Bastion
Bastion is an action role-playing experience that redefines storytelling in games, with a reactive narrator who marks your every move. Explore more than 40 lush hand-painted environments as you discover the secrets of the Calamity, a surreal catastrophe that shattered the world to pieces. Wield a huge arsenal of upgradeable weapons and battle savage beasts adapted to their new habitat. Finish the main story to unlock the New Game Plus mode and continue your journey!
In Bastion, something called the “Great Calamity” has rolled in and taken out your entire civilization. You awaken as “the Kid,” and set off to restore the Bastion — a spot where everyone was supposed to meet if bad stuff went down. To do this, you’ll need to dive into levels, best foes, and collect shards. Like I said, not that different from your average RPG, and it never hooked me. By the time it reached the branching ending, I didn’t have strong enough feelings to really care one way or another about the outcome.
When playing Bastion, you must not only explore unknown territories, but also fight all sorts of monsters and pick up supplies for your haven. Luckily for you, you can use up to ten different weapons, all of them customizable and upgradeable, and improve your combat skills with special potions.
The most outstanding element in Bastion, besides its incredibly rich graphics, is the narrator: a voice that reacts to your choices in the game in real time, explaining your actions and providing a bit of feedback about Bastion’s story.
Bastion Review
Bastion remains relevant and fresh largely on account of its narration. As in Blood Meridian, the Kid’s travels are narrated by a detached speaker who hangs out at the central hub known as the Bastion, but here, the intonations are less 18th-century New England preacher and more Bourbon Street jazzman. It’s all the work of voice actor Logan Cunningham, who adds both weight and the occasional dose of humor to the action, and its power springs from the way it is triggered with almost every action the Kid performs. It’s an effect that allows Bastion to transcend simple narration to the point where the Stranger is telling our story as much as the Kid’s.
While the combat itself may only consist of typical attacks, blocks, and dodges, there’s depth here in the ability to construct buildings at the Bastion. Add a distillery, for instance, and the Kid can unlock perks such as increased critical chance. Toss up a forge, and the Kid can augment the weapons he finds along the way. The limitation of two weapons at any time (along with a related special ability) does allow for some extensive gameplay variations, as you could easily be an in-your-face melee champion or a bow-and-rifle marksman who snipes foes from afar. (And trust me, if you want to survive the ultra-punishing New Game+, you’ll probably want to be the latter.) Want a real challenge? Activate the idols, which boost aspects like enemy damage and armor for the reward of more experience and fragments for upgrades at the forge.
Bastion holds up remarkably well four years later, even as the acclaimed games of the latter day tend to lose their luster once the initial novelty wears off. At its best, this re-release proves that Bastion is worthy of its name. It’s a bastion of good game design and innovative narration, and I suspect that another four years from now, it will hold up just as well.
Extra Tags: Bastion, Download Bastion, Bastion Download, Free Bastion, Bastion Free, Bastion Game, Bastion play