Transistor

The story, the sound, the gameplay - everything about Transistor is full of soul and colour and stylish to boot. The voice acting, unsurprisingly, is top notch, and while I can understand why the story alienated some players, I found it rich and subtle, the kind of narrative that doesn't answer anything directly but is more interested in themes and ideas than heavy, plot-driven storytelling. Like so many others, I loved Bastion, but Transistor will always hold a special place in my heart.

The voice acting is top notch. The art deco style and character design is beautiful. The animations for your character are very stylish and detailed. The combat is somewhat repetitive. I mainly ran around trying to avoid attacks in between waiting for the timer to recharge so that I could pause and think my attacks through. My impression of combat is that it’s too frenetic for real-time, and too easy for pause. That combined with the weapon mechanic of not being able to adjust weapon loadout before/after battle felt really limiting. I found myself wondering why the devs chose to limit your ability to switch weapons to stations. Why not let me switch ad-hoc? Having to flip back and forth between weapons, and combos, and try them out, then return to the station to try out a new combo felt needlessly limiting. The narrator talks like he's intimately familiar with you, but I never feel a connection with him. And he begins speaking like he’s read the screen before it even loads, it might be more impactful if he waited to comment until I’ve had a chance to read it. As it was I found myself forgetting what he said, or trying to read while he was talking. Either way, it was an exercise in frustration. Overall, beautifully executed but marred by design choices that felt needlessly limiting. I felt this way about Bastion too, less so about repetitive combat mechanics, but it was very frenetic. I wanted to enjoy the story, but ended up frustrated by the combat.

worse than Bastion, not a worthy successor of Bastion. it is a turn based game with confusing mechanics

Beautiful to look at, and a nice soundtrack - although it doesn't changeup during combat, just the same lounge music throughout, which makes combat less enjoyable somehow - there's no sense of urgency. There wasn't enough substance to the game to make it enjoyable, for me at least. Felt like a linear interactive story, not a whole lot in terms of game play that affected the end result one way or another.

This is a small game with little fat, and very compelling. It is a top down, combat focused, action game with a bold hand drawn visual art style, and a bold, if slightly underused, soundtrack. This is cyberpunk in a digital dystopia and you play as Red, a singer who has been caught up in conspiracy and has had her voice taken from her. Here the game starts sans further explanation, but with a talking sword who is your companion: the Transistor. The plot is not anything novel or exciting, however its telling is done suitably well. The gameplay involves a mix of real time combat (think Diablo), where you have up to four skills to use as you maneuver Red, avoiding enemies and attacks, and a turn system where the game pauses, allowing you to set up abilities that Red will perform when unpaused. As enemies are usually numerous and strong, the meat of the combat is in the turn based mode. The game encourages changing up your abilities as these represent the citizens of Cloudbank (where the game takes place) who are trapped in the Transistor. By using and equipping these abilities in different ways you unlock more about these characters and get more of the story. This system is very effective and I always changed my loadout after every encounter. But the combat isn't all fluid. I found the real time with pause system a bit awkward. With the brunt of combat being the turn based mode, the real time mode was always relegated to me running and waiting for the turn meter to charge. After all, you can't even use your abilities while waiting for that meter to charge unless you have a specific ability equipped, and this hampered the flow of combat a bit. Nonetheless, the story and atmosphere, and Red as a protagonist, compelled me to finish this. It took ten hours with also doing optional challenges, and I enjoyed the ride. The visuals are nice, at times outstanding, and at story's end, I felt very satisfied. This is a small game and it achieves what it set out to do admirably.