1. “Proper Stories are supposed to start at the beginning, aint so simple with this one.”
Rich, vibrant colors pierce the darkness and a character only known as “The Kid” is
seen. The Kid awakes to his room, a floating island in a vacuum. As you venture
down what seems to be a destroyed pathway, bits of walkway and a lively western/
electronic/ techno beat arise from the void and meet your steps. A nameless
narrator dictates ever move you make. This is how you are introduced to
SuperGiant’s game Bastion. There is no information on what caused this perceived
destruction, you don’t know who you are, and you don’t know who’s narrating.
As you venture through the brief 6-8 hour, you learn more about the world,
Caelondia. You learn that the destruction was caused by a massive event only
referred to as “The Calamity”. Eventually you arrive at the titular Bastion, a safe
haven hub world, and you meet the nameless narrator. From there you can learn
more about the history of ‘The Kid” by smoking an unnamed substance, which
results in the kid blacking out and going to the location aptly named “Who Knows
Where” to grind, you can meet people throughout the various levels that you bring
back to Bastion, and you can collect Pets. As the game progresses, you learn who
created The Calamity and the intended purpose of it. You also learn more about the
world of Caelondia and what it was like before the Calamity. The Story was nothing
original or groundbreaking, but it served it’s purpose.
The premise of Bastion is to collect cores from the different levels so you can give
the Bastion enough power to reverse the effects of the Calamity and essentially
pretend like it never happened. These cores can also be used to upgrade your
private Bastion. With these cores you can create the shops such as the Armory
where you can equip weapons for the upcoming level, the Lost and Found which
acts as a general store shop and many more. The most interesting upgrade to the
Bastion that I found was the Shrine. In the Shrine, the player equips certain idols to
increase the difficulty but also increase the awards the player gets. For example, you
can equip an idol that would allow your enemies to reflect your projectiles
randomly, but you gain 10% EXP boost and 10% more money. It introduced a nice
“Risk-Reward” System that added some longevity to the story.
My least favorite aspect of Bastion was the combat. You gain a number of different
weapons throughout the story and although I experimented with them all, my most
used weapons were the War Machete, which delivered quick blows that after
upgrading left the enemies wounded with lingering damages and Dual Pistols which
fired as fast as my fingers could press down. Unfortunately, most of the combat
resulted in repeated button mashing with little strategy involved. You gain a shield
that if timed correctly, can reflect an enemies attack back at them, but often times I
found it easier to simply dodge out of the way and spam my pistols. Throughout the
game you also learn secret techniques such as a hand grenade or a trip mine, that
use a limited resource called “Black Tonics”. Fortunately, Black Tonics are dropped
often and I was never in dire need of them.

2. You eventually unlock training areas for certain weapons called “Proving Grounds”,
where you try to aim for high scores to unlock certain prizes. Most of the proving
grounds were fair enough and offered fair challenge. The proving ground for the
Bow and Arrow gave me the most trouble because it highlighted the games horrible
lock-on mechanic. Some of the long distance weapons such as the pistol and Bow,
use a charge up system where if you release the trigger right after the kid emits a
flash, you get a power shot that deals extra damage. The lock-on system is very
unintuitive and does not switch between targets in a logical way. When I would hi
R1 instead of locking on to the next target, I would lock onto the target across the
room. Regardless, after enough perseverance I managed to get through and get the
high score, so it can be done.
I cannot stress this enough; Bastion is one of the prettiest games I have had the
pleasure of playing in a long time. The colorful world and astonishing art design on
PS4 literally made my draw drop. Bright colors pop and cartoonish character
models create a world that I want to explore. Unfortunately, the level design left a
lot to be desired and as interesting as the world rising up sounds; in practice it can
be troublesome. There was a few times I thought there was a dead end and would
spend some time looking for an alternate route only to find that the route I was
previously on was not a dead end, I just needed the road to rise up to meet me. But
this served as a minor nuisance than a deal breaker. Besides the sometimes-
confusing environment, levels are often quick and very linear affairs.
Bastion’s beautiful art style and amazing soundtrack are justifiable for purchasing
the game alone. Although Bastion is still great and I would recommend it to most
gamers, the button-mashey and sometimes unintuitive combat, so-so story, and
sometimes annoyingly long load times bring this amazing game back down to
reality.
8/10.