Born of Bread has all the trappings of a great RPG. Fun environmental design, memorable characters with actual personhood, and self-aware writing that both pokes fun and investigates the tropes of gaming. Where BoB stumbles is in its gameplay, which didn't reach far beyond anything that it's main source of inspiration, Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door did 20 years prior.
The battle system was a slight exception, trying out equippable weapons for the main character, Loaf, while having a small tree of options for the partner characters. There is also a Pokemon-esque type system for moves and enemies, but its simplicity boils down to choosing the right attack type if you have it or avoiding using the enemy's protected type. Without the "Attack Sight" boon, which is this game's version of TTYD's badge, that allowed me to see the types of the enemies, I don't think I would have been able to always figure out which of the 7+ types the enemy was.
Unfortunately, by the end of the game, I was beating all enemies in 1 hit and not worrying about damage or WP (like FP from TTYD) consumption. This is because the game is far far too generous towards the player. Items are bursting out of the seams, to a comical point of having to avoid dropped items that scatter the levels. Battles rarely have more than 2 enemies, and the majority of time had just one. The enemies were also extremely samey, attacking in one of a handful of ways and never having any sort of special trick to them, like HP-drain or flying enemies or enemies that split or have phases or etc etc etc. BoB had the material for a more clever variety of enemies, it just didn't utilize it.
There are lot of nitpicks that bothered me with the gameplay. Lots of small things that felt like they could have been reported on by some more playtesting and fixed before releasing it out to the wild. I'm not going into them.
Born of Bread runs on charm, art, and dialogue while getting a bit too repetitive and easy as it went on.
The battle system was a slight exception, trying out equippable weapons for the main character, Loaf, while having a small tree of options for the partner characters. There is also a Pokemon-esque type system for moves and enemies, but its simplicity boils down to choosing the right attack type if you have it or avoiding using the enemy's protected type. Without the "Attack Sight" boon, which is this game's version of TTYD's badge, that allowed me to see the types of the enemies, I don't think I would have been able to always figure out which of the 7+ types the enemy was.
Unfortunately, by the end of the game, I was beating all enemies in 1 hit and not worrying about damage or WP (like FP from TTYD) consumption. This is because the game is far far too generous towards the player. Items are bursting out of the seams, to a comical point of having to avoid dropped items that scatter the levels. Battles rarely have more than 2 enemies, and the majority of time had just one. The enemies were also extremely samey, attacking in one of a handful of ways and never having any sort of special trick to them, like HP-drain or flying enemies or enemies that split or have phases or etc etc etc. BoB had the material for a more clever variety of enemies, it just didn't utilize it.
There are lot of nitpicks that bothered me with the gameplay. Lots of small things that felt like they could have been reported on by some more playtesting and fixed before releasing it out to the wild. I'm not going into them.
Born of Bread runs on charm, art, and dialogue while getting a bit too repetitive and easy as it went on.