Bonds of the Skies

Genre: Turn-Based JRPG

Players: 1

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Review:

Bonds of the Skies is a Turn-Based JRPG released on mobile devices in 2013 and gradually ported to virtually every other platform on the market, with the game coming to the Nintendo Switch in 2019. This game follows a young hero in a medieval fantasy world who forms a bond with a small dragon god and heads out on an adventure to challenge a competing dragon god threatening the peace of the world… or something.

The presentation here is decent, featuring 16-bit-style pixel art visuals and featuring a pretty traditional-style synthesized fantasy soundtrack. The entire thing results in a game that looks and sounds like an early-Super Nintendo-era JRPG.

Okay, I think I’ve buried the lead enough here. This game is extremely, extremely, extremely generic. Honestly, I’m straining to think of anything interesting to say about it. The characters aren’t memorable, the combat mechanics don’t do anything interesting or noteworthy, the world looks like every other fantasy RPG world ever made, the dialogue is poorly-localized, but not so poorly-localized that it’s likely to be memorable for how bad it is, aside from some absurd character names like Yukko and Doggy (no, the latter isn’t a dog or even a dog-like person, and no, there’s no explanation for their absurd name).

Of course, I suppose the bright side to this is that Bonds of the Skies doesn’t do anything outright atrocious for the genre. It’s perfectly playable… but then I have to address its price point. At $13, this game is just a few dollars shy of the price of Final Fantasy VII, one of the most legendary games in the genre. Or, if you prefer something more old-school, it’s more expensive than the first two Dragon Quest games combined, and those games are far more iconic than this one.

If Bonds of the Skies were $5, it would be a fine but absolutely forgettable JRPG that might make for some nice lighter fare between more significant entries in the genre. But at $13, this mediocre, generic, lukewarm game is likely only going to be memorable for one thing – robbing you out of money that could have been spent on better JRPGs.

tl;dr – Bonds of the Skies is a completely generic JRPG that does nothing especially interesting or unique for the genre, and while it doesn’t do anything outright terrible either, its $13 price tag is absolutely absurd – put that money towards one of the countless other better JRPGs on the Nintendo Switch instead.

Grade: C-

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