Review Bounty Battle - Too bad for a potential

Publisher: Merge Games

Developer:
Dark Screen Games

Release date: July 23 , 2020

Platform:
PS4, PC, Xbox One, Switch

The main characters here emerge from classics like Dead Cells, Blasphemous, Axiom Verge, Owlboy, Nuclear Throne and Steamworld Dig, it's certainly an enviable cast of great characters with the potential to deliver a Extremely fun time for arcade game fans. It's therefore a bit of a pity that all this potential has been completely wasted on a game that is among the worst we've played in a very long time.

From the moment you join the Bounty Battle, problems immediately begin to pile up. Its menus are confusing and incredibly clunky, choices are hard to see and confusing for new players, protagonist portraits are horribly low resolution, character selection screens are dark and dull, no there's multiplayer, tournament mode is a nasty travesty, challenge mode is a tad tedious, framerates are so disappointing. 

Fighting in a Bounty Battle sees you go head-to-head against your opponents - in singleplayer or local co-op - using your chosen protagonist's poorly implemented move set. You can chain basic, agile combos together by hitting Y, hitting hard with X, "throwing" with R, dodging with B, jumping with A, and performing a special attack with ZR. As you move around the screen you will accumulate bonus points which you can then use to buy an ally to fight by your side but in reality there is no point in moving around. meaningless way.

Besides your basic move set, your character can also perform more complex attack actions such as power-ups, unreliable dodges, and even teleports but your character can only move in a straight line up and down again. Most of these moves are not designed to be eye-catching, outstanding or inspiring for the player to manipulate, but only leave a disappointment when fighting.

In the game's tournament mode, you usually face three opponents at once, but often two added opponents will often cripple the FPS as well. With a battle mode of three or more characters, the game is like a powerpoint presentation! The only place where players can achieve smooth frame rates in Bounty Battle, is in the training field. 

Tournament mode is the main attraction of the content where you have to dig into the mechanics in single player and overall is shockingly bad. You cannot choose your gladiator; Instead, you have to fight through 5 rounds with each character randomly selected from the enemy warriors after you complete crap boss battles. 

If you manage to win from this farce, you'll be rewarded for your persistence with a still, blurry, low-resolution image of the pugilist player you're currently using. Versus mode is a bit more valuable but just because it allows you to pick characters to fight and keep everything on a 1v1 basis the framerates will probably just lag but not freeze to death!

If we have to find anything positive amid the game's many saddens, it's the rather 'OK' soundtrack. Besides that, it's probably the trailer where everything looks so promising. It's not nice to condemn the developer's work, but really, Bounty Battle is just an inexplicably messy game that is amazingly lazy. It's incredibly flawed and indescribably flawed and there's no reason why the creative team wouldn't realize this and still release the game.

If you are curious and want to spend money to buy the game because of the promise of a super product to change the wind for Super Smash Bros, then maybe you should reconsider now. Instead, you can choose to play any one - or even two or three of the great indie games from which Bounty Battle borrows the protagonist for a much better experience.

Bounty Battle is one of the worst video games we've ever played. The game's premise has so much potential but it's baffling that Dark Screen Games somehow used all of these great indie characters in a way that couldn't be more pathetic. Everything else about this horrible mess is completely broken. 

Complicated menus, horrendous combat, shocking frame rates, raw animations, and poorly explained mechanics plunge the game into a pit that is sure to be unearthed. So meGAME advises you best not to believe the beautiful advertising of Bounty Battle and avoid it as far as possible.