Lootbound is an incredibly addicting and easy-to-learn tactical roguelite with turn-based gameplay and tons of loot to play around with. Despite its simplistic combat, it heavily encourages smart decision-making and inventory management to the point where runs that start off strong can instantly come crashing down if you leave any gaps in your strategy.
I’ve gotten some successful runs over the week prior to release, and to be frank, I love the game, but I believe there are a few kinks to iron out. Let’s dig a little deeper into it!
NOTE: I received a review copy of the game weeks before it released, and this is my honest critique after over 15 hours of gameplay.
Delightful Dungeon Delving
Levels in Lootbound work like the floors in Slay the Spire, in which you have branching paths to choose from after every encounter. You have to weigh your options and decide whether or not you want to fight enemies or focus on getting more upgrades. Along the way, you’re practically forced to pick at least one new party member in each biome.
In each combat encounter, you take turns whacking one another with whatever abilities you’ve currently unlocked in the run. Fights run on an initiative system, so turns are decided based on how “fast” everyone is.
It’s a very laidback combat system, as the only character you fully control is the one you start with. Any companions you get will act on their own and use abilities as long as they have mana to do so. They’re smart enough to heal themselves or other party members if they can, but aside from that, they just kinda attack.
While I appreciate the lack of micromanagement, it does get a bit silly at times with how they just sort of dump all of their mana against trivial enemies or choose to buff themselves or others when they can already land the killing blow. This automated behavior has led to some frustrating losses, but it’s not enough to discourage me from running it back.
Inventory Tetris!
There are multiple mechanics in place to help you gain more power, such as rolling dice to try and open chests or upgrade your base stats, but the main way to grow stronger is through equipping whatever randomized drops you get.
Rather than having equipment slots, Lootbound gives you and all of your party members a completely open inventory where anything you place in there will count as being “equipped”.
Want to have 5 helmets on at once? Knock yourself out, cause your enemies sure can’t.
Got a bard in your party? Make them an entire one-man orchestra with a bag full of varying instruments. Don’t question it, just enjoy the massive heals and buffs.
To top off all this silliness, certain items have “auras” that grant additional bonuses to adjacent items, as long as they meet certain criteria. For instance, a legendary chest plate might grant you even more survivability if you place helmets right next to it, but only if the armor itself is placed on the bottom edge of the character’s bag.
There are many different special conditions that you’ll run into, and this is what I mean when I say that the game rewards smart inventory management. You literally have to play tetris with each party member’s inventory to get the most out of your looted gear, and this is where one major problem rears its head.
Diverse, Yet Very Limited
Although the game’s inventory system allows for a lot of creative builds, it does feel way too restrictive with how much space you have to work with. Most items take an enormous amount of space, even those that have horrible stats.
If you’re unlucky, you’ll be trudging through the levels with an awful mishmash of items that you only picked because nothing else would fit. I’ve lost count of how many runs I played through where I had to pivot away from whatever build I wanted to make because none of the drops that enabled it would fit in my inventory.
I get that there’s this element of risk and luck that the game wants to emphasize, but it gets absurd at times when you’re already half an hour into a run and still struggling to get a coherent, balanced build going.
There have been so many moments where I couldn’t get a simple aura to activate more than once because of all the odd shapes taking up all the real estate in my bag. The worst part? Getting rid of some of the other items would just open me up to being killed in a single turn, or at least leave me constantly knocking at death’s door.
It’s disheartening when you have to let go of so many fun-looking items just because you’d need to sacrifice too much to fit them in. While I’m used to rolling with the punches in games like this, I’d imagine plenty of other players would be extremely frustrated with it.
An Exercise in Futility
One unique thing the game does is that, rather than having a boss at every biome, you instead get to pick “parts” of a Sentinel that you’ll be facing at the very end… if you make it that far.
You basically have a choice between two different buffs that the final boss will have. These can range from having massive party-wide attacks that debuff everybody to a ramping damage boost that makes each turn so much deadlier than the last.
It’s good that you have some agency in how the final boss will act, as it lets you plan ahead and build your party to counter its mechanics. However, in practice, it usually feels very unfair with how luck is still a massive factor in whether or not you can counter it to begin with. An hour-long run can end in a single depressing note just because you had the audacity to get unlucky.
Not only would you have to contend with the limited inventory space, but you also have to deal with plain RNG in the actual combat. Multiple times I’ve had a very unceremonious death at the Sentinel because of how fast it can ramp up, with the only plausible counter being “pray that it misses for one turn”.
Just before writing this, I lost a game that was my first attempt as a paladin. In that run, up until the final boss, nothing could even hurt me without armor-bypassing damage due to my high fortitude. The whole party was healthy with over a thousand max HP each and vampirism compensating for the lack of heals.
It was looking like a done deal, since the Sentinel could barely do anything to me, and my companions could sustain themselves just fine. A few turns of the boss struggling to even dent my armor and then… bam. A single critical strike on my character ends the entire encounter out of nowhere because it just kept stacking tons of crit damage every turn.
The worst part? My party could have easily finished the fight without the paladin, but unfortunately, the run ends when your “main” character dies.
Still Having a Blast
Despite some glaring issues that I have with it, I still enjoy playing Lootbound and will continue to do so past this review. Runs can still be really satisfying when the stars align and you get a proper, functional build all the way to the end. It’s mainly just a case of the game having high highs and very sour lows.
I don’t expect the studio to just overhaul everything to “fix” these perceived problems, but I’m sure there are compromises that can be made to make the game feel a little less dependent on good luck. An option to speed up combat would be nice too.
The charming high fantasy art style, animation, and sound design are enough of a saving grace that they keep me hooked as well. Even basic attacks look and sound magnificent, and I’ll never get tired of watching the bard do literally anything.
I have a few other games in my backlog that I have to cover, but I’ll definitely continue firing up Lootbound as a palate cleanser in the meantime. It’s simple enough that one can easily just pick it up and play for a run or two before continuing with whatever else you have to do, and I’m absolutely going to try and 100% this soon as it doesn’t seem that difficult to do so!