Review: Born Of Bread (Nintendo Switch)
Born Of Bread is an adventure RPG developed by WildArts Studio Inc. and published by Plug In Digital. While it’s not perfect, between the humorous writing, curious characters, and eye-catching graphics, there is a lot to love about this title.
You play as Loaf, a flour golem quite literally born of bread. The royal baker accidentally created Loaf and cares for him as a father, deeming himself Papa Baker. Meanwhile, a group of explorers accidentally resurrect beings from many years ago. This group tries to collect shards of the sunstone to resurrect the rest of their family and friends, all the while wreaking havoc across the land. When Papa Baker gets blamed for something the baddies did, Loaf begins a journey to clear Papa Baker’s name and collect the sunstone shards himself. Thus, the game begins.
Born Of Bread is a casual RPG with turn-based combat and light platforming as you explore the land. Loaf meets many quirky characters, including a few companions to join him on his journey. For example, Lint the Raccoon aids in combat and can dig piles of dirt in the overworld, revealing clovers (the in-game currency), items, or sometimes holes that lead to hidden treasures, such as a weapon upgrade for Loaf. On the other hand, another partner can meditate, revealing hidden platforms. Each character plays a decent role in and out of combat while having their own unique backstory.
Much like the overall game, the combat is in-depth but simple to execute. Enemies run amok in the overworld, and you can attack them first, or they can attack you first. Or, if you’re like me, you’ll accidentally run into them. Loaf will go into battle with one partner, whichever one you have out at that time. In battle, you can choose to attack, defend, use a special move, use an item, or flee.
Loaf learns special moves, such as boosting his defense, when completing a chapter of the story. However, they use resolve points (RP). The attacks use will points (WP). All items in the game are healing, whether it’s for RP, WP, or HP.
Loaf will attack using weapons found throughout the adventure. They’re equipped Tetris-style in his backpack. When using these attacks, sometimes you’ll need to press the A button at the right time to land the attack, wiggle the analog stick back and forth to charge a progress bar or press a combination of buttons in the correct order.
But what about your companions’ battling? They don’t use weapons but have their special set of moves learned via a skill tree. Throughout the world, you’ll find sleeping lizards. Once you collect two of them, you can trade them in for one skill point. However, there are three skills per tier and you can equip one skill per tier at a time. This allows you to switch up their moves as needed, depending on which enemies you’re facing.
The enemies (and your characters’ moves) have types such as fire, meditation, and more. They also have damaging types such as slashing, piercing, and more. Enemies will typically have a weakness and strength. Similar to Pokémon, if you attack using a weapon that’s the enemy’s weakness, you’ll deal more damage. Alternatively, you’ll deal less damage if you fight with something they’re strong against.
Each defeated enemy will earn you experience points. Once you reach 100 experience, you’ll level up. You can choose to increase Loaf’s HP, the amount of WP, or the amount of RP. In addition, you can choose to work toward increasing Loaf’s backpack space after three level-ups or choose to increase your boon space after two level-ups. Boons are similar to badges, in which they’ll add health to your party members, allow you to see an enemy’s weakness, make the party immune to poison, and more.
Aside from the combat, what makes Born Of Bread great is the setting. Loaf’s travels range from a forest to farming lands to snowy areas and more. The 2.5D graphics are charming and visually appealing. Some areas were a tad dark, even with the brightness all the way up on my Switch, but each area was pretty to look at and fun to explore.
In addition, some of the platforming was a miss for me. The depth perception was difficult at times, taking me longer to hop from one cliff to the next than I’d care to admit. I sometimes took a detour, assuming the game didn’t want me to make the jump. After not being able to progress, I’d try the jump again and be able to make it after a few more tries. I think part of this issue was the fixed camera.
Finally, Born Of Bread still has some bugs in it. The game softlocked on me once during a sequence I couldn’t skip. I needed to smash some objects to look for research notes, and thankfully, the game froze only when I smashed a certain object. So, I skipped hitting that one to progress forward. Luckily, the notes weren’t hidden in that particular object. However, the game doesn’t auto-save (you can only do so in designated spots), so when I reset the game, I had to redo some parts.
In addition, sometimes I’d enter a house within one of the towns, and the screen would violently shake until I moved Loaf far enough away from the door. Sometimes Lint would morph inside of Papa Baker, and I got Loaf stuck on top of a statue. He kept jumping, but I was able to hold the analog stick to get him to move forward slowly enough to fall off the statue. These glitches aren’t necessarily game-breaking but can be annoying.
Overall, Born Of Bread is a wonderful game. The characters are likable, the writing is funny with plenty of puns to go around, and the music is upbeat and fun. Aside from the glitches, this title is worth getting. It took me about 16.5 hours to complete the game, though there are many side quests I didn’t complete and items I didn’t get. If they patch the glitches, then I’ll certainly go back to this game and complete it.
