Supergiant Games started off as a company I had little to no knowledge of, but over the course of one year they have shaped up to become one of my favorite team of game developers of all time. Maybe even a bit more than FromSoftware or ArkaneStudios. Time and time again they have published astounding pieces of art that aimed for big heights and tried to improve upon past failures. Despite each of their games sharing a wide color palette and isometric viewpoint, they all have a unique trait or strength that makes them stand out from one another and establish themselves as glorious masterpieces. I’m really positive whenever I think about Supergiant Games, so let’s keep the positivity train going and talk about each of their entries real quickly.
The first game I personally played from them was Transistor, a short action RPG adventure about a red haired singer seeking revenge on the group of men who killed her lover. The story starts off vague at first as we don’t know much about our enemies, but as time went on we begin to uncover the truth lying within and a more sinister danger that was crawling onto our shoulders. Transistor didn’t have the best gameplay among the Supergiant Four, which I am going to call the collection for now on, but the aspect it helped elevate for future titles was the storytelling and world building. Letting us figure out more about the world by delving through logs and character descriptions, and having a main theme that got stronger till the end. That theme being about love and how far you will go. Next there is Pyre, a sportsy narrative driven game about exiles trying to redeem themselves and earn their freedom back. What Pyre did best of all was character building and focusing more on your relationship with surrounding companions. You get to learn more about who they are, why they were exiled, and dreadfully miss them when you finally say goodbye. The main theme about Pyre was what true freedom meant and how each character defined their own legacy.
Finally there is Hades which combines a lot of design choices that previous Supergiant titles got right in the past and combines it all to make an extraordinary roguelike. The combat was frenetic and satisfying to master, the challenge scaled ever upward but remained consistent as the player unlocked skills to make the game easier, there was a great amount of depth to build variety and the powers you unlocked, and the game had challenge adjusters which motivated players to come back for more. The game is tremendously fun and I have pumped almost one hundred hours into Hades, which is a lot of time especially since normally when I finish a game I never come back. The gameplay isn’t the main reason why I love Hades though. It’s the story, world building, and characters. Combining what Supergiant learned previously with Pyre and Transistor, and mixing it together with a greek mythology setting. It followed Zagreus, the son of Hades himself, as he tried to battle his way through the underworld to hopefully find his mother on the surface world. He is aided by his Olympian relatives and cythonic friends along the way, and he establishes strong relationships that he wants to gain their full trust and unlock better powers to escape. Hades is about personal hell and how we can either try to escape the prison that confines our well being or at least make an effort to better it so we don’t struggle for the rest of our existence. Hades is one of my favorite games ever made now and fully deserves the 10/10 review score I gave it.One hundred percent a masterpiece which is rare to see in this industry.
There was one more game left amongst the Supergiant Four and that was the team’s first game. With the release date going back to almost ten years ago. Supergiant Games was small at the time and they had Warner Bros help them before going fully independent. The game I’m talking about is none other than Bastion. It was thanks to Warner Bros that Supergiant Games established their company name to the gaming world, but ten years later how does Bastion stack up against the other three entries in the Supergiant Four? Well Bastion is actually my lowest ranked entry in the Supergiant Four, but it is still a tremendous game that I can recommend as much as the other three. It holds up incredibly well and I can now confirm that I have played all of Supergiant’s work. Today we’ll be talking about why I loved Bastion and why it deserves your attention. I set my sail. Fly where the wind takes me. Back to my home.
Story
The game takes place in a fictional land we don’t know the name of, but there are two higher societies that had a fragile alliance between each other that was about ready to break. The Ura and the Caelondians. The two groups had watchful eyes on the opposite side and were always questioning who would pull the trigger first, but the balance changed when an event known as The Calamity. An epic shock that tore apart the world and turned any living person it made contact with into lifeless stone statues. Buildings were torn apart, monsters ruptured from the ground, and pieces of separate land or territories gained the mysterious property to float upward into the sky. The apocalypse was happening and any survivors left were struggling to survive.
We play as the Kid, a white haired fighter who just woke up to witness the room he is sleeping in is floating in a colorless abyss. He walks outside the room and discovers the town he was once a part of is now filled with lifeless statues and that no sane being roamed the streets. Monsters begin to surround him, so he picks up his trusty hammer and starts to find a way out. He eventually finds a pad that launches him out of the destroyed city and is transported to a peaceful island that doesn’t contain any monsters or statues. A single living person inhabits the island and he is also the narrator who guides the Kid through the treacherous wilds. An old man named Rucks who looks over the sanctuary of an island that he calls the Bastion.
Rucks tells the Kid that surviving Caelodians and Ura were supposed to make their way to the Bastion during troubled times, but the Kid turns out to be the only surviving person left after the Calamity. The Bastion is powered by a special device that allows it to float controllably in the air, stray away from any danger, and slowly convert itself into a functional miniature town. The machine needs Cores to grow stronger and the Cores are located in dangerous territories. Zucks sends the Kid out to look for those Cores and maybe try to find other survivors of the Calamity. That’s what the Kid does and he finds artifacts along the way that allow him to piece together what the world was like before Calamity. He even finds two survivors, an Ura ambassador and harp player who was raised by the Caeldians. He’ll learn about the history of the two societies and the events that lead to the bombastic Calamity. The destruction of the world.
Gameplay
Bastion is an isometric action role playing game with structured progression that gets more challenging as the game goes on. Not as chaotic as let say Hades, but enough to make the player put some thought into whether they button mash their way through levels or bring the right tools for the job. Let’s start off with the combat first as it’s the easiest aspect to explain about Bastion. The combat is really simple as it’s Supergiant’s first attempt at action packed combat, but just because it’s too simple to understand doesn’t mean it works. It works really well and every hit and attack packs some sort of satisfaction or joy. You have a dodge roll which is used to get out of the way of enemy attacks or recover if you are launched into the air by an attack that flings you upward. Dodge rolling also offers invincibility frames, otherwise invincibility time, so if you time it right you can avoid heavy damage attacks by one hundred percent.
You can carry a total of two weapons with you at all times and they are allocated to two buttons. All the weapons are really fun to use and they can be exchanged before a mission starts or at armories found throughout levels. There is the hammer which is a well rounded weapon with a few basic swings, but later on you unlock a weapon with multiple traits and skills. A sword with sideways slashes and can be thrown at enemies. Then there is a spear with long range and can also be thrown like a sword. There are also a multitude of ranged weapons with different firing rates, reload times, range distances, and throwing archs. You have a slow firing machine gun and bow at first, but the guns later on pack pure devastation. There is a shotgun which is good up close or when enemies are bundled up. Long range carbine that requires to be charged up before unleashing a powerful shot. Rapid fire revolvers and even a mortar to nuke the enemies from above. That’s a lot of guns and firepower to work with.
There are special abilities that can be unlocked for each weapon and when performed they unleash a deadly attack that deals tremendous damage. From a cyclone attack with your hammer, to a high jump into the air that spirals you into the ground for a mighty shake downward with your spear. Special abilities require ability tonics, which are carried around with you and deplete when used, but you can refill on tonics by picking them up. There are also healing tonics which is your main method of healing during fights. Enemies can knock your health down very quickly, but one healing tonic is enough to restore your entire health bar. Plus you can refill on healing tonics as they are dropped by enemies or destroyed objects. If you are slain during a mission you are given the chance to continue, but run out of chances and you have to restart.
One of the more important aspects about Bastion is the Bastion itself. Your base of operation and where you prepare before setting out into the wilds once more. The Bastion starts off small as the only thing is the central device and Zucks. However, once you find more Cores then you begin to unlock stations or workplaces that can be used to improve your strength and gear. Swap out of weapons as stated earlier. Upgrade your weapons using materials that you find during missions. Go to the distillery to swap out elixirs which offer special traits and perks. Like bonus damage, extra tonic slots, resistances, and more. A bounty board which rewards you for fulfilling certain tasks. A lost and found to which is more of a shop to purchase materials or new skills. Finally an altar to trigger the gods, otherwise what are basically the Pacts of Punishment from Hades, which apply difficulty modifiers to missions but offer more rewards for doing them. Soon you’ll have to acquire Shards which expand what each station can do. You’ll get comfortable with the Bastion really quickly. Besides that there really isn’t much to say about Bastion and its gameplay. It is very simple to comprehend, but easy to pick up and get into especially if you have played Transistor or Hades. Hopefully you can bring and end to this calamity. So let’s build that wall and build it tall.
Thoughts
Bastion is an incredible little experience that has held up well compared to a majority of other releases from 2011. There is a lot to love about Bastion and I don’t really have that many real complaints that drag down my love and enjoyment for it. Let’s start listing all the things I love about this game. The combat is simple, like I stated earlier, but it’s still a joy to play and gets more expansive as you unlock an extremely powerful arsenal. There is this one weapon that is used during the endgame mission and it’s really lame as it is literally a “bug off log” but it's only for that mission and the rest are all really good. The controls are also really tight allowing for pinpoint movement and any falls off the levels to be fair rather than the Kid walking on ice towards his death. I also really like how the game justifies the ground you are fighting on to be part of the story as a lot of games that separate the ground from the background would entirely forget this. For example, Final Fantasy VII Remake has this one mission where you scale up towards the higher levels of Midgard but the world below is a poorly rendered JPG.
Progression is pretty steady and there was never a point in the game where it felt like it was getting too unfair. I only got a game over during one mission, but that was because I was walking into constant fire when I should have had my shield up to prevent my health bar from draining like a coca-cola bottle had a screwdriver plunged into it. The Bastion does a really good job of serving as a safe haven. As you watch your efforts to collect shards and cores transform it into a livable place. It was like an oasis in a desert. The desert is a dangerous place to explore with lots of features or critters that want to kill you, but that time in the oasis makes traversing the desert not feel as hopeless. It’s like the bonfires in Dark Souls and how they signify your progression.
The artstyle is an aspect I will always love about Supergiant Games as they use a wide selection of colors and make it look like both the characters and world are made of jewelry. With their fine amount of value, gloss, and shine. Bastion has a more cutesy art style compared to the other three games, but it's still a nice one to look at. I still enjoy how the foreground and background in these games are all digitally drawn, but the characters and enemies are animated using 3D models. Yet, they somehow still manage to blend in perfectly with the hand drawn world. The music is still great and the two songs that the game has are still being hummed in my head. I think Darren Korb and Ashley Barret are two of my favorite singers in all of video game music. The game is almost or maybe even less than five hours long, but that’s a reasonable runtime for a game like this. Hades makes sense because it's a roguelike and it's meant to be played over and over especially with the endgame content, but for a campaign experience like Bastion you don’t want the player slashing away for hours on end.
Bastion is still tremendous and in the end I highly recommend it, but the problem I have is the reminder of Supergiant’s future work. Bastion was the foundation of Supergiant Games and a good chunk of the ideas that originated in Bastion would be improved in the future. The combat would be revved up and have more depth in Hades. World building would be more explorative and wider in scope in Transistor. Character building and connection to the cast would have a great improvement in Pyre. Compare Bastion to these three games and it ends up being the weakest among the Supergiant Four. If I were to rank the Supergiant Four from least favorite to most favorite then it would be the oldest game to the newest. Bastion isn’t bad from what I am saying, but it is hard to adore when all the other titles have built up what it did.
Bastion is a great game though and it goes around really cheap these days. With sales kicking down the price from an affordable fifthteen dollars to three or four dollars. If you haven’t already please pick this game up along with the rest of the Supergiant Four. If you are someone who just wants a game that can be beaten within a few sittings or was somehow turned off by Hades roguleike design then you might like how streamlined Bastion is as it is a great introduction to Supergiant's work and where their greatness started. I am going to give Bastion a 9/10 for excellence at best.
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