When comparing FEZ vs Bastion, the Slant community recommends FEZ for most people. In the question“What are the best indie games on Steam?” FEZ is ranked 13th while Bastion is ranked 28th. The most important reason people chose FEZ is:
The core mechanic of FEZ is the ability to spin the world around in 3D, and then traverse and interact with the resulting terrain in 2D. This allows you to experience navigation puzzles that are rarely found in any other game.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Clever 2D rotation game mechanic
The core mechanic of FEZ is the ability to spin the world around in 3D, and then traverse and interact with the resulting terrain in 2D. This allows you to experience navigation puzzles that are rarely found in any other game.
Pro Brilliant puzzles
Fez has some deviously hard puzzles and mysteries that will require gathering clues from around the world to solve them.
Pro Mysterious world with lots of depth
FEZ goes beyond just being a great puzzle platformer. It also has a very clever storyline and game world with a mysterious bygone civilization that fits perfectly with the mysterious puzzles of the game.
Pro Charming graphics and world
The characters are interesting and expressive and the world they inhabit varies between vibrant forests and villages, foreboding caves, rainy cityscapes, and more.
Pro Great atmospheric soundtrack
Soft synth sounds mixed with chiptunes makes for an enjoyable soundtrack that evokes a feeling of nostalgia while creating a fitting atmosphere that complements the graphics.
Pro Fun varied gameplay
Bastion is a game about exploring floating islands while destroying monsters along the way. The combat is simple, fast, and it's a lot of fun to destroy monsters with a variety of weapons. This includes a machete, pistols, a pike, a carabine, and even grenades. You can also equip two weapons at the same time, allowing you to use cool combinations like hammer and a machete or a cannon and a mortar. Each weapon also has upgrades and unlockable skills, giving you new methods for destroying monsters. All of this makes Bastion stay exciting for a long time.
Pro A unique way of storytelling
While the central plot is pretty simple, Bastion has a narrator that comments on everything that you do. This includes things like falling of a ledge, obtaining a weapon, or even destroying a massive monster. Because of this, it feels as if you're playing through a story book, where your journey and actions is the central story.
Pro Beautiful art style
Bastion uses a hand-painted art style for its characters, monsters, environments, and even backgrounds. There's so much color, detail, and variation in everything, it feels like you're skimming through a picture book. It's always exciting to see what this game will show you next.
Pro Incredible soundtrack
Bastion's soundtrack expertly sets the atmosphere with its soundtrack. From somber blues songs during touching story moments to exciting trip-pop mixes during combat. It's just so nice to listen to, making the experience of playing Bastion better as a whole.
Cons
Con Minimal direction
The lack of clear direction + the mysteries of the foreign writing alphabet and numeric systems may overwhelm players who got in expecting a simple & cute platformer game about a white dude with a red hat (a traditional Ottoman hat, which is called a "fez").
Con Pen and paper absolutely required for full completion
There is a lot of backtracking and so, you need to keep a pen and paper near you to take notes, because you might need something very important later on. For some people this might be a fun killer.
Con Not metroidvania
Nothing in the form of powerups,. this is a puzzle game - not a metroidvania.
Con Very limited depth
The core gameplay loop of "jump until stuck, then rotate" is boring and repetitive within the first hour. Aside from this perspective-shifting mechanic, the game does not have much to offer.
Con Limited button mapping support on keyboard
FEZ has a couple of preset control schemes to choose from, but the buttons can't have functions assigned individually.
Con Phil Fish made it
Phil Fish has had a long rap sheet of being incredibly arrogant and toxic in his behavior, purchasing this game is an implicit endorsement of this kind of behavior.
Con Guess-and-check instead of intuitive puzzles
Unlike other great puzzle games like Portal or Braid, many of the levels in Fez are unpredictable. You can't just look at the map and predict exactly what to do. You have to guess and check, and not all of the results are intuitive. While guess-and-check puzzles works well for games like The Witness, it's really tedious in a game like Fez.
Con Loads of backtracking
The world is an intertwined maze that rely on specific portals to travel between. Since the entire game revolves around locating cubes -- a minimum of 32 cubes are required to reach the game's ending (64 cubes and "anti-cubes" exist in total). A considerable amount of backtracking is needed to locate the needed cubes; which are intentionally difficult to find and acquire.
Con Slow gameplay
Navigation isn't quick, and each missed jump can make ascending an area feel like a laborious chore.
Con Frequent crashes on PC
PC version of the game has stability issues. Luckily, FEZ autosaves often so no much progress is lost when the game crashes.
Con Combat can feel repetitive
Like most hack and slash titles, Bastion's combat is very simple, having you mash buttons in every monster encounter. This probably won't bother you as much during short play sessions, but the longer you play in one sitting, the more tiresome it becomes, especially if you already have all the upgrades and don't have anything else to do between levels.