Bastion Reviews

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Written by WorstUsernameEver on July 19th, 2011

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The Bastion, to which you return between levels, is the hub of your activities, and each core allows you to build a different structure to manage everything from your weapons loadout and upgrades to secondary objectives. The Kid embodies the game's aesthetic - strong, silent, with a touch of the Old West about him - and this is reflected in the things he builds and their functions, like a Distillery where you accumulate potions and liquor that act as passive modifiers in combat. Everything you touch is narrated by the old man - named Rucks - who will growl knowingly about how a whale tonic ain't made from whales, but might make you as tough as one.

The gameplay rhythm that you soon settle into is quite simple. You use a skybridge to head out into the world in search of the cores, return to the Bastion to build something, and maybe pick up a survivor, a new tool or some interesting information along the way. But there are lovely touches throughout that prevent this slipping into dull repetition, including little trinkets you can gather back to the hub like a gramophone that lets you play back any of the beautiful soundtrack - southern guitar textured with eastern strings - at your considerable leisure. (I'm still humming some of it now.)

Out in the world, Rucks paints each beautiful level with a layer of narrative varnish that complements the action wonderfully. He introduces one battleground by noting that the enemies you encounter early on aren't the worst of its secrets, returning to the theme later to introduce the real bad guy in a manner that ties the whole sequence together and gives it an intuitive sense of scale. Of course, Rucks' narration can only be spread so thin over each area, and this seems to have inspired the designers to keep each level short and interesting, changing pace and direction in numerous ways that keep you guessing and would each be a sin to spoil.

For players wishing to wring more than the five or six hours it takes to complete the Story mode, there are proving grounds, side objectives and other ways to modify the experience to increase the challenge and unlock more interesting rewards. There's also a New Game Plus mode that allows you to continue levelling The Kid and revisit old locations with a greater sense of the game's meaning and the nature of the Calamity - something that the developers, Supergiant Games, resolve with impressive poise and elegance.

Almost everything comes together to form an enjoyable package that will be rewarding to those who are inquisitive and explore the possibilities. Let downs come in the form of an inconsistent level of design and challenge, particularly in the Proving Grounds, where some are very easy and others remarkably tough. But still, they all have '˜a way'. However, the ambition in the design is too easy to exploit, which exposes a false depth. It's simply too easy blast through the game without giving too much thought into your weapon and ability combinations. It may be admirable that the game tries to allow players to make the choice, but at the same time, it doesn't quite get to a level where it forces players to reflect what really is the best combination or weapons or abilities. You could probably complete Bastion in around six or so hours which is still plenty long for an arcade title, but you'll get so much more out of it if you take your time.

Bastion is an admirable title with a lot of great aspects going for it. It takes a bold and refreshing approach from the aesthetics and presentation, while presenting players with some interesting gameplay ideas. It's a game that will reward you for being inquisitive and taking the time to see what's on offer. While quite solemn and contemplative, the story is probably too heavy handed and convoluted in the middle, while the ambitious possibilities in the gameplay aren't always backed up by what's required of the player. Still, there is enough here to warrant a look in, despite the recent proliferation of isometric slashers. Heck, looking and listening will be enough for some.

As you adventure, you're tasked with rebuilding the Bastion. This will give you increasing access to buildings like the Distillery, which lets you equip stat-boosting beverages, the Shrine, which lets you select new modes that increase the game's difficulty and the Arsenal, which lets you assign weapons and abilities to each button slot.

One unfortunate side effect of this system is that if you find a new weapon while adventuring, you have no choice but to equip it. In order to reequip your older weapons, you'll have to find an Arsenal. While some levels contain Arsenals, not all of them do, and in a game with this many options it's annoying to be stuck with weapons or abilities you don't want.

Sometimes Bastion feels like a Western; other times it feels like a ghost story. Cunningham's narrator ties the whole thing together, and you'll want to keep playing and playing just to listen to his vivid, powerful descriptions.

The measures taken to preserve the quality of the art have a real benefit in combat (or perhaps it's the other way around?). The framerate is high and the top-down scrolling rate is subdued, meaning no smearing across an LCD screen and, more importantly, responsive controls. The Kid is a nimble little guy, capable of a quick roll and counter-attack against the cute fauna- and flora-turned-foes. The melee combat is simple, occasionally insipid and amicable to mashing, but it can reward you with a few on-the-spot reflex tests. Blocking at the right moment can reverse the course of incoming projectiles (or even heal you, depending on your augmentations), and releasing a drawn arrow just in time will increase its damage.

That about covers the hammer, bow and shield -- the first in a steady stream of new weapons that include pistols, a spear, a shotgun, a machete and the quaintest flamethrower you've ever seen. The variety is impressive, even if it doesn't necessarily shake your tactics out of a rut. It can feel like there are too many options at times, and it's hard to prevent habits from forming when you can only change your two weapons at the bastion's armory (or one of the rare ones that appear in a level). Since you can't really improvise with weapons in the middle of a fight, there's a player-inflicted attrition in the total roster by the end of the game. Of course, all that unused weaponry makes the "New Game Plus" option much more compelling.

Even if the combat is spread a little thin, Bastion as a whole offers a remarkably dense and clear vision. Yes, the ever-present narrator remarks on even minor events, giving the game a chewy tobacco flavor with his gruff voice, but there's some wonderful storytelling in the periphery. In practice, you can apply difficulty modifiers to the combat for bonus experience points. The fiction encapsulates that by letting you invoke or reject certain gods at the bastion's shrine. You can apply more augmentations to yourself as you level up, except they're swigs of stern liquor from the Bastion's distillery. And since you're a kid, all of it tastes like crap.

While there are so many different ways to customize your character's weapons, skills, and the difficulty of the game overall, the story just leaves so much to be desired. You're trying to rebuild the Bastion after the Calamity occurred; meanwhile, there's some sort of war going on between two opposing factions called the Ura and the Caeldonians. Rucks tries to explain what's happening in the story while you're running around in the levels so the message was often lost upon me as I was hacking through enemies.

Also, even though there was a very large variety of weapons to choose from, I found that I only really liked a few of them due to the somewhat clunky controls. The game is played top down, so the angles in which a lot of the weapons fired made them hard to hit the enemies. A target locking system worked well in most situations, but for many I found it very hard to hit the enemies with weapons like the Breaker's Bow or the Galleon Mortar where you had to aim in order to hit a target. My weapons of choice were the Scrap Musket for easy area of attack fire and heavy damage, and the War Machete for quick melee strikes. You can change your preferred weapons before you travel to each level, and there are no restrictions as to which two weapons you can equip. Meaning, if you love ranged combat then you can have two ranged weapons equipped. I liked this, as it allowed for a lot of customization and lets people play how they like to.

Anyway, The Kid eventually reaches the Bastion, a haven for the doomed denizens of Caelondia - not that any of them made it. This has been tainted by the Calamity too, however, and it's The Kid's job to set things right. By venturing off into the city and recovering lost 'Cores', the Bastion can be restored to its former glory. While the plots of land you can build upon are predetermined, you can decide which buildings and services you wish to restore first.

The armoury is a good place to start. By the end of the game, The Kid will have access to eleven weapons, each of which can be upgraded through five levels. In the armoury you can customise your loadouts and 'secret skills', while the Forge lets you use resources collected from the City to upgrade your weapons. If you rebuild the Distillery, you can choose from a variety of tonics to equip, each of which activate passive bonuses such as +10 health, or 100 per cent critical-hit rate when on low health. By rebuilding the Bastion, you're essentially making The Kid a stronger battle combatant. Every building has its benefits.

In terms of its core mechanics, Bastion plays out like most action RPGs. You kill enemies, earn XP for the pleasure of doing so, and every now and then you'll level up (which opens up more tonic slots in the Distillery). Combat is a two-weapon affair, and while you're free to choose from your whole arsenal, it's usually a good idea to have one melee weapon and one ranged. While the Cael Hammer offers raw power, many will prefer the speed of the War Machete, or range of the Brushers Pike. As well as a bow and arrow, The Kid can wield all manner of firearms: the Scrap Musket, Fang Repeater and Duelling Pistols.

At its heart, Bastion is a collection of wonderful ideas with heaps of promise. Sadly, it also has some glaring problems and often fails to live up to the lofty goals it has set itself. For all its style and attempts at depth, Bastion plays no better than an average browser-based free-to-play MMORPG. Even the art style, as pretty as it is, makes one think of the types of casual RPGs you see advertised on Web site banner ads, a feeling enhanced by the rudimentary animation. Close-quarter combat consists of bare-bones button mashing, and the auto-targeting system barely works. Ranged attacks are just as likely to miss as to hit, while melee is often a total crapshoot.

The whole "floating dungeon" gimmick leads to frustration as well, despite looking incredibly cool. Thanks to the 2D art and isometric perspective, it's all too easy to fall off the game's many, many ledges and lose valuable hit points. The perspective and art also conspires with the targeting system to make combat doubly irritating. You only have a rough idea of where enemies are on the map thanks their 2D nature, so missing an opportunity is far from uncommon.

This is not to say the game is horrible, of course. The desire to unlock new weapons and loot is compelling, and a number of armaments, such as the aforementioned Billows, can be enjoyable to use (though just as many weapons feel ineffective and boring). There's also a wide variety of content and extra challenges, all with their own useful rewards. The game's story is promising, but the reliance on a single narrator often leads to an unpleasant alienation between player and plot.

There is real beauty to this world, hand-painted and bursting with life despite its destroyed nature. It has been literally torn apart by the Calamity, reforming itself around protagonist 'The Kid' as he walks. The eponymous Bastion is a magical terraformer, designed to fix the events of the Calamity. The Kid must rebuild the Bastion and restore the world to its former glory: in true video game fashion, this leads to a series of item-fetching gauntlets against the feral beasts of Caelondia, but there's a lot more to it than that.

Like the reconstruction of the land under your feet, the story falls into place piece by piece. There's a continual drip feed of information from the narrator that builds our knowledge of the Calamity that has befallen Caelondia, but that's not nearly as interesting as the main characters or even the enemies you face. Rucks the narrator and other characters you recruit to the cause shed light on the cultural collectables scattered across the landscape. Even the gods- mere toggles to increase risk and reward, really- have their own back-stories and personalities. There is a history and richness to Bastion's mythology that is unusual for a downloadable title, going beyond the call of duty, and well beyond Call of Duty.

It's so well written that it puts most other games to shame. I was hooked on every line and so desperate to hear more that I was smashing every piece of scenery with my hammer and jumping into chasms just to see what the writers had included. I was never disappointed: after showing the mementos I'd collected to Rucks and pestering him for conversation, he remarked: (Sometimes, there's not much left to say). I left him alone.

Unusually for a game packed with dialogue, very little is superfluous. Instead of hunting for items and treasure, you search for jokes and flecks of speech. If you've come for the thrill of the kill, the scramble up a leaderboard or the ka-plink of achievements unlocking: these are all here, all enjoyable, but they're by no means the main attraction.

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