Ok, before I talk Bastion, I'm gonna rant about how frustrating it was to even get to play this game. I originally got it on steam when it went on sale for about 3 bucks, but when I went to play, it didn't detect my controller even though Big Picture mode on steam did. Steam can be finnicky about detecting controllers in general, but I kept trying to pair it both wired and wirelessly and no matter what I tried it wasn't working. After some research, I found out that Bastion doesn't support controllers on mac, which was what I was playing on, so even though I despise keyboard controls I figured it was the only way I was going to be able to play it. Then when I started, the game apparently couldn't detect my keyboard inputs and my mouse inputs at the same time. I could toggle between the two in the options menu, but I was limited to only being able to move or only being able to attack. Without exaggeration, Bastion on Mac was unplayable. So after that, I just rebought on my Switch and played the whole thing in 2 or 3 days.

So I was already in a bad mood because of all the hoops I had to jump through just to play it, and as I started out I wasn't into it. The whole game is pretty much nothing but short, samey levels with very barebones beat-em-up combat, and not a lot of enemy variety on top of it all. I also was not into the story; the narrator's voice loses its luster after 2 minutes and he never shuts up, and I was not invested in any of the characters enough to care about the conflict. And honestly it didn't really get much better.

As I played more though, I began to come around to it. The upgrade system is pretty simple, but it was enough to keep me playing for hours at a time, and I really liked the challenges associated with mastering each individual weapon. I hated all of the melee weapons aside from the hammer (which I stuck with for the entire game), and I think there could have been challenges associated with your special moves as well, but I really liked all the different guns you got and I switched between most of them throughout the game.

That ending though was great. I chose rescue and evacuation, and it was an oddly powerful sequence despite the fact that I didn't care about the story at all. And while I'm not particularly fond of the ost as a whole, "Mother, I'm Here" is a phenomenal piece.

I would say that it is overall a good first impression for Supergiant Games, and I'm definitely looking forward to playing the rest of their works, but it wasn't amazing. But I think that's ok; I enjoyed it and could see myself recommending it to others or maybe playing it again one day.