One of the games of all time.
I bought Transistor to see what all the hype was about amongst my circle of pals and general internet at large. After greatly enjoying Hades, a game in a genre I'm generally uninterested in, and not enjoying Bastion, I didn't know exactly how I'd wind up with Transistor.
There are things I like about Supergiant that they seem to knock out of the park each time: the music (thanks Darren Korb) and an isolated experience with an incredible art team supporting what's going on the screen.
What I don't like about Supergiant is after continuing to play their games is just about everything else within them. Hades, Bastion, and now Transistor have left me wanting a lot more in the combat of their titles. Transistor relies on intricate comboing of powers within a melding of real-time and turn based action, giving the player in theory agency as to how to set up engagements and take out the field in front of them. Where Transistor went wrong for me was exactly where Bastion also went wrong, a recycled and generally monotonous field of enemies that were barely improved or made more difficult throughout the game. This in addition to me discovering (through a direct recommendation) an "optimal" power combo made it so I could perma-stun entire fields of enemies and simply hold down the attack button to win. I wasn't struggling per se beforehand, but fights were taking a little longer than they should have... but why wouldn't I just look for the strongest combo and use that? I feel like this an intrinsic issue with the game, the way the combat is structured is that its more or less made to be broken, and the fighting in Supergiant games is already basic enough that this doesn't really do much for me.
There were several other elements of the loadouts and combat that I didn't like. The first being that you lose one power set temporarily when you die, having to come across checkpoints to grant you these back. I just... kinda hate this? It felt like an even worse take on the Fromsoft punishment formula, why am I being penalized even further for losing than having to retry a zone, why are you reducing my firepower as well? Secondly, I felt like Transistor does a generally poor job explaining literally anything in regards to mechanics or combo ability.
Outside of the fighting, I felt like the narrative was remarkably difficult to buy in to or give really any care about. The game stars a pair of lovers in peril, a woman named Red in love with a sword who apparently used to be her betrothed? I played this game for a live studio audience and had to ask a lot of questions for that to make sense. I don't know, and maybe its a general problem with how I consume media, but it's extremely hard for me to feel sorrow or buy in to the romantic plight of characters who I've barely known or were present before the events of the story took place. Why should I feel bad for these characters of whom I have never seen demonstrate love? Why should I demonstrate pity for a sword who was once a man that I've never met and never will meet outside of vaguely narrating the plot of the game? Sword-kun simply did not strike me as an empathetic entity within the game and I feel like the runtime and cold open played a significant part in that. I even got to the final boss and kept asking questions about the narrative would go, not knowing that the game had abruptly ended and I was viewing the credits.
There were simply no moments within Transistor in which I wanted to care about Transistor, which is as much of an indictment upon a title that I can give. Perhaps its me being spoiled by narrative driven games like Red Dead Redemption 2 or Nier: Replicant in which the long party exposition sort of forces the player to care about those around them, but Transistor had none of that. I had no reason to care about the characters, no reason to care about the world, no nothing. Between this, combat that left a plethora of things to be desired, and my least favorite Darren Korb composition to date, I can't recommend Transistor to anyone.
I bought Transistor to see what all the hype was about amongst my circle of pals and general internet at large. After greatly enjoying Hades, a game in a genre I'm generally uninterested in, and not enjoying Bastion, I didn't know exactly how I'd wind up with Transistor.
There are things I like about Supergiant that they seem to knock out of the park each time: the music (thanks Darren Korb) and an isolated experience with an incredible art team supporting what's going on the screen.
What I don't like about Supergiant is after continuing to play their games is just about everything else within them. Hades, Bastion, and now Transistor have left me wanting a lot more in the combat of their titles. Transistor relies on intricate comboing of powers within a melding of real-time and turn based action, giving the player in theory agency as to how to set up engagements and take out the field in front of them. Where Transistor went wrong for me was exactly where Bastion also went wrong, a recycled and generally monotonous field of enemies that were barely improved or made more difficult throughout the game. This in addition to me discovering (through a direct recommendation) an "optimal" power combo made it so I could perma-stun entire fields of enemies and simply hold down the attack button to win. I wasn't struggling per se beforehand, but fights were taking a little longer than they should have... but why wouldn't I just look for the strongest combo and use that? I feel like this an intrinsic issue with the game, the way the combat is structured is that its more or less made to be broken, and the fighting in Supergiant games is already basic enough that this doesn't really do much for me.
There were several other elements of the loadouts and combat that I didn't like. The first being that you lose one power set temporarily when you die, having to come across checkpoints to grant you these back. I just... kinda hate this? It felt like an even worse take on the Fromsoft punishment formula, why am I being penalized even further for losing than having to retry a zone, why are you reducing my firepower as well? Secondly, I felt like Transistor does a generally poor job explaining literally anything in regards to mechanics or combo ability.
Outside of the fighting, I felt like the narrative was remarkably difficult to buy in to or give really any care about. The game stars a pair of lovers in peril, a woman named Red in love with a sword who apparently used to be her betrothed? I played this game for a live studio audience and had to ask a lot of questions for that to make sense. I don't know, and maybe its a general problem with how I consume media, but it's extremely hard for me to feel sorrow or buy in to the romantic plight of characters who I've barely known or were present before the events of the story took place. Why should I feel bad for these characters of whom I have never seen demonstrate love? Why should I demonstrate pity for a sword who was once a man that I've never met and never will meet outside of vaguely narrating the plot of the game? Sword-kun simply did not strike me as an empathetic entity within the game and I feel like the runtime and cold open played a significant part in that. I even got to the final boss and kept asking questions about the narrative would go, not knowing that the game had abruptly ended and I was viewing the credits.
There were simply no moments within Transistor in which I wanted to care about Transistor, which is as much of an indictment upon a title that I can give. Perhaps its me being spoiled by narrative driven games like Red Dead Redemption 2 or Nier: Replicant in which the long party exposition sort of forces the player to care about those around them, but Transistor had none of that. I had no reason to care about the characters, no reason to care about the world, no nothing. Between this, combat that left a plethora of things to be desired, and my least favorite Darren Korb composition to date, I can't recommend Transistor to anyone.