Transistor

The atmosphere, the story, the environment seem great, but this game fails pretty hard when it comes down to the control and design choices in how to handle combat. The game comes off as some half baked combo of almost a TRPG and an action title in how you handle it. Maybe better on a controller? But using the keyboard and mouse it's a muddled mess where you end up taking many unnecessary hits which if it were straight forward like their precursor Bastion would have been so so much better. I'm erasing this one now and hiding it, not wasting my time on a game being subpar where it hurts the most...in how to play it.

The voice acting is great, the art style nice and the combat system interesting. However, after the interesting start, everything becomes more of an annoyance. The world is beautiful but empty apart from the spawning enemies, and terminals which contain nothing interesting. The combat offers different combinations but is neihter enganging nor challenging. And even the good voice of the tranistor becomes a meaningless constant babble.

Transistor is an isometric view game that cannot decide whether it wants to be fast action or turn-based tactical. Apparently the developers could not decide upon which route they wanted to take with it, so they tried to shoehorn both in and that makes for some extremely sloppy, unfocused and unsatisfying game play. In action mode the player character moves at a snail's pace and can never outrun or dodge enemy attacks. In tactical mode the game becomes a little more playable, however you end up wasting most of your turns on taking out excessive amounts of enemy healing units who just stack up and heal each other, nullifying most of your damage. Once you do take them down and are finally able to take on the normal enemies properly, most of your health is gone and some of your abilities have possibly been stripped away because you took too much damage. The story is little more than reading esoteric news bulletins about the game world and listening to the mumbling coming from your sword-friend, who keeps trying to tell you where and when you should go and who can't seem to shut up for two minutes. The whole thing comes across as though the writer(s) was trying way too hard to make the backdrop and story more enigmatic, lofty and avant-garde than it really is. Nothing is ever explained clearly or concisely. Art-wise, the visuals are solid and look well drawn for the most part. The cinematic sequences do tend to have a "DeviantArt" soft 'n' smudgy look to them, but they aren't horrible. The music is mostly unobtrusive and ambient, though there are a few parts with pop style songs that sound like they belong on a talent search television show. There are no instructions given new players. You are dropped into the game and expected to already know where everything is and how it all works. The UI is clunky and poorly thought out. This is one game that's getting uninstalled from my PC and hidden in my GoG library.

I tried to love it, but I can`t even play it without getting furious! Confusing story, hidden in the upgrades of your weapons, unskippable annoying commentaries of your companion, and repetitive pause-abusing combat gameplay. I hate it!

Another great indie game, if you want some nsight about how the game works it is more an action adventure game more than anything else, with an hybrid of real time and turn based combat, which functions pretty much like a bullet time that you can activate to get out of harm's way or to plan your next attacks and get the best out of your synergies; and that takes me to the "functions" which are your attacks and skills, but you can equip one onto another to change the effect in varying degrees in addition you can equip "limiterds" that increase the difficulty of the encounters, but reward you with extra xp The story is not a selling point, but it gets the job done, the visuals are good and the music is superb, my biggest complaint being the game is too linear and sometimes you can inadvertedly advance the plot thinking you are just gonna inspect one of the many exploration points scattered around All in all, is a pretty good game, the flexibility of the combat being its biggest seeling point