at first glance, it is quite difficult to predict exactly where you are on the playing field. This is another factor that undermines the enjoyment of the game.
Finally, let's get to the sounds and music. The voice-overs in the game are more of a grunt. The characters have vocal responses to certain situations, but you can't hear a single dialogue from their mouths. Dialogues proceed entirely through texts. It is not possible to talk about this as a minus, of course, it is purely a matter of preference. Music, on the other hand, is far from being memorable, sometimes even so repetitive that you can get bored of hearing the same tunes. The melodies aren't the kind of thing that sounds bad, but like all the other elements of the game, they're average and repetitive.
To sum up all its pros and cons at one point, Bookbound Brigade unfortunately cannot catch up with its competitors in many aspects. Although the game has a certain potential, it offers an average experience in most aspects. However, if you're a Metroidvania fan and enjoy two-dimensional platforming games, you can give Bookbound Brigade a shot.
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