Bastion Review

Introduction

Bastion is great, really great.

Let´s start off by saying that for me this game was a joy to play, from start to finish, although I was surely hesitating in the first seconds I saw the ingame engine.

But, and oh boy was I overwhelmed, the narration started, the game just pushed me towards its frantic storytelling and gameplay beauty.

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General Information

Bastion is an Action role-playing game and it was developed by Supergiant Games, designed by Amir Rao and written by Greg Kasavin.

It was released in July 20,2011.

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The Gameplay

This game plays out a little bit different from most Action-Rpgs since it has a platformer feel to it, having a nice top down perspective but still maintaining a close up look.

Its combat feels polished and balanced (except the last weapon you get, which can basically 1-shot everything), since you have big array of weapons, from a katana to a flamethrower, and some handy upgrades that make you deal more damage and attack faster.

"The Kid", the game´s protagonist also has a large pool of Special Skills at his disposal, going from grenades, to causing a huge whirlwind-like move with your hammer, wich makes combat even more versatile.

You customise all this with an intelligent hub system which works as one of the main plot-oriented zones, the Bastion.

I personally found myself using the hammer along with the repeater for a nice close-mid range damage build.

Here is nice gameplay video that you can check out if I didn´t convince you :P:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRXKPdIAAqw

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Difficulty/Modes

The game ranges from 3 types of difficulty:

No-Sweat, Normal and New Game Plus, ordered from the easiest to the hardest, and all of them are pretty self-explanatory.

There is also a score-attack difficulty on which the works with a score xp scalling.

Both Score-Attack and NG+ are unlockable after beating the game.

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Content

In terms of content it is not that big, it does have some replayability, since there are 2 separate endings but I spent 20hours on it getting all the upgrades etc...

For the average playthrough I would say it would take about 6-8 hours to end the game.

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How FUN is it?

Well the game is pretty darn fun, it starts off slowly but when it takes off, you begin to feel connected to the protagonist, you care about the world and the backstory(that I won´t Spoil), and you just want to keep going until satisfied and before you know it, the game already left many moral marks on you to reflect and to think about, when put on the real world perspective.

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Verdict

In the end Bastion is all about Immersion and context, and it nails it perfectly, with the smart narration technique used and the perfect pacing always leaving you craving for more of this game :P.

I would really recommend it to anyone, just go out there and play the game, you won´t regret.

So my final score would be an 8/10.