Transistor

Supergiant games released, Bastion back in 2011 as the studio's first release, the game was highly stylistic and well crafted. The game was a critical success, and the studio gained many fans, including myself, I couldn't wait for their next project. And along came Transistor.

One of the most attractive merits of Supergiant's last game was the gameplay design; being highly innovative and stylistic, so most would expect nothing less from Transistor. The gameplay in Transistor struck me as a combination of Final Fantasy Tactics and a but of the mix and match of Magicka. You have a range of abilities that can be acquired either through leveling up or finding them. 

The abilities are called Functions and they can be used in one of three ways which are active, passive and upgrade. What really makes Transistor’s gameplay stand out is how the function upgrades work. You have four active slots, and with every active slot you have two upgrade slots. For example, you have the basic attack function Crash, you equip it on an active slot to use it as a basic attack, then you have two upgrade slots to alter the basic attack, so if you put an electric ability in the upgrade slot the basic attack would do physical damage as well as electric, and so on. This system opens a huge sea of mix and match, I found myself testing and mixing for hours. Functions can also be used in the passive slots and will act as buffs, depending of course on the function, for example if you use the Crash function on a passive slot it will boost your damage resistance.

The most negative side of the game is the enemies; that great gameplay engine is somewhat wasted with a monotonous set of enemies; their design is both poor in terms of aesthetics as well as gameplay.

leveling up in Transistor comes from combat with every level up you gain, you will also be presented with choices of Functions, limiters or unlocking more slots to equip your functions. Limiters is a system similar to the Idols system from Bastion. It's basically built on, the higher the risk the higher the rewards; You chose from a number of mechanics which will raise the difficulty of the game and you will be rewarded as per your choice.

The game’s world is very imaginative and highly stylized and the narrative is seamless with the gameplay, which is something I always appreciate. For example almost all the Functions are acquired through absorbing souls of people you find.

Moreover, the game's narrative is told mostly through the narrator. The narrator is trapped in Red's (the protagonist) sword and mostly engaged in a monologue since Red lost her voice. The issue I found is that the narrative gets a bit hard to follow after a couple of hours. Still the the voice acting is delivered with outstanding outstandingly and the writing is mostly well done that completes the image of the cyberpunk isolated world.

The art direction mixes the cyberpunk theme with water coloring style, apart from the enemy design, most of the game is beautifully imagined. Unfortunately the battle grounds, like the enemies, is mostly made of dull white blocks to work as cover fire. 

The soundtrack serves more than the usual role of providing atmosphere, It plays a bigger role as it's an integral part of the narrative. The game’s soundtrack overall is terrific without a doubt. Darren Korb, returns after the great job he did with Bastion to produce the soundtrack. Also returning to provide her golden vocal cords once again, Ashley Barrett. The Soundtrack has been described by Korb as "Old-world Electronic Post-rock" I describe simply as: awesome, The developers celebrate Ashley Barrett’s vocals by dedicating a button to her beautiful and hunting humming so you can listen to her anytime during the game.

In closing, I have enjoyed my time with the game but battle is everything, you can have great style, story, soundtrack, characters...but what keeps me going is a robust battle engine with enemies that will engage you and force you to use arsenal to its fullest.