In terms of gameplay, it has that same three-quarters view as Diablo 3, and you enter areas and kill monsters, look for whatever important doodad you're interested in at that moment.. You find and upgrade weapons, level up, pretty standard fare. I do appreciate the ability to mix and match any two weapons. There's about 11 in all as you move through the game, and you can use whichever you want. There are also special attacks, some of which are tied to specific weapons, but others that aren't. There was a nice range of options. The game does opt for an interesting approach where the ground rises up and appears beneath you as you advance, like it wasn't there until you came along. And then if you remove a Core from the place, it starts to fall apart again, and you can't go back again. That was different. A lot of games won't give you the option to replay earlier levels again, but they also don't give you a map that shows where you've been and where you can go. This game does that, but you still only get one shot at each level, after which they're blacked out on the map. It's as though they have no relevance or use once the main character gets what he's after.
The story of the game is that your character, the Kid, wakes up in his room after The Calamity. All citizens of Caelondia were told to reach the Bastion in that event, so that's where he goes. There's only one other person there, an old man, everyone else having either been turned to stone or simply vanished. The old man implores the Kid to seek out Cores, which can rebuild the Bastion, and enable it to fulfill what Rucks (the old man) says is its true purpose. Eventually the Kid finds two other people (separately), Zulf and Zia, both of them from a group of people known as the Ura, who have a not-great history with Caels.
None of that is apparent at first, though, but as you move through the levels you can find other things than Cores and weapons. You find little remnants of society, and when you bring them back and show them to the other characters, you learn a little bit more. The whole game is presented as Rucks telling it to Zia - or maybe someone else - as a story, and as he does so, he gradually admits more and more*. The Caels, in the name of their economic and technological advancement, invaded the lands of the Ura. They used mining techniques that ruined and destabilized the Ura's lands. There was a war, the Ura were at least partially defeated - though the Caels maintained a defensive wall, maybe just as a show of force - and marginally assimilated, though they were definitely second-class citizens.
And if the Kid gets the Bastion up and running, Rucks expects him to use it to turn back the clock. That's the decision the game gives you at the end. I think Zia convinces Rucks that considering the Kid is doing all the work, he should choose. Do they reset everything, or do they use the Bastion as a floating mobile home, and see if there's other people elsewhere in the world they could meet, and perhaps settle there?
I chose to go forward (on the first play, I went back later and chose the other option just to see what would happen). It seemed obvious to me. By Rucks own admission, everything that had happened since the Calamity would be erased, but there was no guarantee it would change the outcome. It had not been tested. No guarantee anyone would remember anything, which to me, sounded very much like no one would recall anything, in which case it would just give everyone the chance to relive their deaths all over again (not that they'd know it). Better to go forward knowing what we did, and trying to learn from it.
That choice was easy for me. The harder choice came minutes earlier. Zulf had a falling out with the rest of the group and returned to what remained of the Ura to plan with them. It didn't end well for him, and the game left me with the choice: Leave him behind, or carry him out? That one was harder. I understood his frustration and anger after what he'd learned, but he'd also endangered the lives of my other friends (and when the Ura attacked the Bastion, two of the three animal friends I'd made along the way died trying to help). Generally speaking, people who betray others in games are the ones I'm inclined to be hardest on. It was like that in Red Dead Redemption, and in Metro: Last Light. I thought about it for a minute, but I ultimately picked him up. Not at all sure why. Maybe I didn't want to risk a cut scene where the Kid has to explain how he left Zulf behind. Or I felt he'd been a good friend once, briefly, and I could forgive the decision.
Maybe it was because I don't think he was thinking of it until it happened. Those other games I mentioned, I'm pretty sure the characters in question planned to betray me from the first moment we met, and I resent the dishonesty (also that the games forced me to save their lives on multiple occasions). Zulf came with me in good faith, until he learned the truth, at which point he felt he had to do something else.
Overall, I thought it was a good game. I'm not sure it necessarily deserves some of the hyperbole I've seen about it, but that's writing on the Internet. I definitely think I've gotten my money's worth from it.
* I missed some of it. After awhile, with him droning on as I'm under constant attack, he becomes background noise.
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