But the first and last thing that must be said is this: how gorgeous Bastion is, from head to toe. Aesthetically, stylistically, there's no game quite like it.
The last gunslinger in town
Let me give you the lay of the land. Tell you who's who.
First thing you'll notice? Pieces of terrain, colors of the rainbow, fall out of the sky. They form floating walkways beneath the Kid's feet. Though he don't ask why, as the Narrator says.
The Kid might be the one survivor of the Calamity. He's traveling in search of Shards--to repair the Bastion, a place of refuge and now his home base.
The Kid's a strong and silent type; we're not privy to his thoughts. He's a man of action, smashing up the environment (if you want him to) and, of course, wild creatures that stand in his way.
Along the way, the voice of a Narrator tells the unfolding story, describing what the Kid does right as he's doing it.
The Narrator's a character of his own. A seasoned old sheriff he sounds like, all poetic in that Old West way. He's what keeps your ears and eyes peeled.
And the Bastion? All you need to know is that it has the foundations for six structures that will aid the Kid's quest. Build those structures and you unlock what they can do.
The Arsenal's where you swap out weapons. You may equip two weapons at a time, plus one special skill. The Forge makes weapons more powerful, should you find the right material to upgrade them lying out there in a post-Calamity world.
The Distillery stores a range of Spirits that pack a punch of bonuses to your health, skills, and such. The Lost-and-Found's like a local store. But stocked for combat, not cooking.
The Memorial and the Shrine are places to look for a challenge. The Memorial rewards you in monetary fashion for snagging certain achievements, like hunting every species of creature or mastering a weapon.
The Shrine can house up to ten gods, and if you're a little addled you can pray to 'em for life to be harder by ramping up the game's difficulty. Just for kicks.
Does the Bastion hold up?
You feel a tangible sense of progress building those structures, unlocking their abilities, and seeing the Bastion take shape. Exquisitely beautiful as each locale is in the Kid's world, there's no place like home. With each return to the Bastion, you bring home some new upgrade or memento you'll want to examine or test out.
That, more than anything else, propels the player forward. Though the Narrator's lines are engaging, the plot itself didn't do much for me. I found the story to be piecemeal and rather forgettable. Maybe because I was too busy fending off gasfellas, lunkheads, and vicious thorny plants to really pay attention.
But Bastion is beautiful enough--visually, aurally--for the plot to not matter. It looks like a dream, feels like a dream.
It doesn't play like a dream, though. And this is where Bastion shows its cracks: the combat. Being a hack-and-shoot, combat is the core of the game. But I simply did not enjoy hammering gasfellas until the midpoint of the game, after which I enjoyed it just a little more.
Perhaps it was the jerky character movements and the chaos of monster mobs. Fighting felt like monotonous button-mashing much of the time, until I figured out how to use the right weapons for the right enemies at the right time. Still, I'm glad the game only lasted me 6 hours; I was was long ready for something new by the time it ended.
What was good about combat, however, was the variety of weapons available for testing and upgrading. I favored the Army Carbine for ranged shots and the Pike for close combat. Also, the ability to auto-target was a lifesaver; some fights might be impossible otherwise.
Overall, good concepts and good system, but when battles played out in reality, they felt too chaotic in a cramped space and more button-mashing than finesse.
Conclusion
While I didn't enjoy the core of the game, combat, there was enough to make up for its button-mashing chaos: great visuals, music, and narration. They're reason enough to play Bastion. And if you did enjoy the combat, New Game Plus mode is worth a go, with new challenges.