Bastion Review

I do have a fondness for simplistic, yet artistic, games like this.  They hardly seem to fall low of expectations and often have something for everyone.  But, although I can clearly admire the effort put into Bastion, small problems nibble away at the whole experience and left me quite disappointed.

The game does not start before The Calamity; an event that caused the ground to crack away, allowing fragments of it to rise up at the playable characters feet.  So it’s difficult to understand how this affects the people and places, because we don’t really know how the world existed previously.  Even with the narrator talking about certain locations the world feels depressingly hollow and underdeveloped.

Your character doesn’t react to the environment while other people and the layout of objects give off the impression that The Calamity is not incredibly odd, but something everyone expected and prepared for.  This may have been the case but it hardly feels like a problem when everything is essentially fixing itself as you move.

Also, if you fall off the ‘floor’ your character just plunks down onto it again, so the game play itself makes the rules of this place even more confusing.

The ground constructing itself beneath you doesn’t serve much purpose during game play, since Bastion could very easily have just taken place on “Earth” with the gaps in the ground being replaced with basic holes.  

Ofcourse it’s a stylish choice, and an interesting one at that, but since the pre-determined paths form as you walk near them I was constantly asking myself ‘Why doesn’t everyone just walk around and rebuild their world over?’  

The path you’re supposed to take is consistently clear, only rarely leading you to dead ends filled with useful items.  As far as exploration goes, you never feel in danger.  I could easily tell where the ground would form so I was never nervous or stressed, almost as if my progression was already laid out.  

However, the clustered environments can make it tricky to tell if you’re about to step on a gap or just a dark tile, but falling off is only punished with a tiny bit of damage from the fall back.  This can make the absurd situation feel weirdly safe, especially since there are some gaps that are so small that it’s impossible to fall through them.

It is purely an aesthetic choice, since combat doesn’t really make use of it either.

As you progress through Bastion you systematically obtain varied weapons to fight equally varied enemies.  I was afraid that I would spend all my…gems…or whatever they are on upgrading lesser weapons, which would later become obsolete when I found one more suitable to my playing style.  Fortunately, you are given an appropriate amount of time and currency to test out each weapon before finding one that suits you.  And, predictably, there are some enemies that can be killed more effectively with certain weapons, so you can’t just stick with one.  For me, it was a big hammer and a musket.  

No weapon that you receive feels useless, except maybe the carbine that takes forever to aim, and each enemy can take a satisfying amount of punishment from each one.  Although there are some enemies, like plants that shoot spikes at you, that have such a wide and long attack range that they're pretty much impossible to kill without taking damage yourself.  In those cases, I just ran up to them and smashed them with my hammer as fast as I could.

The upgrades you place onto your weapons are my favourite kinds of upgrades; dynamic and game changing.  Granted, there are some boring ones like +15% damage, but many improve the reload and firing rate among other things by relatively large amounts.  Each upgrade, the good ones at least, are instantly noticeable and greatly increase your effective in combat.

The game play progresses smoothly and even though the environments can get repetitive the more you play in them, the enemies and situations never become crude upgrades of themselves.  The only exception to that are these miner monsters made out of gas, apparently, that just become larger and/or more numerous as the game continues. 

Combat itself can get rather manic.  I’m positive that a small amount of it is due to my lack of experience using a keyboard.  But since you have a plentiful supply of health and healing potions (I think they’re called something else but whatever, they’re potions) you never feel cheated when you get swamped by enemies.  You don’t necessarily have to be careful, just quick and skillful.  And since the camera angle makes it virtually impossible for you to be blind sighted, combat, although sometimes tricky, never feels overly oppressive.

Like Dante’s Inferno, the fact that enemies are introduced in areas they suit but later show up in completely unrelated areas makes the world itself feel shallow and even claustrophobic.  You’ll go to a foggy swamp areas, fight some toad-like creatures, only for them to revisit you later in a non-swamp area.  Luckily they don’t appear in places covered with ice, which would have been more ridiculous than this game’s premise.

Since the areas you go to only have small retrospective back-stories or reason for being how they are, Bastion’s world, while still showing mildly different locations, has the explorative feel of a street with a cul-de-sac.

Massive praise has to go to the attention to detail here.  I’m not talking about the beautifully artistic look of the locations and enemies.  I mean the games acknowledgement of your seemingly trivial actions.  

Virtually every aspect of the game is narrated, which automatically makes the journey feel more charming and story book-ish.  There are many moments where you are given weapons that you can later replace with others during a single level.  When you get the weapon, the narrator comments of it, giving rather subtle clues beneath his narration as to how it works and how to use it effectively, such as “The kid knew he had to stay out of harm’s way when reloadin'”.  And when/if you replace it later, he will say something like “He put away his new toy and got something more to his liking”.  This is such an impressive and praiseworthy thing for a game to do that it basically breaks the immersion.  It makes the journey feel infinitely more personal, and because the narrator never describes your actions with negative inflections you always stay positive and never feel like you're doing the wrong thing.

The narrator commenting on such a numerous amount of things is simply delightful, and gives emotional context and feeling to every situation.  This is needed in practically all moments since the playable character has as much personality as Pac-Man.

The story itself isn’t anything special.  With not much back-story, simplistic characters and areas in the game that just let you crudely test out your weapons like you’re in an arcade, Bastion doesn’t seem to care about the world it’s creating.  

The narration helps the underdeveloped story, but it is most effective when mentioning specific events that happened before The Calamity, since it makes the fact that the ground is rising beneath and falling above you more engaging.  Really, the narration is the only thing that makes the vague enemies, story, setting and characters have any amount of interest and understandability.  Even enemies that look like Wailmer from Pokémon feel more substantial when there’s a story-teller backing them up.

Bastion isn’t anything new.  Personally, I was very used to the art style from Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes.  

The concept of reforming floor isn’t a part of the game play in any major way, and isn’t explored enough to feel important, especially since you start with it already happening and never play without it, making The Calamity feel uncomfortably normal.  

Combat is enjoyable thanks to useful weapons, distinct enemies and fairly dynamic upgrades.  Yet you can very easily be surrounded and pummeled by enemies, which doesn’t become a huge problem because you can roll away and attack them easily.  

The world Bastion creates is sadly underdeveloped.  It is more focused on putting in good game play that reacts well with all its components then actually placing meaning behind what’s happening.  There’s an ability that allows you to jump that you only get during the climax, which seems like a pretty random place to put such a classic improvement to the game play.  And there are many times when you are introduced to a new enemy and the narrator says something to the effect of “Those things.  They live here.  Watch out for them”.

On a small level I found the look and feel endearing.  I finished it all in 1 day, and I never felt like leaving it, which is one of the biggest compliments you can give any game.  I wanted to keep playing.