Blightbound

Some games have all the right pieces that, when put together, create a masterpiece of entertainment. And then there are games like Blightbound, which still has most of the right pieces, but never comes together as anymore than a jumbled mess. Visually, the game has the colorful look and style of a comic book panel brought to life. The animations are a bit quirky though, with movements looking almost like a marionette puppet show. The story's interesting and does a solid job of setting up the hows and whys of different heroes banding together in small parties to explore the no man's land of Gravemark. But after setting up this strong foundation, the game never builds anything on top of it. There's precious little in the way of any character or plot development.

The gameplay is the biggest place where Blightbound can't seem to pull itself together. For starters, the controls feel sluggish and unresponsive. One big issue that comes up regularly involves registering characters' attacks. Many attack animations look for all intents and purposes as it they've completely missed their targets, yet they still register as hits. Conversely, lack of depth in the flat 2D character models can make it look like you're hitting an enemy, only to be just slightly above or below them and missing completely. Finally, and most frustrating, the game seems to randomly struggle just to function. Just trying to play through the tutorial was an impossible task thanks to the game crashing out completely at random spots without warning. Thankfully this can be avoided by skipping the tutorial completely, but that defeats the purpose of even having a tutorial to begin with. The overall result of Blightbound is that it's a game that should be much stronger than the sum of its messy parts.