Bastion
is an action-rpg by Supergiant Games, the developers of Transistor
and the upcoming Pyre. Bastion was originally released in 2011 to an
extremely positive reception, but I wasn’t as enamoured with
Bastion as many others, which is why I was somewhat sceptical of
Supergiant’s next game – Transistor.
But
if you’ve seen my Transistor review, you’ll know I thought that
game was pretty damn amazing. So I really wanted to give Bastion
another shot to see if it could hook me now in a way that it didn’t
at release. So has it? Unfortunately – no.
Let’s
start with the good stuff. Like Transistor, the visuals, animation,
music and sound of Bastion is fantastic. The world is interesting,
with a subtle attention to detail, history and story. You play as
‘the Kid’ who awakens to find his world shattered (quite
literally) into pieces. You need to figure out what happened and how
to put the world back together again.
Unlike
Transistor, however, the story isn’t quite as engaging as its
premise. Like the world of Bastion, it’s a fragmented narrative,
that despite the wonderful narration, struggles to make an impact
until the very end. The story and characterisation is too threadbare
and too shallow to illicit much of an emotional reaction.
Which
I wouldn’t care too much about if the gameplay of Bastion offered
more than it does. The game is split into small, separate levels that
take roughly 10-15 minutes each to complete. There’s a good variety
of locations and enemies, but the combat itself is rather one-note
regardless of which weapon or ability you choose.
And
the game does have a decent selection of weapons and abilities, all
of which feel different to use, but sadly none of which encourage a
different style of play. You’ll earn experience to ‘level up’
which unlocks slots for various boosts in the form of ‘tonics’,
and you’ll find (or purchase) upgrades to your weapons. There are
also ‘idols’ which add various gameplay modifiers and can be
combined to further increase the challenge.
All
of this stuff is fine, but the problem is, it’s all slowly unlocked
as you progress through the game. Which sounds like a weird thing to
say, as I normally like it when a game continually unlocks new
mechanics and challenges as I progress. Let me explain – Bastion’s
gameplay is basic to say the least. It’s pretty much just a simple
button masher with little tactical depth aside from a ‘counter’
mechanic using your shield. It’s functional, but not terribly
exciting.
It
only begins to become more exciting as you unlock the various
weapons, tonics and idols to mix up the core gameplay. But because
each level (10-15 minutes) and the game (about 5 hours) is so short,
you simply don’t have the time to properly explore or enjoy these
new additions before the game is over. There’s no option to replay
levels in a single playthrough. The intention is that you’ll begin
a New Game+ with all of these items unlocked and ready to use from
the start.
But
the gameplay of Bastion just isn’t terribly interesting without
applying the various modifiers – which you won’t have fully
unlocked until the very end. When your game only becomes interesting
to play once you’ve finished the damn thing, that’s a bit
of a problem.
I
can’t say I didn’t have fun playing Bastion again, but my opinion
on it hasn’t really changed. Because the initial playful is so
painfully average (in terms of gameplay) I’m not exactly desperate
to jump into New Game+ even though I know it’ll offer a better
overall experience.
This
is something Transistor did brilliantly. It offered a satisfying
first playthrough, and an even more satisfying second. Bastion, on
the other hand, has an initial playthrough that feels like it exists
purely to unlock things for New Game+. But I don’t want to be too
hard on Bastion because overall, it’s a decent game. I just find
its design so frustratingly backwards.
6/10
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