Bastion Review

Ladies and gentlemen, this is an auspicious moment. Not that I played the game. Not that I’m reviewing it. But that the game even exists. Supergiant, the devs for Basion, really knocked it out of the part with their first game. It established a foundation for everything that Supergiant would do in the future. The art style, the writing, the music, the narration, the narrative, the game play. All of it made by people who’d never really spent a lot of time in this kind of medium before. Sure a couple of the folks who worked on the game had some experience with it, but according to a documentary I saw, a lot of them were coming in fresh.

Think about it like Goldeneye for the N64. That dev team had never made a game before and they ended up making one of the finest games, I’d go as far to say ever. Bastion I would absolutely include on that list.

We, The Kid, wake up after all hell has broken lose and the world is literally in pieces. Something big and something bad happened and we have to make our way to The Bastion to see if there are any survivors and maybe find a way to put the world back together. Along the way we meet some survivors and make a few new friends in the form of tamed animals that we encounter out in the wilderness.

Rucks, our narrator and guide once we reach The Bastion, sends us out into the remnants of the broken world to collect materials to activate The Bastion and use it’s power to repair the world. Things don’t go as planned, as they always seem to go, and we hit a couple of snags while we’re out and about. But nothing we can’t handle. While we are out and about Rucks pops in to tell us little stories about the areas we’re visiting, the people that used to live and work there, and how they tamed the wilderness to make life better for all around them.

Game play is action rpg, isometric view style. Kind of like Diablo. There’s no inventory to manage, there’s no armor to mess with. In that aspect it’s a little more simple. There’s no exp, levels, or anything like that. What we do have, however, is an arsenal. We pick our primary and secondary weapon before we head out into the wild. Each weapon has it’s own little tech tree. By completing trails we unlock the branches from the tree. We find the other weapons while we’re out exploring the wilderness. We begin with a hammer and eventually find a bow, a spear, pistols, a flame thrower, and a lot more.

Combat is easy to learn and a little bit of a challenge to master. Each weapon acts and reacts a little differently and has not only a main attack but a secondary attack. they all have their uses in various situations. It’s important to familiarize yourself with all of them so you know what to take and when. The combat challenges aren’t easy but they’re very doable.

Graphically the game is colorful, a little fantastical, a little whimsical, and very very good. It’s a gorgeous game. The closest thing I could probably compare it to would probably Torchlight. It’s very similar to that, but better. It’s a delightful looking game and I love it.

The only thing potentially better than the graphics are the music. It’s one of the finest soundtracks of all time. The music is very well produced, and there’s a huge variety in the tracks. Nearly all are instrumental but a few with vocals make their way into the game here and there to help establish some characters and move the story along. I’ve got to say it’s one of my favorite soundtracks. Start to finish it’s nearly flawless.

I’ve played through this game probably half a dozen times and I really feel like I could pick it up again anytime and fall back into it and it’d be just as good as the first time all over again. Supergiant went on to make another amazing few games like Transistor, Pyre, and the crowd favorite Hades.

If you can get it, get it. It’s an incredible game and you’ll never regret it.