This review contains spoilers
Let's get the big positives out of the way first: Speaking on a visual and audio level, Transistor is amazing. The game features stunningly beautiful backgrounds that give the city setting impressive life merely from appearance. There's lots of little touches that look quite nice in the game, like the sparks as Red drags the Transistor around for example. This is combined with some very nice 2-D portraits and art with a distinctive and strong style, all of which is what drew me to have a lot of interest in this game!
On top of that this game has a beautiful soundtrack that is entirely worth jamming to even without the game, with Ashley Lynn Barrett providing some great vocals on certain tracks (including my favorite in the game, "Paper Boats"), in addition to some great instrumental tunes. For the instrumentals, I am particularly partial to the final boss theme "Impossible" which is a pretty funky techno-beat that kinda makes me think of a very modernized style of Mother 3 songs. It is well worth more than just one listen!
But once we get past the spiffy visuals and into the meat of the game, that's where it began to lose me. The combat system is actually really cool: All of your moves are "Functions" and therefor can be put into your 3 slots (Active, Upgrade and Passive) in any combination. This offers a lot of uses and combinations, which can be pretty fun to tinker around with. On top of that, you have access to the ability "Turn()" which lets you stop time to move and plan before performing hyper-accelerated options. All-in-all, the base customization and combat has good potential. But the game suffers from very easy difficulty: Turn + Crash + Spark, which are all abilities you will start with or get early, can slaughter the entire game without much hassle and so hurts your desire to customize because you can run through the game so easily that trying weird combos doesn't feel rewarding. From what I know, the combo I primarily used isn't even that strong. You're going to be slaughtering a lot of the game regardless of what you pick if you just abuse the basic mechanics, with the possible exceptions of the challenge rooms that force you into using very specific abilities (usually because they are intentionally abilities not meant to be well put together).
I only died twice in the entire game and neither were because of my opponents killing me outright, but because I only had two attacking moves on the final boss without thinking and so when I lost my first health bar (you have 4 health bars and each time you lose 1, 1 of your Functions overloads: The one with the most stuff on it specifically) I didn't have enough damage to finish them off. I simply made an ability I never even used that would overload first and won casually. Even aside from game overs there were only a few times the entire game I lost even one of my four health bars, I wasn't even being particularly challenged. It was hardly the worst combat system for this, but I didn't find myself particularly engaged outside of the challenge rooms and to an extent the final boss. My brief foray into Recursion didn't make the game particularly tougher or style changing, nor did the fact I had multiple Limiters on by the end.
But the story and character aspects were the main areas of major disappointment to me, in part because Transistor just has a pretty cool setup with this sprawling city of creative stifling, a constantly changing landscape and world due to widespread direct democracy (hard to get more direct than the very first OVC terminal giving you a 51/49 result on the weather while your sword-boyfriend complains there were only two options), with mysterious disappearances due to the Camerata, a mysterious group of four people who believe the constantly changing state of the city is terrible and seek to change it. Sounds really cool, right? Congratulations, that's all of what the game has to offer there!
Yeah that's my biggest issue, the game has a great setup but ultimately shoves it aside because the events of the game are not only essentially in the middle of the apocalypse, but also shove you specifically away from situations that could give much interesting insight, with the exception of Royce from the Camerata (who is still sadly too brief). The Camerata all have these really slick designs and could have a lot to them, but for example Grant (their leader) never gets any dialogue at all and just some light hints from other characters, Sybil (who is really great design-wise) basically just ends up in the psycho lesbian archetype without any other real personality traits. The backdrop of this lush city setting with its own unique culture, a governance we get some privy too, and all of that falls to the wayside extremely quickly in the game and basically just serves as window dressing. Quite frankly I was far more interested in all the stuff the game didn't let me see or wasn't interested in exploring than the main plot, which is rather thin. And while I do appreciate the gay / bi representation here...it amounts to a character whose entire status is basically being a crazy, lovestruck lesbian and tragic suiciding gays, I can't say I'm a big fan. Especially since there was a lot of interest in "city that stifles individual expression and seems to stress conformity vs. group made up 3/4ths of LGBT people seeking to oppose it".
It primarily ends up being a character focus on Red and her stuck-in-the-Transistor boyfriend Mr. Nobody, but this does lead to a somewhat awkward bit of story pacing where because Red is mute (something I wish the game explored more: I really feel like this game wanted a prologue or segments in the city before it all goes to shit!), Mr. Nobody serves as the primary vehicle for Red's character or ultimately makes it about him, which feels kinda odd to me? Red gets some pretty obvious stuff, I mean she's a singer who's been made mute and the world is going to hell around her the depression isn't hidden, but it ultimately comes across as rather surface level and largely brought up some by some stuff like the music...but that wasn't enough to elevate it THAT strongly, it is no Metal Gear Rising in terms of music adding to the story (largely because the story isn't strong enough to hold the music up rather than the other way around).
There's just a lot of interesting stuff that the game doesn't seem interested in, and it makes me sad. Royce ends up being the stand out character, with his amazing voice acting work by Sunkrish Bala being a big factor. I really want to see some more characters with this style of voicing. He probably has the most developed character in the game, he definitely has the best fight in the game, I really wish we got to see more than like 20 minutes of him in total or that the rest of the Camerata actually got something close to just letting him...talk and have dialogue or any form of insight with him (as with the Limiters' dialogue or reading his terminals). The characters you can learn about via the Functions are neat, but 80% of their stories boil down to the exact same format (they're an exceptional individual, they Do a Thing, it causes them to meet the Camerata and be killed) which makes them a bit...predictable and eh.
Overall, Transistor is a game with a vivid and lush feel, look and sound, but it lacks an equally vivid story that drags it down, and an interesting gameplay basis ended up being a more mediocre experience to me due to not really playing into the customization enough. It's worth a try if you're enamored with some part of the game (visual, audio or otherwise), particularly when it is on sale from its 19.99 price, but I would temper expectations when heading into it. For me, it was an average game I enjoyed slightly but which left me feeling disappointed at the end.
On top of that this game has a beautiful soundtrack that is entirely worth jamming to even without the game, with Ashley Lynn Barrett providing some great vocals on certain tracks (including my favorite in the game, "Paper Boats"), in addition to some great instrumental tunes. For the instrumentals, I am particularly partial to the final boss theme "Impossible" which is a pretty funky techno-beat that kinda makes me think of a very modernized style of Mother 3 songs. It is well worth more than just one listen!
But once we get past the spiffy visuals and into the meat of the game, that's where it began to lose me. The combat system is actually really cool: All of your moves are "Functions" and therefor can be put into your 3 slots (Active, Upgrade and Passive) in any combination. This offers a lot of uses and combinations, which can be pretty fun to tinker around with. On top of that, you have access to the ability "Turn()" which lets you stop time to move and plan before performing hyper-accelerated options. All-in-all, the base customization and combat has good potential. But the game suffers from very easy difficulty: Turn + Crash + Spark, which are all abilities you will start with or get early, can slaughter the entire game without much hassle and so hurts your desire to customize because you can run through the game so easily that trying weird combos doesn't feel rewarding. From what I know, the combo I primarily used isn't even that strong. You're going to be slaughtering a lot of the game regardless of what you pick if you just abuse the basic mechanics, with the possible exceptions of the challenge rooms that force you into using very specific abilities (usually because they are intentionally abilities not meant to be well put together).
I only died twice in the entire game and neither were because of my opponents killing me outright, but because I only had two attacking moves on the final boss without thinking and so when I lost my first health bar (you have 4 health bars and each time you lose 1, 1 of your Functions overloads: The one with the most stuff on it specifically) I didn't have enough damage to finish them off. I simply made an ability I never even used that would overload first and won casually. Even aside from game overs there were only a few times the entire game I lost even one of my four health bars, I wasn't even being particularly challenged. It was hardly the worst combat system for this, but I didn't find myself particularly engaged outside of the challenge rooms and to an extent the final boss. My brief foray into Recursion didn't make the game particularly tougher or style changing, nor did the fact I had multiple Limiters on by the end.
But the story and character aspects were the main areas of major disappointment to me, in part because Transistor just has a pretty cool setup with this sprawling city of creative stifling, a constantly changing landscape and world due to widespread direct democracy (hard to get more direct than the very first OVC terminal giving you a 51/49 result on the weather while your sword-boyfriend complains there were only two options), with mysterious disappearances due to the Camerata, a mysterious group of four people who believe the constantly changing state of the city is terrible and seek to change it. Sounds really cool, right? Congratulations, that's all of what the game has to offer there!
Yeah that's my biggest issue, the game has a great setup but ultimately shoves it aside because the events of the game are not only essentially in the middle of the apocalypse, but also shove you specifically away from situations that could give much interesting insight, with the exception of Royce from the Camerata (who is still sadly too brief). The Camerata all have these really slick designs and could have a lot to them, but for example Grant (their leader) never gets any dialogue at all and just some light hints from other characters, Sybil (who is really great design-wise) basically just ends up in the psycho lesbian archetype without any other real personality traits. The backdrop of this lush city setting with its own unique culture, a governance we get some privy too, and all of that falls to the wayside extremely quickly in the game and basically just serves as window dressing. Quite frankly I was far more interested in all the stuff the game didn't let me see or wasn't interested in exploring than the main plot, which is rather thin. And while I do appreciate the gay / bi representation here...it amounts to a character whose entire status is basically being a crazy, lovestruck lesbian and tragic suiciding gays, I can't say I'm a big fan. Especially since there was a lot of interest in "city that stifles individual expression and seems to stress conformity vs. group made up 3/4ths of LGBT people seeking to oppose it".
It primarily ends up being a character focus on Red and her stuck-in-the-Transistor boyfriend Mr. Nobody, but this does lead to a somewhat awkward bit of story pacing where because Red is mute (something I wish the game explored more: I really feel like this game wanted a prologue or segments in the city before it all goes to shit!), Mr. Nobody serves as the primary vehicle for Red's character or ultimately makes it about him, which feels kinda odd to me? Red gets some pretty obvious stuff, I mean she's a singer who's been made mute and the world is going to hell around her the depression isn't hidden, but it ultimately comes across as rather surface level and largely brought up some by some stuff like the music...but that wasn't enough to elevate it THAT strongly, it is no Metal Gear Rising in terms of music adding to the story (largely because the story isn't strong enough to hold the music up rather than the other way around).
There's just a lot of interesting stuff that the game doesn't seem interested in, and it makes me sad. Royce ends up being the stand out character, with his amazing voice acting work by Sunkrish Bala being a big factor. I really want to see some more characters with this style of voicing. He probably has the most developed character in the game, he definitely has the best fight in the game, I really wish we got to see more than like 20 minutes of him in total or that the rest of the Camerata actually got something close to just letting him...talk and have dialogue or any form of insight with him (as with the Limiters' dialogue or reading his terminals). The characters you can learn about via the Functions are neat, but 80% of their stories boil down to the exact same format (they're an exceptional individual, they Do a Thing, it causes them to meet the Camerata and be killed) which makes them a bit...predictable and eh.
Overall, Transistor is a game with a vivid and lush feel, look and sound, but it lacks an equally vivid story that drags it down, and an interesting gameplay basis ended up being a more mediocre experience to me due to not really playing into the customization enough. It's worth a try if you're enamored with some part of the game (visual, audio or otherwise), particularly when it is on sale from its 19.99 price, but I would temper expectations when heading into it. For me, it was an average game I enjoyed slightly but which left me feeling disappointed at the end.