Bastion Review

A bit late compared to most, Thunderbolt Games is the latest publication to offer a review for the PC version of Supergiant Games’ debut title, the much discussed and praised action-RPG Bastion, which most of you will probably remember for its aesthetic and the use of a dynamic narrating voice as a storytelling tool. Here’s a snippet:

The actual gameplay is simple – from an isometric perspective, the player navigates The Kid through small levels, usually moving from point A to point B to reclaim an important item or fight a boss (and sometimes both). Hordes of enemies and traps block the way forward, and can be dispatched with a mix-and-match assortment of ranged and melee weapons. The Kid can hold two weapons at a time, and each weapon has upgrades that can be bought as the game progresses. The Kid also has special abilities that can be equipped one at a time, ranging from special attack moves to creature summons to hand grenades. While the game initially came out on Xbox 360, Bastion feels totally natural on PC – isometric RPGs are the PC’s strong suit, of course, but the transition is smooth nonetheless.

In fact, for a game that first released on Xbox Live Arcade, Bastion does a great job fitting in with the PC crowd. It’s a bite-sized adventure, to be sure, but it didn’t suffer in the shift to PC. The controls feel excellent, and the hand-drawn art looks fantastic at high monitor resolutions, as opposed to the 720p render size the game had on the 360. There’s even support for Xbox 360 gamepads, although the mouse controls are so tight you’d be hard pressed to need a controller.

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Bastion doesn’t need gameplay gimmicks to feel innovative – instead, it plays with presentation in clever ways, and ends up feeling incredibly fresh, despite essentially being action RPG lite. It’s proof that good ideas aren’t always grand ideas, and it never lets its story get in between the player and the action. Instead, it weaves them together at the same time, making a simple story and a simple game feel like so much more.