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This thread has been linked to the game 'Bastion'.
Bastion is an isometric action RPG developed by Supergiant Games and published by Warner Bros. Interactive.
The game starts off with the protagonist known as “The Kid” asleep on one of the last few pieces of land remaining after an event known as the “Calamity”, which fractured the world into floating pieces and turned those caught in the blast into ash. The Kid makes his way to the Bastion where people agreed to go in times of trouble. With each step he takes toward the Bastion he finds that the ground forms up underneath his feet. Once he gets there the Kid only finds one survivor known as Rucks who narrates the story and your actions throughout the game. You find that the monument at the middle of the Bastion needs cores to help revive the Bastion and bring it back to its former glory.
This game’s narrator is said to be dynamic, as he makes comments dependant on your actions. For example, I decided to mash the space bar to repeatedly roll forward and the narrator made me smile when he said “the kid just kept rollin' and rollin'”. If you run from enemies he may comment on it and if you decide to smash many similar objects he comments on it. At one point in the game there were many thorn bushes blocking the path and I went crazy trying to clear them out so the narrator says “Kid was destroying those weeds like there was a prize for it”. It is a nice touch to the game although I don’t think it is innovative as I’m sure it would be programmed like football game commentary, but maybe more adventure games should try this approach. The Narrator delivers his lines in a silky smooth drawl which is hard not to like. It sounds like an audio book reading of “How to deliver your lines real smooth like” by Morgan Freeman.
With each core that you put in the monument, you get to build a building of your choice within the Bastion. Each building provides benefits for you and two of the buildings are there to allow you to spend the currency, known as fragments, that you find throughout the levels and drops from beating enemies. You can spend Fragments at the Forge to upgrade your weapons that you pick up throughout the game. When you upgrade a weapon you are able to switch between two benefits e.g. the Machete can have increased Critical Chance or a Cripple & Damage over time effect. You can switch between these effects at the forge whenever you want. However, before you can upgrade your weapon you must find upgrade materials by buying them at the Lost & Found building in the Bastion; finding them in the levels or beating weapon challenges known as the Proving Grounds.
In the Lost & Found store, apart from upgrade materials, you can also buy secret skills that are linked with the weapons that you have. Considering there are many weapons and secret skills to choose from, there is an Arsenal building which allows you to pick which two weapons you wish to carry and one secret skill that you wish to use. Being limited to two weapons means that you will focus upgrading two weapons out of the eleven weapons to chose from, which means that there are a lot of weapons that go unused as you use the same weapons throughout the game.
You can also build a Distillery in the Bastion which allows the Kid to hold spirits, which provide passive bonuses. The kid only holds 1 spirit at the beginning of the game, but he gains a spirit slot each time he levels up. Some examples of the spirits are Stabsinthe which reflects small damage back to anyone that attacks him and Werewhiskey which gives you 100% critical hits when below 33% health.
When you set off to find a core you end up on another floating island and you explore areas for fragments, item upgrades and killing many enemies that stand in your way. Exploring hidden areas for item upgrades and destroying the scenery are the only distractions from combat and I expected there to be more hidden locations than there were. The combat is about positioning yourself correctly so that you can avoid attacks and also manage to get enemies to attack themselves. You also gain a shield early on which allows you to counter block by blocking just before the projectile hits you. This counter attack is powerful and usually kills enemies in a single hit and so is a decent means of engaging you with twitch reaction timing. Apart from that, I can’t say that the combat is particularly deep and ends up as a rapid mouse clicking affair. The game gives you the choice of how difficult you wish the game to be as one of the buildings in the Bastion is a Shrine which allows you to Invoke the Gods which give the enemies benefits but also rewards you with more fragments and Xp for the added effort. This doesn’t change the game-play much and just makes the combat last even longer.
The auto-aim function doesn’t work very well on moving targets and also it isn’t ideal to have to tab to a specific target if you are attacked by multiple enemies. I couldn’t be bothered using a single line weapon like a carbine or a bow due to the auto aim and ended up using the Musket which had a wide spread of fire which ultimately made me have to think less about which target to aim at.
When completing areas and returning back to the Bastion you usually bring back NPCs and creatures that you fought back with you. This reminds me of Super Mario Galaxy 2 as your main hub area gets more detailed as the game goes on.
I didn’t really care for the story missions as I only liked the boss fights that there were, but I did enjoy some of the Proving Grounds challenges. Each weapon in the game has its own Proving Ground challenge and some of them are hit and miss. The Duelling Pistol challenge is only testing how fast you can right click which isn’t very engaging. My favourite challenge was for the Fang Repeater where the ground drops and you have to rapidly destroy as many targets without falling. It took me a while to realise that you were supposed to roll when reloading as it is the fastest way to move. The problem with the proving grounds is that on some of them it is impossible to get 1st prize without upgrading the weapon that you need to use so that you may think that you aren’t doing something right when you never had a chance. That said the narrator does hint that upgrades are advised on some of the challenges. You also have to make sure that you equip the right upgrades and have certain drinks in your distillery and I did find that trying to get the right combination is part of the fun.
There are objects that you can interact with in the Bastion which will take you to “Who Knows Where” which is a place that spawns waves of enemies for you to overcome and you can obtain a score to add to an online scoreboard if you wish. Your score will be higher if you activate more idols in the Shrine to increase its difficulty.
The game is hand painted and looks stylish and colourful, which will help the game look timeless and the game’s soundtrack is pretty enjoyable to listen to. I really like the song played at the ending credits.
The game offers you two different choices which effect which ending you get and if you wish to see the other ending you have to play the game again, as the game only allows you to autosave. The game provides a New Game+ option which allows you to carry over your weapon upgrades and character level. In a single play through you won’t get enough experience to be max level and hold most of the drinks in the Distillery and only a few of your weapons will be fully upgraded. New Game+ also gives you some new Idols in the Shrine so that enemies can be even tougher if you wish them to be.
Bastion was created by a small team of 7 people and you can see the care and attention that they have put into the game. With its hand drawn art, enjoyable soundtrack and a well presented story it is worth the price of admission, but as a game I wish for a bit more depth in the combat. With New Game+ it has replay value and it is worth a play though as a whole package.
7.5/10
The game starts off with the protagonist known as “The Kid” asleep on one of the last few pieces of land remaining after an event known as the “Calamity”, which fractured the world into floating pieces and turned those caught in the blast into ash. The Kid makes his way to the Bastion where people agreed to go in times of trouble. With each step he takes toward the Bastion he finds that the ground forms up underneath his feet. Once he gets there the Kid only finds one survivor known as Rucks who narrates the story and your actions throughout the game. You find that the monument at the middle of the Bastion needs cores to help revive the Bastion and bring it back to its former glory.
This game’s narrator is said to be dynamic, as he makes comments dependant on your actions. For example, I decided to mash the space bar to repeatedly roll forward and the narrator made me smile when he said “the kid just kept rollin' and rollin'”. If you run from enemies he may comment on it and if you decide to smash many similar objects he comments on it. At one point in the game there were many thorn bushes blocking the path and I went crazy trying to clear them out so the narrator says “Kid was destroying those weeds like there was a prize for it”. It is a nice touch to the game although I don’t think it is innovative as I’m sure it would be programmed like football game commentary, but maybe more adventure games should try this approach. The Narrator delivers his lines in a silky smooth drawl which is hard not to like. It sounds like an audio book reading of “How to deliver your lines real smooth like” by Morgan Freeman.
With each core that you put in the monument, you get to build a building of your choice within the Bastion. Each building provides benefits for you and two of the buildings are there to allow you to spend the currency, known as fragments, that you find throughout the levels and drops from beating enemies. You can spend Fragments at the Forge to upgrade your weapons that you pick up throughout the game. When you upgrade a weapon you are able to switch between two benefits e.g. the Machete can have increased Critical Chance or a Cripple & Damage over time effect. You can switch between these effects at the forge whenever you want. However, before you can upgrade your weapon you must find upgrade materials by buying them at the Lost & Found building in the Bastion; finding them in the levels or beating weapon challenges known as the Proving Grounds.
In the Lost & Found store, apart from upgrade materials, you can also buy secret skills that are linked with the weapons that you have. Considering there are many weapons and secret skills to choose from, there is an Arsenal building which allows you to pick which two weapons you wish to carry and one secret skill that you wish to use. Being limited to two weapons means that you will focus upgrading two weapons out of the eleven weapons to chose from, which means that there are a lot of weapons that go unused as you use the same weapons throughout the game.
You can also build a Distillery in the Bastion which allows the Kid to hold spirits, which provide passive bonuses. The kid only holds 1 spirit at the beginning of the game, but he gains a spirit slot each time he levels up. Some examples of the spirits are Stabsinthe which reflects small damage back to anyone that attacks him and Werewhiskey which gives you 100% critical hits when below 33% health.
When you set off to find a core you end up on another floating island and you explore areas for fragments, item upgrades and killing many enemies that stand in your way. Exploring hidden areas for item upgrades and destroying the scenery are the only distractions from combat and I expected there to be more hidden locations than there were. The combat is about positioning yourself correctly so that you can avoid attacks and also manage to get enemies to attack themselves. You also gain a shield early on which allows you to counter block by blocking just before the projectile hits you. This counter attack is powerful and usually kills enemies in a single hit and so is a decent means of engaging you with twitch reaction timing. Apart from that, I can’t say that the combat is particularly deep and ends up as a rapid mouse clicking affair. The game gives you the choice of how difficult you wish the game to be as one of the buildings in the Bastion is a Shrine which allows you to Invoke the Gods which give the enemies benefits but also rewards you with more fragments and Xp for the added effort. This doesn’t change the game-play much and just makes the combat last even longer.
The auto-aim function doesn’t work very well on moving targets and also it isn’t ideal to have to tab to a specific target if you are attacked by multiple enemies. I couldn’t be bothered using a single line weapon like a carbine or a bow due to the auto aim and ended up using the Musket which had a wide spread of fire which ultimately made me have to think less about which target to aim at.
When completing areas and returning back to the Bastion you usually bring back NPCs and creatures that you fought back with you. This reminds me of Super Mario Galaxy 2 as your main hub area gets more detailed as the game goes on.
I didn’t really care for the story missions as I only liked the boss fights that there were, but I did enjoy some of the Proving Grounds challenges. Each weapon in the game has its own Proving Ground challenge and some of them are hit and miss. The Duelling Pistol challenge is only testing how fast you can right click which isn’t very engaging. My favourite challenge was for the Fang Repeater where the ground drops and you have to rapidly destroy as many targets without falling. It took me a while to realise that you were supposed to roll when reloading as it is the fastest way to move. The problem with the proving grounds is that on some of them it is impossible to get 1st prize without upgrading the weapon that you need to use so that you may think that you aren’t doing something right when you never had a chance. That said the narrator does hint that upgrades are advised on some of the challenges. You also have to make sure that you equip the right upgrades and have certain drinks in your distillery and I did find that trying to get the right combination is part of the fun.
There are objects that you can interact with in the Bastion which will take you to “Who Knows Where” which is a place that spawns waves of enemies for you to overcome and you can obtain a score to add to an online scoreboard if you wish. Your score will be higher if you activate more idols in the Shrine to increase its difficulty.
The game is hand painted and looks stylish and colourful, which will help the game look timeless and the game’s soundtrack is pretty enjoyable to listen to. I really like the song played at the ending credits.
The game offers you two different choices which effect which ending you get and if you wish to see the other ending you have to play the game again, as the game only allows you to autosave. The game provides a New Game+ option which allows you to carry over your weapon upgrades and character level. In a single play through you won’t get enough experience to be max level and hold most of the drinks in the Distillery and only a few of your weapons will be fully upgraded. New Game+ also gives you some new Idols in the Shrine so that enemies can be even tougher if you wish them to be.
Bastion was created by a small team of 7 people and you can see the care and attention that they have put into the game. With its hand drawn art, enjoyable soundtrack and a well presented story it is worth the price of admission, but as a game I wish for a bit more depth in the combat. With New Game+ it has replay value and it is worth a play though as a whole package.
7.5/10
Bastion is an isometric action RPG developed by Supergiant Games and published by Warner Bros. Interactive.
The game starts off with the protagonist known as “The Kid” asleep on one of the last few pieces of land remaining after an event known as the “Calamity”, which fractured the world into floating pieces and turned those caught in the blast into ash. The Kid makes his way to the Bastion where people agreed to go in times of trouble. With each step he takes toward the Bastion he finds that the ground forms up underneath his feet. Once he gets there the Kid only finds one survivor known as Rucks who narrates the story and your actions throughout the game. You find that the monument at the middle of the Bastion needs cores to help revive the Bastion and bring it back to its former glory.
This game’s narrator is said to be dynamic, as he makes comments dependant on your actions. For example, I decided to mash the space bar to repeatedly roll forward and the narrator made me smile when he said “the kid just kept rollin' and rollin'”. If you run from enemies he may comment on it and if you decide to smash many similar objects he comments on it. At one point in the game there were many thorn bushes blocking the path and I went crazy trying to clear them out so the narrator says “Kid was destroying those weeds like there was a prize for it”. It is a nice touch to the game although I don’t think it is innovative as I’m sure it would be programmed like football game commentary, but maybe more adventure games should try this approach. The Narrator delivers his lines in a silky smooth drawl which is hard not to like. It sounds like an audio book reading of “How to deliver your lines real smooth like” by Morgan Freeman.
With each core that you put in the monument, you get to build a building of your choice within the Bastion. Each building provides benefits for you and two of the buildings are there to allow you to spend the currency, known as fragments, that you find throughout the levels and drops from beating enemies. You can spend Fragments at the Forge to upgrade your weapons that you pick up throughout the game. When you upgrade a weapon you are able to switch between two benefits e.g. the Machete can have increased Critical Chance or a Cripple & Damage over time effect. You can switch between these effects at the forge whenever you want. However, before you can upgrade your weapon you must find upgrade materials by buying them at the Lost & Found building in the Bastion; finding them in the levels or beating weapon challenges known as the Proving Grounds.
In the Lost & Found store, apart from upgrade materials, you can also buy secret skills that are linked with the weapons that you have. Considering there are many weapons and secret skills to choose from, there is an Arsenal building which allows you to pick which two weapons you wish to carry and one secret skill that you wish to use. Being limited to two weapons means that you will focus upgrading two weapons out of the eleven weapons to chose from, which means that there are a lot of weapons that go unused as you use the same weapons throughout the game.
You can also build a Distillery in the Bastion which allows the Kid to hold spirits, which provide passive bonuses. The kid only holds 1 spirit at the beginning of the game, but he gains a spirit slot each time he levels up. Some examples of the spirits are Stabsinthe which reflects small damage back to anyone that attacks him and Werewhiskey which gives you 100% critical hits when below 33% health.
When you set off to find a core you end up on another floating island and you explore areas for fragments, item upgrades and killing many enemies that stand in your way. Exploring hidden areas for item upgrades and destroying the scenery are the only distractions from combat and I expected there to be more hidden locations than there were. The combat is about positioning yourself correctly so that you can avoid attacks and also manage to get enemies to attack themselves. You also gain a shield early on which allows you to counter block by blocking just before the projectile hits you. This counter attack is powerful and usually kills enemies in a single hit and so is a decent means of engaging you with twitch reaction timing. Apart from that, I can’t say that the combat is particularly deep and ends up as a rapid mouse clicking affair. The game gives you the choice of how difficult you wish the game to be as one of the buildings in the Bastion is a Shrine which allows you to Invoke the Gods which give the enemies benefits but also rewards you with more fragments and Xp for the added effort. This doesn’t change the game-play much and just makes the combat last even longer.
The auto-aim function doesn’t work very well on moving targets and also it isn’t ideal to have to tab to a specific target if you are attacked by multiple enemies. I couldn’t be bothered using a single line weapon like a carbine or a bow due to the auto aim and ended up using the Musket which had a wide spread of fire which ultimately made me have to think less about which target to aim at.
When completing areas and returning back to the Bastion you usually bring back NPCs and creatures that you fought back with you. This reminds me of Super Mario Galaxy 2 as your main hub area gets more detailed as the game goes on.
I didn’t really care for the story missions as I only liked the boss fights that there were, but I did enjoy some of the Proving Grounds challenges. Each weapon in the game has its own Proving Ground challenge and some of them are hit and miss. The Duelling Pistol challenge is only testing how fast you can right click which isn’t very engaging. My favourite challenge was for the Fang Repeater where the ground drops and you have to rapidly destroy as many targets without falling. It took me a while to realise that you were supposed to roll when reloading as it is the fastest way to move. The problem with the proving grounds is that on some of them it is impossible to get 1st prize without upgrading the weapon that you need to use so that you may think that you aren’t doing something right when you never had a chance. That said the narrator does hint that upgrades are advised on some of the challenges. You also have to make sure that you equip the right upgrades and have certain drinks in your distillery and I did find that trying to get the right combination is part of the fun.
There are objects that you can interact with in the Bastion which will take you to “Who Knows Where” which is a place that spawns waves of enemies for you to overcome and you can obtain a score to add to an online scoreboard if you wish. Your score will be higher if you activate more idols in the Shrine to increase its difficulty.
The game is hand painted and looks stylish and colourful, which will help the game look timeless and the game’s soundtrack is pretty enjoyable to listen to. I really like the song played at the ending credits.
The game offers you two different choices which effect which ending you get and if you wish to see the other ending you have to play the game again, as the game only allows you to autosave. The game provides a New Game+ option which allows you to carry over your weapon upgrades and character level. In a single play through you won’t get enough experience to be max level and hold most of the drinks in the Distillery and only a few of your weapons will be fully upgraded. New Game+ also gives you some new Idols in the Shrine so that enemies can be even tougher if you wish them to be.
Bastion was created by a small team of 7 people and you can see the care and attention that they have put into the game. With its hand drawn art, enjoyable soundtrack and a well presented story it is worth the price of admission, but as a game I wish for a bit more depth in the combat. With New Game+ it has replay value and it is worth a play though as a whole package.
7.5/10
The game starts off with the protagonist known as “The Kid” asleep on one of the last few pieces of land remaining after an event known as the “Calamity”, which fractured the world into floating pieces and turned those caught in the blast into ash. The Kid makes his way to the Bastion where people agreed to go in times of trouble. With each step he takes toward the Bastion he finds that the ground forms up underneath his feet. Once he gets there the Kid only finds one survivor known as Rucks who narrates the story and your actions throughout the game. You find that the monument at the middle of the Bastion needs cores to help revive the Bastion and bring it back to its former glory.
This game’s narrator is said to be dynamic, as he makes comments dependant on your actions. For example, I decided to mash the space bar to repeatedly roll forward and the narrator made me smile when he said “the kid just kept rollin' and rollin'”. If you run from enemies he may comment on it and if you decide to smash many similar objects he comments on it. At one point in the game there were many thorn bushes blocking the path and I went crazy trying to clear them out so the narrator says “Kid was destroying those weeds like there was a prize for it”. It is a nice touch to the game although I don’t think it is innovative as I’m sure it would be programmed like football game commentary, but maybe more adventure games should try this approach. The Narrator delivers his lines in a silky smooth drawl which is hard not to like. It sounds like an audio book reading of “How to deliver your lines real smooth like” by Morgan Freeman.
With each core that you put in the monument, you get to build a building of your choice within the Bastion. Each building provides benefits for you and two of the buildings are there to allow you to spend the currency, known as fragments, that you find throughout the levels and drops from beating enemies. You can spend Fragments at the Forge to upgrade your weapons that you pick up throughout the game. When you upgrade a weapon you are able to switch between two benefits e.g. the Machete can have increased Critical Chance or a Cripple & Damage over time effect. You can switch between these effects at the forge whenever you want. However, before you can upgrade your weapon you must find upgrade materials by buying them at the Lost & Found building in the Bastion; finding them in the levels or beating weapon challenges known as the Proving Grounds.
In the Lost & Found store, apart from upgrade materials, you can also buy secret skills that are linked with the weapons that you have. Considering there are many weapons and secret skills to choose from, there is an Arsenal building which allows you to pick which two weapons you wish to carry and one secret skill that you wish to use. Being limited to two weapons means that you will focus upgrading two weapons out of the eleven weapons to chose from, which means that there are a lot of weapons that go unused as you use the same weapons throughout the game.
You can also build a Distillery in the Bastion which allows the Kid to hold spirits, which provide passive bonuses. The kid only holds 1 spirit at the beginning of the game, but he gains a spirit slot each time he levels up. Some examples of the spirits are Stabsinthe which reflects small damage back to anyone that attacks him and Werewhiskey which gives you 100% critical hits when below 33% health.
When you set off to find a core you end up on another floating island and you explore areas for fragments, item upgrades and killing many enemies that stand in your way. Exploring hidden areas for item upgrades and destroying the scenery are the only distractions from combat and I expected there to be more hidden locations than there were. The combat is about positioning yourself correctly so that you can avoid attacks and also manage to get enemies to attack themselves. You also gain a shield early on which allows you to counter block by blocking just before the projectile hits you. This counter attack is powerful and usually kills enemies in a single hit and so is a decent means of engaging you with twitch reaction timing. Apart from that, I can’t say that the combat is particularly deep and ends up as a rapid mouse clicking affair. The game gives you the choice of how difficult you wish the game to be as one of the buildings in the Bastion is a Shrine which allows you to Invoke the Gods which give the enemies benefits but also rewards you with more fragments and Xp for the added effort. This doesn’t change the game-play much and just makes the combat last even longer.
The auto-aim function doesn’t work very well on moving targets and also it isn’t ideal to have to tab to a specific target if you are attacked by multiple enemies. I couldn’t be bothered using a single line weapon like a carbine or a bow due to the auto aim and ended up using the Musket which had a wide spread of fire which ultimately made me have to think less about which target to aim at.
When completing areas and returning back to the Bastion you usually bring back NPCs and creatures that you fought back with you. This reminds me of Super Mario Galaxy 2 as your main hub area gets more detailed as the game goes on.
I didn’t really care for the story missions as I only liked the boss fights that there were, but I did enjoy some of the Proving Grounds challenges. Each weapon in the game has its own Proving Ground challenge and some of them are hit and miss. The Duelling Pistol challenge is only testing how fast you can right click which isn’t very engaging. My favourite challenge was for the Fang Repeater where the ground drops and you have to rapidly destroy as many targets without falling. It took me a while to realise that you were supposed to roll when reloading as it is the fastest way to move. The problem with the proving grounds is that on some of them it is impossible to get 1st prize without upgrading the weapon that you need to use so that you may think that you aren’t doing something right when you never had a chance. That said the narrator does hint that upgrades are advised on some of the challenges. You also have to make sure that you equip the right upgrades and have certain drinks in your distillery and I did find that trying to get the right combination is part of the fun.
There are objects that you can interact with in the Bastion which will take you to “Who Knows Where” which is a place that spawns waves of enemies for you to overcome and you can obtain a score to add to an online scoreboard if you wish. Your score will be higher if you activate more idols in the Shrine to increase its difficulty.
The game is hand painted and looks stylish and colourful, which will help the game look timeless and the game’s soundtrack is pretty enjoyable to listen to. I really like the song played at the ending credits.
The game offers you two different choices which effect which ending you get and if you wish to see the other ending you have to play the game again, as the game only allows you to autosave. The game provides a New Game+ option which allows you to carry over your weapon upgrades and character level. In a single play through you won’t get enough experience to be max level and hold most of the drinks in the Distillery and only a few of your weapons will be fully upgraded. New Game+ also gives you some new Idols in the Shrine so that enemies can be even tougher if you wish them to be.
Bastion was created by a small team of 7 people and you can see the care and attention that they have put into the game. With its hand drawn art, enjoyable soundtrack and a well presented story it is worth the price of admission, but as a game I wish for a bit more depth in the combat. With New Game+ it has replay value and it is worth a play though as a whole package.
7.5/10
A first rate review for what sounds like an intriguing game..
Good job!
Good job!
Good review. I picked this up as part of the last Indie Bundle but I've yet to play it.
By the sound of it, I should start.
By the sound of it, I should start.
Thanks Chasfh and Pb :)
I got it from the Indie bundle as well. I was gutted that they couldn't give me additional keys to gift Braid and Limbo to a friend. I loved Braid and Limbo was pretty good as well. Can't say that the bundle was bad value though even though I already had two of them.
I got it from the Indie bundle as well. I was gutted that they couldn't give me additional keys to gift Braid and Limbo to a friend. I loved Braid and Limbo was pretty good as well. Can't say that the bundle was bad value though even though I already had two of them.