There is something about giant robots brutally ripping through reprehensible enemies that never gets old. Whether it’s landing a well-placed headshot or ruthlessly dicing through ratchet mercenaries, it’s easy to get lost in these types of games, as they rarely fail to raise your heartbeat from the high-paced action. This is why Bounty Star adding farming and base building to the gameplay formula might seem contradictory, as these genres tend to be more affiliated with a “relaxed tone”. After playing for over a dozen hours, I can attest firsthand that some aspects work exceptionally well, while others miss the mark.
Hiding In The Desert
The story follows Clem, an exceptionally skilled soldier known for their unmatched skills in piloting mechs on the battlefield. However, Clem’s glorious career comes to an abrupt end when a surrender by enemy forces goes horribly wrong, resulting in devastating consequences for everyone involved. To atone for her past wrongdoings, Clem now takes on contract bounties in the Red Expanse, a post-apocalyptic version of the American Southwest, to rebuild her tarnished reputation.
The premise channels the ambiance of a gritty spaghetti western, but instead of intense gunfights, it’s with mechs. Overall, it’s absolutely fantastic, as it really breeds this attitude of kill-or-be-killed. Clem’s outlook also personifies this pessimistic view, as their actions and dialogue within the world often reinforce this nihilistic message. Some may even find the first hours a bit too dark, as Clem constantly battles her inner demons. But throughout the course of the game, Clem gradually comes to realize that doing good deeds for others carries weight and meaning.
Collecting One Bounty At A Time
The dichotomy between mech battling and farming complements each other more than I expected. It’s very much like dipping a chip into a milkshake. It’s an unlikely combo that works. The gameplay bounces back and forth between mech combat and expanding your garage, which serves as your base of operations. When you begin each day, you will take control of Clem and participate in activities around the garage, such as growing crops, preparing meals, and looking after animals. Once you’ve finished these activities, you can then take on bounty missions, where you can exterminate criminals and foul creatures plaguing the Red Expanse. When you finish, you can spend the goods you’ve accumulated at the store to buy new items, blueprints, or weapons.
The fights themselves are everything you would want from a mech game − exciting, action-packed, and a little bit tactical. In fact, if you enjoyed the older Armored Core games, you will find a lot of parallels here. When you head out to battle, you will pilot the Desert Raptor MKII, which will have two primary weapons: a melee weapon and a firearm. These options might sound rather generic, but there’s quite an expansive pool of weapons you can pick from. For example, you could choose a grenade launcher or an assault rifle as your firearm, which feels and plays out very differently from one another. You can also attach augmentations to your vehicle that can give it unique abilities on the battlefield, like jumping or repairing itself. There are so many ways you can choose how to fight, so it definitely encourages you to dabble and try out different playstyles.
Every mission is about being mindful of your enemies, your positioning, and the temperature meter. If you unleash an excessive onslaught of moves, one after another, the vehicle will temporarily shut down and become defenseless against incoming aggression. Obviously, this will leave you in a sticky situation where your mech can easily be taken out. It forces you to think about your next move constantly, and actively punishes you if you do anything remotely resembling button-bashing.
Some may find the controls a little bit clunky and heavy, but it’s aiming for that war-machine feel, and it absolutely excels. It is beyond satisfying to impale a grind sword into an adversary or blow up a drone into smithereens with a firearm. Later on, you can also gain new moves to perform in combat scenarios, but none of them are superpowerful enough to change the dynamics of the fight. I quite liked using the gun-canceling maneuver, where your raptor hops backward and your gun automatically reloads. This would be great to use when you’re trying to create distance between you and the enemy.
Bounty missions are best described as glorified stages. Each mission will have specific objectives, such as capturing someone alive, scaring some dinos with a firework gun, or completing the bounty within a given time limit. If, for whatever reason, you fail to complete all the objectives the first time around, the bounties will eventually reappear, so you will have the opportunity to try again with better equipment. I’m a bit of a perfectionist, so I quite liked going back to older missions to tick all the boxes, so to speak. However, there’s not the biggest selection of missions available, so I could see how some players may find it a bit repetitive.
Fighting On An Empty Stomach
In contrast, the farming is average at best and by no means exceptional. The process is relatively simple, but if you leave the crops unattended for too long, they can wither away. To start, you will need to obtain a plant bed, then root some seeds and water them until they’re ready to be harvested. You can then use these crops to create scrumptious dishes that can give you perks in combat scenarios, like better movement speed or dealing more firearm damage. Think of it like the Monster Hunter series.
There are also a few base-building elements at play, as you will have to assemble new items for your garage at the workbench. Some are very straightforward, like creating a battery for cooking appliances, while others offer more substantial benefits, such as developing new power sources to reduce fuel and ammunition costs. Quite often, you’ll have to finish miscellaneous tasks around the garage before you can take on the next bounty related to the storyline.
These two gameplay elements are supposed to interweave with one another, so progressing in one will help the other, but that’s not really the case. In reality, you can ignore large portions of farming altogether, as it’s not often essential to progressing in the main story. The food buffs aren’t the most powerful, either, as the way you move in battle will dictate your survival far more, which also makes farming redundant. This was a bit of a shame, as participating in activities around the garage is very tranquil and a nice change of pace from the chaos of the battlefield. So, although the idea is great, the execution is severely lacking. It might have also been interesting if they had incorporated the mech more into the farming, in the same way Lightyear Frontier did, where you use the mech itself.
Graphically, the character models in the game are jarring. Everyone looks really strange, especially Clem with her red soulless eyes. I think the developers were aiming for a steampunk appearance, but it just doesn’t come across right. She won’t be giving Tank Girl a run for her money, that’s for sure. The dialogue is quite often out of sync with the mouth movements as well, so even though there is some excellent voice acting and character exchanges, it all falls a bit flat. When you move around the garage, it also feels janky at times, and I would occasionally notice the framerate dip on the PS5. This was surprising, as it’s not the largest open-space environment.
I feel torn about Bounty Star. It attempts to amalgamate two genres that, on paper, feel like they shouldn’t work, but it strangely does. The problem is that the execution is disappointing as it fails to make the farming elements integral to the experience. I would still recommend Bounty Star to mech-heads as the combat and controls are superb, but it’s hard to ignore what could have been.
Disclaimer: Annapurna Interactive provided a PlayStation 5 copy of Bounty Star for review purposes.
