Review | Blightbound

LifeisXbox’s Blightbound Review | Welcome to a dark land, consumed by a blight, which only exists because a band of heroes once defeated The Shadow Titan, this blight came with his death, of course, he knew this would happen, but the heroes did not. Join two friends, or play with two bots, in this dungeon-crawler that clearly takes inspiration from Diablo 3 on combat, looting, and more. Will you be able to vanquish the Blight? Blightbound is developed by Ronimo Games and published by Devolver Digital.

“Blighbound is a fun game to play, the combat feels pretty nice, with abilities being useful and good-looking“

ℹ️ Reviewed on Xbox One | Review code provided by PR/publisher. This review is the personal opinion of the writer.

What we liked!

• Great Appearance | Blightbound looks great. There’s a 3D and 2D mix that fits the dark aesthetic that the developers intended pretty well. The first game that came through my mind when I saw the characters from it was Darkest Dungeon without having to look it up, but when you do look at both of these games side-by-side, the resemblance is quite clear, even though it’s not exactly the same.

• Useful AI | I only managed to play Blightbound with AI because I don’t have friends available that I’m able to play Blightbound with. Not only that but I also couldn’t find players through matchmaking either. These bots in Blightbound can be quite useful in combat as they do use all of their skills pretty well. They even help you to do a few simple puzzles, which makes it better than I expected.

• Simple Puzzles | Since Blightbound is a dungeon-crawler, you probably don’t want to spend a long time solving puzzles because the best part of a dungeon-crawler is fighting enemies with friends, right? Then you don’t have to worry about this at all! All puzzles are easily understandable, be it standing on pressure plates, shooting/hitting a crystal, or moving blocks. You never have to think too much about how you can solve them.

• Good Gameplay | Blighbound is definitely a fun game to play. The combat feels pretty nice, with abilities being useful and good-looking. I’m can imagine the gameplay would be far better should you have the choice of playing with friends at any point. There is loot for you to collect such as weapons, trinkets, money, and armor. You can also level up your characters; craft, buy, and sell gear and new heroes. You can also find heroes in the dungeons you go to. There are a total of 18 heroes for you to buy/find and you start with one hero from each class, making it a total of 21 heroes. They are divided into three classes: Warrior, Assassin, and Mage. Your objectives in the dungeons are simple, it can be collecting specific items to get to the end or rescuing wounded survivors.

Somewhere between

• Okay Soundtrack | The soundtrack in Blightbound isn’t anything special, it’s just another case of it fitting the game, but not being as good as it could’ve been. It’d probably be better if it was a little bit more dramatic than it is, at least in boss fights, to set the mood accordingly.

• MatchNOTmaking | Blightbound has matchmaking for you to play with random people and it has even got crossplay. The issue here is that, as I already mentioned, I couldn’t find other players to play with; even with crossplay enabled. I know this isn’t the developer’s fault but it still is a problem for people who don’t have anyone that they can play with and don’t want to play with bots.

What we disliked

• A Little Problematic | Blightbound does suffer from FPS drops quite a few times in every level but I’m not sure if it has anything to do with it requiring constant internet access to play. I played with bots, so I don’t think that is the issue. I also had only one bug but it was frustrating because it made an enemy immortal. He was the only enemy left and my attacks did absolutely nothing to him. This meant I was forced to let him kill me and the bots, making me consequently fail the mission.

• “It’s Repetition, I’m Coming Back to you.” | I know it’s common for dungeon-crawlers to be repetitive but having to repeat many levels to be able to play other ones is incredibly boring. Every time a level is completed, the difficulty of all levels is randomized, which forces you to play a level you don’t want to. Bots are random heroes that have random equipment and have a level equivalent of your hero, which proves that this game really is grindy. (The title here is a reference to a song from Information Society called Repetition)

• Missing a Proper Story | Each hero has their own story, which you progress through by completing specific levels. The issue is that you’re forced to play dungeons that are rated a level way higher than your squad if you want to keep progressing through it non-stop. There is no main questline as the personal story from each hero is the only story you get, apart from the opening cutscene.

How long to beat the story |
How long to achieve 1000G | Approximately 60-100 Hours

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