My absolute favorite part of this game is the soundtrack. It’s an incredible compilation of songs from the game, and if you buy the game on Steam, for an extra $5 you can get the “Soundtrack Edition,” which comes with a copy of the soundtrack. The soundtrack is truly intoxicating; generally I’m quite addicted to NPR when I drive, but since I got the CD, it has been the only thing I listen to exclusively for weeks.

The game borrows from many different styles of music. Cowboymovie soundtrack, Asiatic, and Middle Eastern are just a few of the styles I recognized. The game used them well; there wasn’t a single part of the game when I thought the song didn’t fit well with the area I was in.

“Proper stories are supposed to start at the beginning; ain’t so simple with this one,” says the narrator. “Now here’s a kid whose world got all twisted, leaving him stranded on a rock in the sky.”

“He gets up,” says the narrator as you realize you now have control of the game. It doesn’t take long before you realize the game is actually narrating your actions. The entire game is narrated in this fashion, making it feel like an epic fairy tale that’s being told as you play.

The story of the game is excellent: The world in the game has been destroyed by something called the “Calamity,” which you’ll learn more about as you play. The story of the game is a tad dark at first, but it’s quite fitting for the feel of the game.

There aren’t many survivors in the world, and when you find one, it becomes your priority to bring them back to your base, a floating town in the sky called The Bastion, which is maintained and understood by a gravelly man who serves as the narrator. The narrator is also an intricate part of the story, and will slowly reveal his part in the world.

The game plays like an old Super Nintendo Entertainment System RPG. The first thing that came to mind while playing this was how much it reminded me of “Secret of Mana.” There’s a healthy assortment of weapons that lets you play how you want. Whether with hammer and bow, machete and musket, or rifle and mortar, you can combine weapons in any way you want by binding them to your left and right mouse buttons if you’re playing on the PC.

The game itself takes place on a series of floating slabs of land in the sky, suggesting that the core of the planet is incredibly dense, keeping the gasses surrounding the planet trapped and the land slabs caught in an orbit within the gas. Theoretically, if the gravity on the planet is that strong, then the planet would eventually recombine, but not with the same structure as before.

Overall the game is a small masterpiece, and I look forward to seeing what the developers do in the future. So I’m giving this game a 5/5, partly because the story is impeccable. It’s not forced down your throat in an obtrusive way; you just learn it as the game is narrated during your journeys.