Recent reviews by Scrypt36

I honestly looked forward to this game for a while, but within the first half hour I knew it was not for me.

The art is amazing, the music even more so, but the gameplay was simply not satisfying or fun throughout my near 2 hours of playing.

The biggest issue i have is the sailing, which is supposed to be the core of the game feels messy and slow. I had a much better time just paddling with the oar, but the second you added the sail it quickly goes downhill. its harder to control or is just unbelievably slow to get to where you want to be, and thats when the wind is in your favor.

Most items added next to no function until, i assume, later into the game, but when you can only hold so few of them at the start management of those items feels more tedious than it does fun or challenging. Each equipment takes one of your precious slots so crafting all of them at the start becomes a set back more than it does an asset as you rarely use some of them, but still need them once or twice to progress. On the subject of crafting, its pretty average, except the UI is a touch clunky and could be easier to use.

You are constantly hungry when sprinting and dodging everywhere but standard movement is much too slow for my personal liking. Most survival games have a good balance in this area but the mechanics in this game are either annoying at best or serve nothing to the game at worst. Why kill small enemies and craft a fire to cook for the hunger to be gone soon after, when you can just as easily eat the berries off the bushes and get the same effect without the time it took to gather craft and cook all the resources? There needs to be more to the survival mechanics than just a badly balanced hunger bar to call a game a survival game.

The base combat is boring. Its mostly the same with little variation. Combined with horrendous camera angles/control with Mouse and Keyboard makes you want to just avoid the fight rather than enjoy the challenge, of which there is little. If you are to play this game i highly recommend using a controller.

There are also many graphical errors to be fixed when climbing, sailing and dodging on certain terrain but they are not the main issue, just persistent enough to warrant mentioning.

Windbound has some great music and good artistic style, but it is nothing more than something nice to look at and listen too. For those looking to this game for the comparison to Zelda titles (the main reason i was so interested) it definitely does not feel or play like a Zelda game, I can see where it draws inspiration, but it falls VERY short in terms of gameplay and is not worth the full price in its current state. Very disappointing.