Born of Bread Review (OniBarubary)
Born of Bread is an adorable, quirky little RPG with a lot going for it and some very noticeable things working against it. I completed most everything in it, enjoyed my time with it but here and there I kept coming up against small annoyances or frustrations. Unfortunately what made them stand out was probably the great time I was having otherwis; so that when something popped up it'd be like taking a nice jog and then stubbing your toe before building back up to speed and whanging your knee on a chair.
At the end of the day I would still recommend and heartily give this game a thumbs up but feel sorta bad that every piece of praise I write is going to come with a caveat.
You play Loaf, a little boy baked into being by your baker dad, who soon after his birth has to travel the world trying to stop a gang of ruffians from a long dead empire from bringing it back with a powerful artifact. The writing in the game is quite good, specifically in the actual dialogue as well as the general chatter and voice. It's cute, it's very funny and the game does a good job giving even NPCs lots of dialogue and their unique voices. My only real complaints come in the general, as while the story itself is quite good, the pacing can sometimes leave certain moments feeling rushed, unearned or out of nowhere. It's not super egregious, but I will say that the story becomes about something else in the later parts which was actually quite strong and could have been very touching but the transition to it was a tad awkward. It's like...all the pieces were there, the game did A+B=C but if you sat with it too long it felt kinda sudden. I liked the end quite a lot and felt it was deserved but getting there had some stumbles.
Gameplay is familiar to any turn based RPG fan of the Paper Mario series (early on). Similar to complaints above, it has all the parts, does a good job making things unique in it's own system like a focus on the weapons you can fit in a backpack, badges you can equip...but then cracks start showing. Your MC has an overwhelming number of options, and so do your sidekicks! Except...they only have 5 max slots and you can't switch the slots in battle. The battles mimic a streaming setup so that you can do well to earn back points to use abilities, but...they only ever ask you to use items so there's little variety. The combat is full of this, where it's quite enjoyable moment to moment but then you have to work around some choice or limitation that feels artificial or hurts gameflow.
And I think that's my main complaint, to sum up and not harsh on each part of the game individually; the game has a lot of design decisions that feel very old-school or outdated in service to the game it's trying to evoke. I know a lot of games trying to bring back a long left behind style of game fall into this trap, but it's easy to see why. After all, when you romanticize a game from the past you often forgive it or let it glow warmly without remembering all the warts and flaws in favor of the nice feeling you get. Most noticeable is they gave an in game reason why you need to save in locations and there isn't a robust auto-save (and a character to go with it) but in practice it means that you are continually going to sacrifice gamefeel for a design choice that went away for a reason. Like fast travel when your dungeons and areas are expansive being limited to 5 general locations, like inventory space being so limited. The game constantly has outdated design decisions dragging down an otherwise well designed, fun and up to date game.
Which makes me sound quite critical. And yes, there is a lot that could rub you wrong in this game. But there's a ton to love. Specifically the art style, aesthetic and world are gorgeously done and so fun and the music is fantastic without any draggers. The area design is strongly varied, the type matching makes you think in combat, sidequests have meaningful rewards and stories. I loved a lot of the characters, thought Loaf had a ton of personality for a silent protag and loved the antagonist group too.
People will see a Mostly Positive or low Very Positive and fall into all or nothing thinking which I think is an enormous disservice to games like this that have their faults but have a lot of love put into it and a lot of love you can get out of it. We shouldn't write off ambitious but flawed games because they didn't reach the heights of games people have on their GOAT lists. It's unrealistic and unfair, and you will miss some truly enjoyable experiences if you only ever play the critically loved series.
I would full heartedly suggest playing this game and would 100% buy any sequel from a tiny studio that learned a lot from this labor of love to go out there and do even better next time.