Bastion Review
Played on PC
Developed by Supergiant Games
Released 20th July 2011
Bastion is as successful as a debut title will ever be. Having left EA as the helping hand to Command & Conquer 3 and Red Alert 3, Amir Rao and Gavin Simon co-founded the small indie team known as Supergiant Games. With a team of 7 people, split between San Jose and New York City, a game brimming with a fantastic audible and visual presentation arose out of the 2-year development cycle. This brilliant design paid off as by 2015, the game had sold more than 3 million copies and had been nominated for multiple awards such as Best Original Game and Best Independent Game by the Game Critic Awards and Spike Video Game Awards respectively. Bastion happens to be one of the few games that are great and deserve more recognition than they currently have, especially since it became the building blocks for Supergiant's next games: Hades, Transistor and Pyre.
Story
The story of Bastion is relatively great. The narrative follows the mute protagonist, only known as "the Kid", as he travels between floating remnants of islands, trying to survive and piece together the cause of the world-ending catastrophe, the Calamity. This whole world that is built up, with every island being a unique, organic wasteland, was quite fascinating, however, it never transcended just that. The story remains at a constant quality and intrigue, never getting better or worse. This resulted in some moments of the experience beginning to feel like they would flatline and inevitably downgrade. Fortunately, for moments like those, they were saved by the superb narration.
The whole game's tale is told in the format of narration. Not only is the voice acting amazing for it, but it doesn't break up the pace like cutscenes or readable collectables would. Instead, all its significant events, secrets and additional pieces of lore are verbally shown to the player in short yet informative lines of dialogue. For some reason, I found this to be extraordinary and I'm possibly giving it much more credit than it deserves.
Gameplay
The gameplay may have been the weakest part of the game, however, at worst, it's mediocre. The combat is very simple, you have a weapon for both your right-click and left-click while having an ability you can use for every Black Tonic you have. While in the moment of scrapping with the neighbouring wildlife, it won't seem like there's much combat variety. You'll either use your long-ranged weapon, short-ranged weapon or the ability if the foe is too difficult. Very cut and dry. Yet, there is such a wide arsenal you can pick from with so many builds and options to go for. You can rock a musket and a shield or a mortar and a spear or any other combination you can think of. Additionally, every weapon has up to 2 specific abilities linked to them, on top of the individual abilities themselves. Either create a Ring of Fire with the Flame Bellows or place a bunch of land mines to surprise any charging, giant Scumbag. Unfortunately, the creativity ends there as the upgrades for the weapons could've been better if there were more like Serrated Edge that adds poison to your machete, rather than "increased 50% damage" or some other stat boost nonsense.
Despite the gameplay not being incredibly fleshed out, it truly did feel like a unique challenge every time I entered a level, and this was very much the case for every Shrine modifier active, which increased the intensity and difficulty of the game. However, the main reason the enjoyable challenge was created was due to the game brimming with a variety of enemies that made me panic under the various amounts of tactics I had to employ with my small arsenal. The main problem I had with the enemies though, is that the bosses (which I won't score individually) were essentially on the same level as the other adversaries. They simply were just a beefed-up variation of the enemies populated before or after the main fight. This ended up ruining some of the cooler fights such as Queen Anne of the Anklegators.
Characters
The characters were pretty decent. Not a single soul in this game was cookie-cutter, shallow or poorly written in any way. Despite them not having lines of dialogue themselves, the narration telling us how they were feeling, saying or experiencing was enough to make the characters favourable. Additionally, the Who Knows Where levels were very intriguing. These levels are like an alternate, dreamlike dimension, where the player battles waves of enemies while the narrator slowly reveals a character's past. These granted great depth to the characters, even though there was no need to do so, but resulted in me being more immersed in the world of the game.
Atmosphere
The atmosphere is incredible. First of all, the music is phenomenal. The magic that is produced with the soundtrack is insane and, since all the levels were made following the music, every track brings the best out of every level. To be completely honest, I'd go as far as saying that it's up there with my other personal favourite game soundtracks besides The Last of Us, Undertale, Streets of Rage 4, Halo, and more. Oh and if "Build That Wall" doesn't evoke any positive reaction out of you, don't speak to me. Another small point to add about the audio is that the sound effects are great and expressive.
The game's visuals may not be as amazing as the music but it's still magnificent. The simple yet beautiful art style is so gratifying to look at and this is due to how the hand-painted style it presents, softens the sharpness that Jen Zee, the innovator of this exotic, post-apocalyptic art style, saw as typical in isometric games and the colourless, harsh depictions of most devasted landscapes. Finally, since the game is around a decade old and not graphically demanding, you should be able to run it whether you have a NASA computer or a potato for your setup.
Story - 8/10
Gameplay - 7/10
Characters - 7.5/10
Atmosphere - 9.5/10
Great
Bastion is a must-play. Yes, it does have some flaws embedded in its gameplay, however, they can be considered minute when looking at the bigger picture. It's a very obvious observation but the game's quality is carried by its immaculate presentation.
