Bookbound
Brigade by developer Digital
Tales USA LLC and publisher Intragames
Co.,Ltd—Nintendo
Switch review written by Susan
N. with a copy provided by the publisher.
Estimated reading time: 11 minutes
Introduction
Bookbound Brigade is a 2D side-scrolling platformer that has some
unique elements, which will be covered later on. The premise of the
game is to embark on a quest to retrieve B.o.B, the Book of Books, by
traveling through time. Players will encounter a variety of
historical figures who teach new abilities that help to progress
through the game.
In short, Bookbound Brigade is a cute and witty game whose concept is
refreshing, if not a little rough around the edges. Though, as a
person that isn't good at platformers, I simultaneously love and hate
this game.
Gameplay
The first thing I noticed about Bookbound Brigade is that players
control multiple characters at one time. I'm not talking about
switching between characters to perform special abilities, I mean all
of the characters move together and in the same way. It's almost as
though the group is attached to each other at the hip. When players
jump, the whole group jumps. When players attack, each individual
character attacks one after another.
Anyways, part of the strategy in Bookbound Brigade is being able to
transition through the different formations to get past obstacles.
Sometimes players need to be in horizontal formation to walk through
small areas. Other times, players need to switch to a vertical
formation to leap onto skinny platforms. Adopting this sort of
mechanic makes for interesting gameplay, but it also causes a lot of
frustrations, which I'll cover later.
The historical figures used in the game are amusing because they fit
the qualities of the people. However, each one has something
different about them from what we know. For example, Dracula is a
character that is in your party (he allows you to jump higher by
using his cape - something that is unlocked early in the game). He is
known for being a vampire who feasts off of human blood. In the
description of each character, there is a brief introduction of who
the historical figure is, followed by the 'Unbound' version which is
different. In Bookbound Brigade, Dracula no longer kills humans by
drinking their blood, he drinks tomato juice because it tastes
better!
The characters found throughout the game are hilariously witty but
sometimes annoying. As an example, Queen Victoria is too feisty. When
in the high seas players run into a bunch of pirates (that eventually
leads to the discovery of Blackbeard), one large pirate is talked
down from a fight by King Arthur. Most of your band agrees except for
Queen Victoria. She calls him a coward and players are pulled into
the boss fight anyways. Darn Queen Victoria...
While traversing the different areas through time, players can bust
open crates that sometimes grant blue pages. These pages are used to
unlock abilities like extra damage by individual party members or
increasing the total party's health. Tier one cost 1000 pages. Tier
two cost 3000 pages. And the cost goes up the further down the list
you go for each character. For reference, in the screenshot below,
underneath each character are icons with locks. Those are the extra
damage abilities or health perks that players can purchase with
pages. It's a neat feature of the game that I like because frankly I
do like customization in games.
Anyways, a unique feature of Bookbound Brigade is the formation
system. When in the standard formation, the characters can jump,
move, and attack as a unit. In vertical formation, players can
execute a combination of buttons to lift up small monsters and hurl
them a short distance. If in a circle formation, players can speed up
movement which can damage enemies and bust through certain walls. And
each formation is used regularly to access different areas or hit
buttons to open doors.
Bookbound Brigade operates on a checkpoint system. These are
strategically placed before important game events. They not only
serve as a way to save the game, but also will restore all health and
energy used by your party. Each time players go back to a previous or
new checkpoint, the game will save at that location and not at the
furthest point reached like some games would. I found this to be
particularly useful because at each level there are multiple
unreachable areas or alternate paths that players can take - assuming
they've unlocked the respective abilities to go through those
alternate paths. Sometimes the checkpoint saving would make it harder
for me to get back to certain locations that I wanted to explore.
However, once players have entered the world, players can't go back
until they've defeated the boss.
On that note, it pains me to say that Bookbound Brigade is extremely
linear. While the game gives players the illusion of going other
ways, often there is only one path to the boss. There is no
alternative until players unlock other abilities allowing them access
to chests or characters, forcing players to go through obstacles they
may be stuck on until they can pass it.
Combat System
I like the idea behind the combat system, but at the same time, I'm
infuriated by it. Players use up to 8 historical figures at the same
time. And it should be noted that the historical figures which make
up your party are not chosen by players. It would have been much more
interesting to me if players could choose which historical figures
would embark on the quest to save B.o.B, but that isn't the case
here. Part of that is likely due to its linear method of level
design... Anyways, these historical figures have two abilities that
can be unlocked though gameplay. Each ability allows players to get
past different obstacles like Dracula's second jump gets the group
into areas they couldn't reach before. Other character abilities
relate to the combat system, which is what makes this game unique.
The multi-character combat system is a nice refreshing take on the
genre, but it's also poorly designed. In order to fling small
combatants towards a larger enemy, players either need to have the
ability unlocked to do this in vertical or horizontal formation.
While it's a cool idea, the characters attack individually to make
that action happen. So, the closest character has to attack the
creature and lift it up (using a certain combination of key presses)
and it has to reach either end for it to be thrown. At the same time
that players are executing this attack, other small creatures are
attacking the group, causing them to take damage. It's almost like
it's a turn based system without actually being a turn based game.
It's also not a complicated system and is an intriguing idea, but any
purchased attack boost is applied to the individual characters, not
the group. It means that while players know that their characters are
doing more damage, there isn't a lot of visual representation of that
fact. And honestly, having the characters all attack at the same time
would work better because it just isn't polished enough, in my
opinion.
Bookish Pros and Cons
On the plus side, it's really interesting to switch formations to do
different things or access new locations. Each of the abilities are
unlocked by historical figures that you save throughout the thematic
tomes (or: different points in history, like Egypt for example). It
allows for players to use a couple of different strategies to win
boss battles and traverse obstacles, making it fun. I do like the
formation mechanic, just not in combat.
Players can unlock some different perks by using book pages instead
of a coin currency. I love the concept that players traverse through
time by entering Thematic Tomes that are found in the library. Each
wing is dedicated to a different world where these tomes can be
found, and I felt it was a nice touch.
Even turning the idea of what we know about the various historical
figures on their heads made me smile. The book reader in me had great
fun with the references and visual representations of the characters.
And overall, the above elements made me love this game.
On the negative side, trying to execute abilities didn't always work.
I don't know if it was input lag, a dying joycon, connection
strength, or the sheer fact that the game couldn't always keep up
with the number of buttons being press. While I know that the Switch
I was using to review this game has a joycon that is starting to
fail, I don't actually know where the fault lies. This might not be
the fault of the developer, so bear that in mind if you get a code
for the Switch. I would recommend playing this on PC or with a pro
controller with only one signal being sent to the console.
Another negative point to the game is that some of the levels were a
bit more frustrating than others. I felt like the difficulty of the
challenges were sometimes steeper than they needed to be. Granted, I
am absolutely terrible at platformers, and it took far longer for me
to get through certain sections of the game, but the difficulty of
each area ramped up immediately. For example, I just acquired the
cirle formation. In a room a little later on has a puzzle with spikes
that come out of the ground at a set interval. The difficult part of
this is not avoiding the spikes, it's that players have to roll past
the spikes up a hill to immediately change formations to jump close
onto other spikes on a platform which leads out of the room. In
another area, players use the vertical formation to pass a bunch of
fire obstacles. Again, the issue isn't that section, it's the one
immediately afterwards players have to switch formations quickly at a
precise point in order to avoid the fire that will shoot out of the
wall... In other words, Bookbound Brigade requires players to have
fast reaction times, the ability to read situations properly, and
execute a combination of buttons in rapid succession. While that
isn't necessarily a tough concept for people who are good at
platformers, having a set of joycons that often defy button
combinations didn't help to ease my terribly gameplay. I'm already
handicapped in this genre, no need to make things worse!
Final Literary Thoughts
Bookbound Brigade is a neat 2D platforming game that delivers a
refreshing take on the genre with its combat system, no matter how
flawed and shallow it may be. The game takes well-known historical
figures that players are familiar with and turns them upside down
while giving players a hilarious plotline. The way the game is
presented is quite entertaining to me as an author and I appreciated
the wit.
Personally, Bookbound Brigade gets brownie points for having a
character named B.o.B because I happen to be a fan of the Dresden
Files by Jim Butcher. (For those of you that are unfamiliar with this
book series, Bob is the name of a sentient skull that holds a lot of
knowledge. As a second aside, B.o.B.B was also a guild name from
Guild Wars 1 that my brother and a few friends were apart of...)
Its platforming is simplistic enough, even if I took longer to
complete levels where others who excel in this genre would find easy.
I enjoyed playing Bookbound Brigade even though it is not a genre I
play.
Overall, I enjoyed my playthrough, even though I yelled at the game a
ton. It has some faults that need addressing like the input issues
(which might not actually be the fault of the developer) and an
improved combat system. It's still a fun take on the platforming
genre and as such, Bookbound Brigade earns a 7 out of 10 in my books.
Score: 7 / 10
