Transistor

Much as the title makes this sound like fangirl gushing, I think it's meant to be played twice. I hated the writing my first time through, but it's better on repeat playthroughs. That said, on the first playthrough, you have no idea what's going on, and that makes a wonderfully surreal dreamlike experience. I had this moment where I was on a twilit beach, littered with robot corpses and oil stains, time completely stopped (more on that later), with my gal humming some old Hawaiian-sounding tune in almost total darkness, and wondered, "What the HELL am I even doing right now?" It's an unforgettable experience that I absolutely treasure. Not quite Bastion, but similar in a few ways. You get functions that can be used as active skills, upgrades to active skills, or general buffs. The combat is action, but you can also kinda stop time to enter this tactical mode of sorts; I've never played anything quite like it. Like Bastion, you have special challenges that you can find, and like Bastion, they punish you into mastering the game; it sounds awful, but it works extremely well. There are aspects of the game that could use a little explanation, but the fact that there is so much with which to experiment and also that it forces you to do so (often with joyous results) more than makes up for what little has the potential to be counter-intuitive.

Transistor is, something of a confusing game. The setting, the music, and the character design are all great, but it suffers a bit from a lack of explanation. There is lore to be uncovered, but the way it's presented to you (vaguely via terminals and in menus) makes it a bit hard to digest. With that said, the aesthetic is really neat. Unlike Hades the game is more slow-paced. Even your most basic of attacks has a significant start-up time, so you have to be very deliberate about your actions. Enter "Turn()" which essentially freezes time and allows you to queue up a series of abilities in order to plan the encounter. This is a really interesting feature and something I really enjoyed, even as someone who generally abhors "turn based" combat (although this doesn't technically apply in this case). Until you unlock the majority of the abilities and have upgraded significantly however, combat can be a bit frustrating until you get midway through, as you are limited by "memory" (which puts cap on the amount of abilities you can activate at once). I really like the power system in this game. Each ability has an active, an upgrade, and a passive ability but only one can be used at a time (unless you have unlocked extras of that ability, which is only possible in NG+). This creates innovative situations where you are mixing and matching abilities and trying to creatively design powerful synergies. When you lose all your health you will simply lose one of your 4 ability slots temporarily (and you haven't failed until all 4 are gone). The fact that this happens forces you to creatively mix and match abilities. I basically rushed through the game on my first playthrough and beat it in maybe 4-5 hours, but since the game is more fun the more powerful you are, it definitely feels even better on NG+ (which I understand not everyone will want to do). For me it's a 4.5/5, minus 0.5 because of the story being rather hard to understand, but otherwise, it's a great game.

The setting, sound and art style are all top notch. The gameplay may seem a bit confusing at first, but the more you play, the more you know and the more you get into it. Adding in different moves into your playstyle and figuring out new ways to deal damage is very fun. The story is short and (bitter)sweet, I found it very enjoyable. Finding out the background of how the lead duo got into their current situation and seeing how they play off of each other is interesting and at times humorous All in all, I'd recommend playing the game. I though about docking a point due to the short nature of the game, but the studio that produced it isn't big and you can't really hold it against them. If nothing else, pick it up on sale.

This is suposed to be a tactical rtwp combat rpg with a twist, it tries to reinvent the wheel of the genre and ends up with a more cumbersome pause system, think of it like VATS from fallout 3/4 but with the real time part of combat being chaotic and too fast paced, you can't even pause the game proper if you can't activate "VATS" due to it being in cooldown, so you end kitting foes waiting for "VATS" to reload. Also while the art style of the game is cool sometimes it gets in the way of playability with unnecesarily long "presentation" of "bosses" that look cool but offer zero meaningufl information, if you fail the fight you will have to watch it again and again.

Usually when the words “turn based” are linked to a game, I fully neglect it. I hate turn based games. What’s the point in having all these cool skills & attacks if I can’t use them freely? Transistor found a way to make it fun & may have even piqued my interest in turn-based games. Which is no surprise considering they made Bastion, the game that made me never look down on Indie titles ever again. Transistor combines the strategic planning of turn based combat with real time combat. Although most of the time I found myself using the planning mode which stops time to allow you to pick which attacks you’ll use. Enemies don’t get this option either. So, it creates a more action focused experience, thankfully. What I really liked here was how different abilities had 3 types of effects, active effects, upgrade effects & passive effects. E.g the ability, Crash; its active ability was your normal attack. The upgraded effect would come into play if you slotted into another ability. The passive effect would give a passive ability if you slot it into a passive slot. This REALLY took an interesting approach to the RPG mechanics that I personally never saw before. There’s a lot of combos to try. To my surprise I found myself experimenting a lot throughout the game, only finding that right combo about an hour before finishing the game. Death isn’t instant, instead, you lose a random ability. This keeps you on your toes. It added a reasonably organic level of difficulty. To top it off, those abilities you lose are inactive until you interact with 2 access points; save points where you change your abilities. This really helped encourage versatility & I loved it. The narrative is just lovely. Music is astounding. Visuals are gorgeous. GoG have a ridiculously stupid character limit on reviews. So, all I’m able to say is, the game is stunning in every way possible.