Bastion

About Bastion

Bastion dropped in July 2011 from Supergiant Games and quickly became a standout indie title. You play as a silent protagonist known only as the Kid in a shattered world where floating islands drift after an event called the Calamity. The goal is simple yet compelling: reach the Bastion, a mobile hub city, and gather energy cores to rebuild it. Available on PC, consoles, and even iOS, this action RPG blends fluid combat with a reactive narrative system. The Kid wakes up alone and must team up with Rucks, an elderly narrator who comments on every move you make in real time. It is a story about rebuilding from nothing while exploring beautiful, fragmented landscapes.

Gameplay

You control the Kid using standard directional inputs to slash, parry, or unleash special abilities against waves of enemies. Combat feels tight because you can switch between four distinct weapon types mid-fight without pausing. Each weapon offers unique movesets and upgrade paths that change how you handle groups of foes. A key mechanic involves collecting cores at the end of each level to construct new buildings in the Bastion hub, which unlocks faster travel routes and storage options. You also face optional difficulty modifiers and a practice mode to hone your skills without risk. The game relies on real-time decision-making rather than turn-based tactics. Every encounter feels urgent as you manage cooldowns and positioning to survive heavy attacks from larger enemies or swarms of smaller ones.

What Players Think

Players have rated Bastion highly, with Metacritic giving it 86 out of 100 and IGDB sitting at 86.4 based on 747 ratings. The community vibe leans heavily toward relaxing and cozy, with three votes for cozy and four for relaxing despite the combat intensity. Most users complete the main story in about eight hours, though New Game+ modes encourage longer playthroughs to see different endings. Review snippets often praise the narration style and how well it syncs with player actions. Achievement hunters find plenty of content with over 50 unlockables scattered across the game. The high completion rate suggests players stick with it until the credits roll rather than abandoning it halfway through.

PlayPile's Take

This title costs around $14.99 on most platforms and offers roughly ten hours of solid gameplay plus extra time for New Game+. It suits people who want tight combat mechanics paired with a story that actually reacts to what they do. The price is fair for the amount of content provided, especially considering the replay value from multiple endings. You should play this if you like action games where the world changes based on your progress rather than static maps. Skip it if you prefer complex skill trees or open-world exploration over a linear path with hub management. The final choice regarding time travel adds a layer of consequence that few other games in this genre attempt so cleanly.

Storyline

The game takes place in the aftermath of the Calamity, a catastrophic event that suddenly fractured the city of Caelondia as well as the surrounding areas of the game's world into many floating pieces, disrupting its ecology and reducing most of its people to ash. Players take control of the Kid, a silent protagonist who awakens on one of the few remaining pieces of the old world and sets off for the eponymous Bastion, where everyone was supposed to go in troubled times. The only survivor he meets there is an elderly man named Rucks, the game's narrator, who instructs him to collect the Cores that once powered Caelondia. A device in the Bastion can use the power of the crystalline Cores to create landmasses and structures, as well as enable the Kid to travel farther afield via "skyways" that propel him through the air. During his quest, the Kid meets two more survivors: Zulf, an ambassador from the Ura, underground-dwelling people with whom Caelondia was once at war; and Zia, an Ura girl who was raised in Caelondia. Both of them return to the Bastion, but upon reading a journal that the Kid discovers, Zulf intentionally damages parts of the Bastion's central device (the monument) and returns to Ura territory. The Kid learns that the journal belonged to Zia's father, Venn, who had worked for the Caelondians. He had helped Caelondian scientists ("Mancers") build a weapon intended to destroy the Ura completely to prevent another war. Venn rigged the weapon to backfire, so that when he was finally forced to trigger it, the resulting Calamity destroyed most of Caelondia as well. To repair Zulf's damage to the Bastion, the Kid starts collecting Shards, a lesser form of Cores. As he obtains the penultimate shard needed, the Ura attack the Bastion, damaging it and abducting Zia. In the next seven days, The Kid engages in sporadic skirmishes in Ura territory. When he finally blasts through an Ura outpost and meets Zia, she tells him that she had left with the Ura voluntarily to find out their intentions; Rucks had previously told Zia that the Bastion had the ability to somehow fix the Calamity. The Kid travels to the once-underground Ura homeland to retrieve the last shard. There, he discovers Zulf being attacked by his own people: the battle with Kid has devastated the Ura forces, and they blame Zulf for bringing the Kid to their home. The Kid can choose to drop his weapon to help Zulf or leave him. If he leaves Zulf behind, the Kid destroys the remnants of the Ura and escapes through a skyway. If he chooses to carry Zulf, Ura archers initially open fire on them but ultimately cease fire and watch silently as the Kid and Zulf take the skyway back to the Bastion. After the Kid returns and recovers, Rucks gives him another choice: He can have the Bastion rewind time to before the Calamity in the hopes of preventing it, or use it to evacuate the survivors and move on to somewhere safe. Rucks is unsure if there is any way to prevent the Calamity from reoccurring if the time is rewound, as there was no way to test the process. The game ends either way, showing images of the characters (with the inclusion of Zulf if the player chose to rescue him) flying away or of their lives before the Calamity along with the credits. In the New Game+ mode, which is unlocked after beating the game once, it is hinted that restoring the world didn't prevent the Calamity.