Bounty Star Review - Armored Core With FARMING and Base-Building!?

Do mechs and farming mix?

Well howdy, partners, and welcome to I Dream of Indie Games for another rootin’ tootin’ shootin’ good time! I’ve played my fair share of mech games throughout the years, but Bounty Star, coming to us from DINOGOD and publisher Annapurna, might be the first one I've played that also lets me grow plants and cook breakfast burritos. This mix of genres doesn't seem to go together on paper, but hey, I'll try anything once. Bounty Star is certainly ambitious and creative, but does this 3D action game that’s been blended with base building and farming manage to grow and thrive? Or is it a rusty pile of bolts? Let’s find out in our full review.

Bounty Star makes a terrible first impression. Its awkward character portrait art and animations are immediately apparent, alongside poor voice acting performances and dialogue that seems to have a strange fascination with not only its lead character’s buttcrack, but asses in general. I wouldn’t be shocked if the first 30 minutes or so of the game are enough to turn most players away. Poor hit detection, vanishing polygons, and crude animations showcase that this was clearly a troubled project where budget cuts had to be made. This will be a theme throughout Bounty Star, a game that feels like a freezing cold burrito shell with warm eggs inside.

Bounty Star opens on a mech mission gone wrong, ending in complete and total destruction caused by a massive explosion. Many lives are lost, but surviving the event and carrying much guilt is war veteran Clem. Fast forward a bit, and Clem is now living a private life, taking on the identity of “Graveyard Clem” before heading off to the Red Expanse—a desert that is still ruled by dangerous mechs and outlaws. Clem will now take up an MKII mech once more and partake in various bounty hunts to both defend the land from criminals and earn a living for herself.

Bounty Star’s narrative is awkwardly told. As I mentioned, the dialogue in the game isn’t very good, and as a result, that means its characters are about as interesting as Jared Leto’s Joker. Clem isn’t well fleshed out, and the supporting cast doesn’t do much to lift a rather poorly pieced-together script that comes together about as well as the final season of LOST. It’s a bumbling mess of a tale, but thankfully, not the main focus of the game. A shame, though, as with better writing and characters, the world of Bounty Star could have been an interesting one to learn about.

Thankfully, once you get past its god-awful introduction, a tall order I know, Bounty Star introduces a surprisingly solid core gameplay loop. At your main hub, you’ll gather resources, build items to improve upon your mech, cook food, eventually do a bit of farming, and take on new bounties each day. The game does feature a day-night cycle, which means Clem will need to go to bed and wake up at specific hours to go on certain missions.

Let’s first talk about how missions play out. Clem will choose a bounty from her map, prepare her mech, and then fly off into battle, where she will typically be tasked with taking out a set number of enemies. These enemies aren’t the smartest I have come across before, but they do a decent job of standing in your way. Each mission comes with its own rewards and difficulty levels, and even includes optional goals that can earn you additional currency. You’ll even have the option of either killing your foes or capturing them, as some missions want enemies brought in either dead or alive. As unpolished as its presentation can be, the combat in Bounty Star is halfway decent—a good mix of using melee attacks and shooting with a variety of different weapons which you’ll earn over time. Enemies even have different damage types worth paying attention to when it comes time to customize the mech. The MKII has a good weight and feel to it, able to boost and dodge while dishing out damage. Players will need to keep an eye on their mech's temperature; otherwise, it will overheat, along with its hit points, which can be restored a few times throughout each map based on how many reserves you have available.

All the while, your environment is somewhat destructible. As you trample over objects, you’ll earn additional currency to grow both your base and mech. Take down missions, earn more money, build out your base and mech, and progress through a rather linear story that has plenty of side missions. This is mostly how Bounty Star plays out, with the occasional change of pace coming in the form of battles on baseball fields and even scaring off dinosaurs using fireworks—no, I didn’t make that up. There’s not a ton of variety to the mission types throughout, but at least the developers tried to mix things up a bit.

Upon successful completion of a mission, it's back to the base where you’ll spend that hard-earned loot of yours! I’m normally not a huge fan of base building, or farming for that matter, but Bounty Star does a pretty decent job of slowly introducing new elements and making the process easy to understand. Buying and crafting new items for your mech is admittedly exciting, with a good amount of customization options available that make your MKII feel uniquely yours. You’ll gain new weapons, new paint jobs, new engines—all sorts of fun trinkets. Even better, players can eventually unlock an additional loadout and switch between them with a press of the button in battle.

Hungry? Why wait? Purchase ingredients to cook up delicious meals that will give Clem additional perks in battle. You can also view optional collectibles such as action figures and hats at your base, and, of course, grow plants—which takes a really long damn time but nets you more resources. It’s also important to keep your base powered with water and even take on previous missions with a bizarre VR headset, so all told, there's no shortage of things to do in between each run, and the developers have done a nice job of slowly introducing new systems to players. With that said, it’s going to take time to unlock many of the game’s finer aspects, so be prepared for a bit of repetition in the early going.

The presentation of Bounty Star is by far its weakest aspect. Low-resolution textures are plentiful, and stiff, awkward animations almost seem the norm—outside of combat, where the game seems to fare much better. Character models are particularly awkward. The script—we’ve already talked about how good that is—though the sound design is halfway decent, even if it's not my style. The music is a mix of post-apocalyptic country, blues-ish sounding tracks that actually fit the vibe of the game, even if they weren’t to my personal taste. Sound effects, on the other hand, were nothing remarkable, with those poor voice performances detracting from the overall experience. Bounty Star did run very well for what it's worth, as I didn’t experience any major framerate drops or egregious glitches during my time playing the PC version. On Steam Deck, players should expect a significant visual hit and an unsteady framerate between 36–40 fps, but it's certainly playable depending on your tolerance. The game doesn’t feature any accessibility features of note and a very vanilla set of visual options.

Bounty Star is a fun game at times that requires players to sift through a lot of crap to get to its tastier morsels. Its story and overall presentation aren’t great; it has one of the most deflating introductions I have come across in some time, and while plating isn’t everything if the food tastes good enough, in this case, the game’s lack of polish actively holds it back from greatness. Even still, I can’t deny that the gameplay loop got its hooks into me, with a solid base-building system, tolerable farming, and some pretty damn great mech combat at times. If you’re willing to be patient, you just might find a good game that could have been a great one.

BRONZE: GOOD