"Bastion" (PC)

My experience with this game was… interesting, to say the least.

When I started watching a longplay (as I often do to sample games before potentially buying), my first impression was that the graphics were nice and colourful, the music was good, and the idea of the paths forming before you as you advanced was a novel idea.

But I very quickly grew to despise the narrator's monotonous running commentary! I got so annoyed by his ceaseless reciting and occasionally criticising the player's actions that after less than twenty minutes, I couldn't take it anymore, so I took off my headphones and watched the rest muted! I never found his remarks funny or endearing, and I couldn't even bring myself to care about the story or details of the world, because it was all indigestibly delivered through that obnoxious narration. That one creative decision almost single-handedly ruins the whole experience!

Then I found out that the narration could be lowered to zero, so I took advantage of the Steam Summer Sale to play the game myself as a purely visual experience. After all, I didn't want the longplay to bring me to an unfair conclusion: a scathing review based on the narration alone.

However, the narration turned out not to be my only grievance: I also had issues with the gameplay itself. The mouse controls and isometric perspective kept throwing me off, so I'd often end up attacking or evading in the wrong direction. (And no, the game wouldn't register any controllers I tried to connect.) I know that's more on me than the game (I suck at video games; I make no allusions to the contrary), but that's part of the reason it drove me nuts when enemies would gang up on me or spam attacks so much that I couldn't keep up. There was one area with a huge flood of enemies where I lost almost all my lives, and that was just in the first hour. If it was only going to get harder from there, I knew I wouldn't stand a chance. So I did something I've never done before on Steam: I requested a refund.

To sum up, I know I'm in a minority on this, but I flat-out didn't like this game. It looks and sounds nice, but I found the control unintuitive, and the narration turned the experience from arduous to downright unbearable!

My rating: 35%