The Case

Transistor is Supergiant Games’ follow-up to their smash hit that put them on the map - Bastion. Bastion was praised for being a brilliant single player game, even making some "game of the year" lists back in 2011. Transistor has people expecting greatness from the developers once again, and with its beautiful concept art and mix of both turn based and real time action, people have good reason to believe that lightning might strike twice. But as the internet has taught us, you can't always believe the hype; is Transistor really as good as everybody is making it out to be?

The Trial

Transistor and Bastion might have had the same developer, but it never feels like it. While both games share extreme beauty and a narrated journey of a silent protagonist, Transistor never once felt like Bastion, and achieved greatness in its own way.

Transistor's city of Cloudbank as beautiful as it is haunting, and gives off the feeling of a once prospering city now completely emptied by "The Process." The fact that you have no idea where The Process comes from, who started it, or why it exists, before it suddenly started wiping out this beautiful city only adds to the atmosphere. Bastion was bright, colorful, and vibrant in comparison to Transistor's dark metropolis, which is filled with statues, pizza joints, break rooms, and advertisements, all of which you can interact with to discover more about the city, and look as if nothing had happened until moments ago.

This feeling of "What the hell went down here?" pervades the story too, and even at the end you're likely to be confused as to what exactly happened. If you want the full plot you're going to have to read every data log, listen to every audio book, and examine every interactable to get even the hint of an idea. Some people won't like this way of storytelling, where the story is hidden behind optional content instead of being presented to you, but it's fitting, if nothing else, when you remember who you're playing as. If there is one downside, there isn't enough story to be discovered, since Transistor is a short game, clocking in at only around 5-6 hours; nowhere near the amount of time you need to understand the game.

Red, our protagonist, was Cloudbank's Elvis Presley, its Paul McCartney, the most beloved singer in all of the land, and then...well...you're not. I'm not going to spoil it for you, but something happens, and then you start the game in front of a corpse with the “Transistor,” a giant glowing sword, stuck in it. Red lost her voice before the game starts, so all the dialogue you hear is coming from the Transistor. Throughout the game, the Transistor will narrate your journey and comment on your actions, while occasionally talking about how he loves you. The Transistor is a lot of things: your boyfriend, the narrator, a central plot device, and weapon all wrapped into one peculiar package, but for the most part, it will be used for combat.

Combat is completely unique, and is a mix of turn based strategy and fast paced action. There are two modes you can do combat in: you can play in real time, or freeze everything around you to go into turn-based mode where you can dodge an incoming bomb, run around the battlefield, and do massive damage to enemies. Of course, what you can do while time is frozen is limited by a rechargeable bar at the top of your screen. Every action from moving to using abilities uses more of this bar, but when you've planned out your turn, you can sit back, and watch your enemies blow up while frozen in time. The problem is that you can't use many of your abilities while your bar is recharging, and your bar only recharges while playing in real time, forcing players to get good and play in both real time and turn based modes.

If you get the hang of the game and become a god amongst men early on, you can enable "limiters," much like invoking the Gods in Bastion, to make the game more challenging and give yourself some bonus exp at the end of each battle if you beat it. One must be careful with these limiters though, because Transistor punishes you for dying. When you run out of health, instead of dying and going back to a save, you lose an ability temporarily, leaving you to fight the rest of the battle and the upcoming ones without it. You only actually die when you lose every ability you have, and only then will the game respawn you at the last checkpoint. Dark Souls has nothing on Transistor in the death department; Transistor may be shorter and easier than DS, but losing an ability is no joke. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately for the player, you can retry fights just by pausing the game and restarting at the last save point, making death much less significant if you aren't above some save scumming.

In combat itself, there are a total of 16 abilities that you can use, but once again, Transistor manages this like no other game has. Each ability you get can be an active ability, can enhance any other ability, or can be a passive ability. For example, early on in the game you get the ability to dash and an ability to shoot a laser. You could set your dash to the one button and the laser to another button, or you could sacrifice your laser move and instead use it to enhance the dash, making it cause damage to all the enemies you pass through. This works the other way too; if you sacrifice your dash to enhance your laser the cooldown of the move is reduced and it is fired instantly instead of needing to be charged first. Another option pops up later in the game where you could forgo both of these abilities entirely and set them as passive abilities to upgrade Red. While you can get the abilities over time by leveling up or collecting them in the environment, you only get so much "memory." This “memory” only has a set number of points, limiting what abilities Red can have assigned and use at any time, making you, for example, choose between "Crash()," which may only cost one memory point or "Load()," which might be better, but costs four points instead. Unfortunately, this system can get extremely complex, and isn't very intuitive. If you're like me, you'll be halfway through your first playthrough before you understand how all this works.

One last thing that has to be mentioned is the soundtrack. This being Supergiant Games, nobody should be surprised that the soundtrack is spectacular. Every song fits the feeling of the game perfectly and helps give you a feeling of what kind of city Cloudbank was before whatever happened, happened. Great music is always a point of interest on its own, but Transistor went even further in the music and character development aspects by adding a button to make Red hum along with the background music. Watching this once exalted singer left to hum to herself on an empty stage drives home what Cloudbank was and what it has become.

The Verdict

Lightning struck twice for Supergiant Games; Transistor is awesome. There are plenty of choices in combat, plenty of songs to listen to, and plenty of plot to be discovered, but if you're looking for plenty of gameplay, look elsewhere.

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