A tumbleweed dances across a dusty desert, but this isn’t anywhere like we have here and now, because this one is covered in bandits, dinosaurs, mercenaries, monsters, and reasonably sized robots! The world ended once, one more time, and you are here to be a force of good among the remnants of civilization fighting back against a hard environment as well as the forces of evil humans. Thankfully, they aren’t the only ones with a robot.
Bounty Star
Developer: DINOGOD
Price: $24.99
Platform: PC, PS5, Xbox Series
MonsterVine was supplied with a PS5 code for review
It’s always interesting when you go into a game expecting to like some things, but fall in love with other parts of it you didn’t know about. A lot of my friends mentioned Bounty Star to me because they know I love me a good ole’ fashioned mecha brawl, but I also love games like Stardew Valley and the like, heavily dealing with time management, growing and nurturing livestock. I came into this expecting to homestead with a giant robot, but I found something with a bit more nuance, but less exciting gameplay.
Bounty Star takes place in a land that reached a level of technological superiority that birthed a plague that nearly wiped out humanity, basically resetting civilization and bringing back dinosaurs. After that, humanity gradually evolved again, and with the help of finding ancient technology, including the Raptor mecha suits, they were able to restart civilization. At this point, the world is a post (Post-post?) apocalyptic wild west, filled with bandits, wild dinosaurs, mercenaries, and more.
You yourself, however, play as Clementine, aka Clem by her preference, who is a bit rough around the edges, but for good reason. Ex-Soldier, Ace pilot, Master Mechanic, and someone carrying quite a bit of trauma from her past, but she wants to become a force of good as she enters a new chapter of her life. The remains of any kind of government tend just to outsource their help because they aren’t exactly an organized force in this wasteland. Thankfully, they pay well, and Clem comes into her own little slice of life when she is given a property to work and live on.
This was the part I was possibly the most excited about, doing fun little Harvest Moon-style stuff with the help of a mecha suit in Bounty Star. I saw myself using its power to gather logs and things like that, but it’s more of an accessory to the narrative and gameplay sections. It was fine, but I guess I was hoping it would be a little bit more in the spotlight because I think it has a lot of potential. Regardless, it is fun enough, and getting new additions to it is always satisfying as you make your routine more automated or efficient.
Growing crops, cooking meals that give bonuses during the mecha segments, crafting up new pieces of weapons and accessories, as well as various passive bonuses, you can build all this into the main gameplay, and the thing that had my eye on it in the first place, the third-person mecha combat. It doesn’t have to be Armored Core levels of intense, but I found the combat to be cool, but lacking a lot of substance, and having its fair share of annoyances that I ran into again and again.
You take on bounties from the bounty board in your home base to progress the story, and each of them has main objectives, as well as secondary objectives for you to complete to make some more cash. Once you pick it, eat yourself some food to buff up your stats for the next mission you embark on, and make the final changes to your mech before you head off to the mission zone. You can have two different loadouts consisting of melee weapons, ranged weapons, various support units, and boosters, as well as a bonus that you get at the end of a long melee string.
Visually, Bounty Star isn’t anything to marvel at, and some really rough animations feel uncanny at times. But then, sometimes Clem moves with so much personality that I have to assume the focus is more on that than on some animations that aren’t in the spotlight as much. Once you are into your mecha, you will be shooting, slashing, and dodging your way through monsters, smaller autonomous robots, bandits, and, of course, other Raptor suits. It was serviceable enough, but the enemies have an annoying habit of not letting you capitalize on their damage windows, or interrupt you with insanely quick counterattacks that I kept running into that would take me out of any good run I was having with the gameplay.
There are some very cool pieces of equipment to play with on your Raptor, and Bounty Star encourages you to experiment and to try and bring the right damage types to the mission since it gives you a preview of what you will be up against when you are selecting bounties. There is a bit of rock, paper, scissors at play here, and bringing the flat-out wrong damage type leads to some very long fights, so you will want to not just stick to a single loadout. I was pretty thankful when they gave me the option to switch to two loadouts on the fly, because I could stubbornly use the loadout I thought was cool and make the second one appropriate for the mission.
The thing that really ended up being what I enjoyed the most was the writing and the Bounty Star’s entire vibe. I was not surprised when I was chatting with a friend and they asked who published Bounty Star. They saw it was Annapurna Interactive, because these are some seriously likeable characters dealing with some rough trauma in an unforgiving world that has just enough silliness to keep you smiling when it wants you to. Clem is a character who is trying her hardest to grow. I loved that after many story missions, you get a spot of her just reflecting in her journal while posted up on her mecha on an orange, sunset, wild west. It reflects decisions she makes later on in the story in a really satisfying way. I love Clem’s animation for sleeping and various other little things, and I especially love that when she is absolutely stumped, she pulls out a stuffed dinosaur to talk through the problem with until she finds a solution.
Clem, in her past, made a decision during a military operation that directly led to her entire squad, her friends and her found family being wiped out by and ambush after she let someone go, showing in that moment that she has good in her heat, but it is immediately revealed that a good heart might not be a good thing in this lawless world we find ourself in. Her hesitation to step back into a seat after she buried her whole squad, hence her nickname of Graveyard Clem, felt earned, and with the aforementioned diary entries, you understand how she copes with her decision to pilot again, and her resolve to be a force of good in this world grows.
There are other characters who stop by, from merchants to inventors, to ex-bandits peddling in inhalants that let you relive previous story missions, and all of them tend to add something more for you to do on your homestead. The music and sound effects were good, with the edge going to some great tunes that played throughout my time with the Bounty Star. I think this Bounty Star has some good bones, but I wish there were as much meat on all of them as there is in the story, writing, and world. I think this is a great start, and I hope to see Bounty Star do well and get some support post-launch.
The Final Word
Bounty Star is a good time, with likable characters and an interesting setting ripe for exploration. Those are its strongest parts, but the rest of it is entirely serviceable despite some frustrating jank during combat and unrealized potential in the homesteading process. I could see a sequel to this game, with a bit more depth on the gameplay side, being a real hit that pleases mecha fans, story fans, and farming-sim fans alike.
MonsterVine Rating: 4 out of 5 – Good
