Bastion

Tighly made and very impressive considering it was release way back at 2011 when indie was on the rise. A must play even today.

A fun hack and slash game, where you unlock various weapons and skills in order to progress throughout a a shattered world and find out what happened. Has lovely visuals, great narration. The story can be pretty mature, despite the colourful setting, but that only adds to it. In terms of gameplay, its a good example of easy to learn hard to master. Not everything is perfect thought. Sometimes when surrounded by enemies you shied and targetting system wont work perfectly. Plus the edge where you fall off if not on the pathway can feel quite restrictive and somewhat annoying. But for the price, this is a great game. Undeniably recommended.

"Proper story's supposed to start at the beginning..." -Rucks I was recommended this game from a friend of mine in graduate college. She had mentioned that the game may LOOK simple, but there was much more to it. Taking her advice, I bought it and have not regretted it since. This game not only tells a story that resonates politically and socially now more than ever, it has some of the best audio ever put to a game. Its soundtrack contains some of my favorite video game, especially the credits song. I also love the fact that the continuous use of narration not only enhances the storybook quality of the game, but also helps add to the world-building without ever interrupting the flow of gameplay. Though the gameplay itself is relatively simple compared to the rest of the game, I continue to play it to this day to try out different weapon combinations and relive the Kid's story. I definitely recommend this game. So, "what do you say?" - Rucks

The game looks very nice and sounds pretty good too — some sound effects are from a stock library, which made them feel uninspired; the songs are mostly good. The combat has quite a few issues, but the weapons are solid and fun: the targeting with the shield or a ranged weapon is undependable — cycling through enemies is often not a viable option and my shield (or ranged weapon) locking onto the incorrect enemy usually leads to feelings of unfairness — the enemies are mostly okay, some are very frustrating to fight — the frog-like enemies with armor on the front are annoying to fight and often frustrate; the eyeball enemies are also annoying to fight and take a while to kill; the bull enemy is pretty much a waiting game, because after he starts attacking you can pretty much just defend with your shield and wait for him to stop; the turrets are similiar to the bull, as they also turn the game into waiting, but thankfully not all of them: the spike enemies can be dodged, but if you don't dodge them when they start attacking it's just best to defend until they stop; the orb shooting turrets are fine, you can counter them easily and they don't shoot for long; the turrets who turtle can be fine to deal with if you can one-shot them with a counter or a weapon, but slow down the game otherwise — the animation is very problematic: some enemies don't have clear telegraphing or almost any at all; the rolling is fast, but doesn't have i-frames, which means it's just mostly used for maneouvring around the battlefield. The challenges are very different from one another, but this leads to big spikes in difficulty — one challenge I beat perfectly on my first time, others I didn't win at all — however they are overall a nice idea executed well. The plot asks somewhat interesting questions, but it's not too interesting overall. Overall the game is mostly noteworthy for it's art (visuals, music); the story and combat aren't too good. Together they create an alright to good game.

There's not a bad bone in its body. Great artstyle, great soundtrack, very cool weapon selection which caters to many styles, awesome theme and a well realized story with a lot of nuance. Plus it's very replayable thanks to a NewGame+ mode and several ancillary add-ons which increase the fun when you want to shake things up a bit. HIGHLY recommended.