Born of Bread Review (WalŦz)
I played this game through it entirety on the Steam Deck with no visual issues, at least none related to the game itself. There seems to be Keyboard and Mouse controls as well, but considering I played everything on a controller I may mention things that might be different on those controls that I'm not aware of.
Pros:
- The world building and environment is phenomenal. Everything from the 2D art inside a 3D environment is meshed together so wonderfully. It's able to do its own style while paying homage to Paper Mario's artstyle.
- The main characters are likable and expressive, with none feeling too bland or too cheesy. As eccentric as some of them can be, they're also portrayed as down-to-earth as well, and don't go over the top with their personalities if it's unnecessary. You'll love the people you're meant to love, and hate those you're meant to hate.
- The narrative as you progress the game pays light homage to a lot of other pop culture references (i.e. Pokemon, The Office, etc.), but retains enough of its own originality and personality that I never got tired to reading what everyone has too say, and even if the main plot is a little generic, the way the story is being told as the game progresses has never gotten boring for me, and I always look to see to what every NPC I encounter has to say. The dialogue in this game is genuinely entertaining to me.
Cons:
- This game suffers a lot of unfortunate launch day bugs, most notably many situations that will softlock you if you're not careful. The only cushioning here is that there's no autosaving once you reach a certain point, so you're never truely softlocked.
- The Combat System is my biggest gripe, which I'll go on for a bit. It's really un-intuitive. It's like a very watered down version of TTYD's combat system, where there's an audience that help restore certain resources if you do well enough, but usually in sparse amounts and they don't really make a difference. The timed hit system can be annoying at times, especially since there's no soft blows where if you mis-time a hit you'd at least do 1 damage. No, if you mess up you do nothing.
- Early in the game you do have to deal with some resource management and strategy, especially since you only get to carry 5 items at a time in the beginning. But you can very easily stack up the game's main combat stat through level ups, which is Will Points (WP), until you have enough to waste since every stat is restored on level up. Believe me, about 97% of my level ups were on WP only since it was the only thing I ever needed. Oh yeah by the way, NONE of the enemies in the game have status resistances or immunity, including EVERY BOSS. Meaning as soon as you get something like Sleep, WHICH CAN STACK, every fight becomes trivialized provided you have enough resources for that fight duration. I never got to see the final boss attack me because I never let him.
- The combat visuals are also very minimal. Aside from the very pretty background, the visual effects and expression of movements combat-wise are very bare-bone, and the camera is almost always at a fixed position other than zooming in a little for close range attacks (but only when you attack). Nearly every enemy has the same tell for when they attack, so you don't need to learn their attack patterns, save for a couple. There's also no Stylish moves or whatever, or if there was I never found it or needed it. Even the level up screen felt a little flat.
Mixed:
- The music. The music amazing everywhere EXCEPT during combat. I don't know why it always goes back to the combat, but the battle music, while there is a variety for each area, really doesn't feel as impactful and are very hit or miss for me. Even the boss fight music feels off, and the only reason I can think off is that it doesn't have that "Paper Mario pop" or intensity. Maybe it's the audio channel mixing, maybe it's the instrumentation, maybe I'm wrong and musically impaired, either way I'm not feeling it.
- The UI/Menuing is kind of all over the place, and has a weird hierarchy for certain tabs in the menu. It's sort of the opposite of paper mario where all the equipment and item management is closer to the front and stuff like party status/arrangement and badges are closer to the middle-back. If there was a way to manually reorder the tabs myself I'd be fine. The UI could also serve to add more QoL improvements, notably an inclusion of partner hotswapping in the overworld and a way to pop up the character status in the overworld, instead of having to jump into the pause menu every time, especially when there are timed events that require specific partners.
I think overall this game definitely has the narrative charm of Paper Mario, especially in a modern context. But there's a lot that could be improved in just the gameplay and combat. Personally, I still think Bug Fables did a better job in being faithful to the spirit of Paper Mario 64, while I'd say Born of Bread is like the middle ground between PM64 and TTYD. If you like Paper Mario, I do think Born of Bread does it justice done fair enough, especially for its content and price point.