Jeremy Gallen's Game Reviews

Supergiant Disappointment

Developer Supergiant Games saw its foundation in 2009 by developers Amir Rao and Gavin Simon in San Francisco, with their first game being Bastion, released for various platforms two years later, and receiving critical acclaim. I’ll confess that I’m somewhat wary of attempting Western RPGs given their tendency to have mechanical basis in pen-and-paper roleplaying games, even when their gameplay is in real-time. Around its initial release, though I had played a demo for the game, received a positive impression, and thus decided to check out the full game on Steam. Does it still hold up today?

Bastion focuses on a protagonist known as “the Kid” who seeks to reconstruct the titular area, serving as a hub where he can perform various functions such as outfitting weapons, spirits (the beverage kind) that can provide several stat increases and effects, and so forth. The game has an interesting narrative style where a voiceover tells all which transpires, the story itself occurring after an incident known as the Calamity. Other RPGs have dealt with post-doomsday themes, and given the unskippability of dialogue, the plot feels somewhat forced down the player’s throat, and there are occasional errors in the text.

The Kid can outfit two weapons at a time and one special ability that consumes one of up to three tonics, with more of these enemies occasionally drops as he defeats them. Three potions he can carry at a time can also restore his health, akin to the tonics found sporadically from enemy drops. The hero receives a vast arsenal of melee and ranged armaments, although the player can only change his arms at dungeon Arsenals or that he can reconstruct at the Bastion, somewhat defeating the purpose of weapon variety. Those who play on difficulties above casual will also likely have a difficult time, since foes can easily slaughter the Kid, the easiest difficulty allowing him to revive with no progress lost should his health expire. Generally, the gameplay has some good ideas, but the execution leaves much to desire.

The aforementioned unskippable text is one of the primary strikes against control, with Western RPGs in particular tending to be bad about that particular aspect. The record of progress also occurs automatically whenever the player transitions between the Bastion and dungeons, with no option to manually accomplish the task. The Steam version also may occasionally crash, there’s no suspend save, and load times can be sluggish, with perhaps the sole saving grace being the ability to pause.

Bastion features one of the better Western RPG soundtracks, and the perpetual voiceover is decent, if it gets old somewhat quickly. However, the death strum ages just as poorly, and there are many points without music, so the aural aspect could have definitely been better.

The same goes for the graphics, which superficially appear good, given bright colors, pretty environments, and intricate spritework, although there are issues with some minor choppiness, enemies that appear either as reskins or bigger/smaller versions of one another, and the visuals sometimes impeding gameplay, which somewhat mar the visual experience.

Finally, the game is fairly short, somewhere less than twelve hours to finish, and while there is theoretical lasting appear in the form of achievements and clearing things such as all weapon “Proving Grounds”, the experience isn’t exactly enjoyable enough to warrant supplemental playtime.

All in all, while I had an above-average experience with Bastion around the time of its initial release, time hasn’t completely been kind to it, given the issues with the game mechanics such as the restrictiveness of weapon use despite the heavy variety, the save system, the overabundance of story, and technical hiccups with the aurals and visuals. Given the acclaim the game would receive, however, it’s unsurprising that Supergiant Games would develop more titles, surprisingly not sequels to Bastion, but I’m definitely hesitant to touch anything else the developer produces, and can’t completely recommend their first release.

This review is based on a playthrough of a copy downloaded to the reviewer’s Steam Deck.