Game Review: Transistor
2018-Jan-18, Thursday 18:00![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dorchadas
Based on Transistor and Bastion, I'd say that Supergiant has a type. Both games begin after something has gone catastrophically wrong, with the protagonist left in the ruins trying to piece together what happened. Both games have a silent protagonist. Both games are isometric action games. Both games have a vibrant, beautiful art style that complements a world full of nooks and crannies containing their own fragments of story. Both games explain almost nothing at the beginning and allow the player to discover the background as they play. Both games have combat systems that emphasize player choice and quick response to changing situations. Both games are narrated by Logan Cunningham.
Though I can't blame them for that. Everything should be narrated by Logan Cunningham.
This would make a very good album cover.
Transistor is the story of Red, a jazz singer in the city of Cloudbank. Something has gone seriously wrong, and at the very beginning she's standing over the body of her paramour which has been impaled by a giant sword. Red takes up the sword, which seems to have the spirit of her paramour inside it, and sets out to find some answers.
That's basically all that's explained at the beginning, and since the story is ambiguous and most of it is never clarified, it's hard to talk about in a way that both avoids spoilers and says anything definite. Cloudbank is intriguing--it becomes obvious almost immediately that it's not an ordinary city, with the OVC terminals that Red interacts with allowing her to vote on the appropriate weather and the color of the upcoming sunset. On the way back to her apartment, Red orders food for delivery but no price is listed, nor is there any mention of payment, money, or even having to work at all. Transistor looks like an art nouveau cyberpunk metropolis, the kind where one might expect Red to have to go through the slums or confront her privileged existence as a famous singer versus the squalid lives of the working poor, but there's no class conflict in Cloudbank. There's every indication that life there was pretty good for the majority of people. A perfect democracy, responsive to the will of the people, where its citizens are free to pursue personal fulfillment in the way that they deem most satisfying.
Until a small group of people decide that this arrangement is too inefficient and if they controlled it, they could make it better. It does not go well for them or, in the end, for anyone else.
Flatbread, every day of the week.
Most information about the world comes from exploration and from the narration. While the events that led to Red gaining control of the giant sword--the eponymous Transistor--caused her to lose her voice, her paramour is perfectly willing to comment on anything and everything in the world. Searching out places off of the main path leads to terminals where Red can find news broadcasts from Cloudbank authorities or open votes on how the city should change, commentary on the city itself, or memories of her time together with her paramour.
Most of these are relatively short and the narration continues while you explore, so there's no reason not to seek them out.
The rest of the information comes from the game mechanics themselves. During the game, Red acquires powers that she can use in combat, but each of these powers is a record of a specific person, termed a Trace. Using them in combat fills in the information about that person, and using them in a different capacity adds different information, so there's an incentive to constantly adjust powers to unlock new information rather than stick to a single powerset. While I have a tendency to find a sweet spot or favored set of moves and play that way for the entire rest of the game no matter what game I'm playing, in Transistor I would constantly switch up what abilities I was using. I couldn't go more than two or three battles without changing my loadout around because I wanted to learn more about everyone whose Traces I had picked up, and it also made sure I tried out every move for the space of an entire battle at least once. It's an excellent way of encouraging versatility by tying it to the story progression, and it puts narration volume in the hands of the player, which I always appreciate. We have enough games with long speeches in them.
Take that, creep.
Several people mentioned that they didn't like the gameplay of Transistor as much as Bastion, but I loved it. Even considering the beautiful world, I think the gameplay is the best part.
Throughout the game, Red is attacked by out-of-control robots--or perhaps "enemies with a robotic aesthetic"--called the Process and has to defend herself using the Traces she picks up. Each Trace has three separate capabilities: as a direct ability, like how Crash() is a short-range attack or Mask() is an invisibility cloak; as an upgrade to other abilities, like how Breach() increases the range of other powers or Ping() makes them quicker to use; or as a passive ability that improves Red herself, like how Void() increases her base damage or how Help() gives Red a chance to turn into a super-powered form for a single combat turn. Changing these abilities and making sure that upgrades and passives are properly applied within the limits of Red's Memory allocation is the key to winning battles.
There is one other mechanic that encourages switching abilities, and that's the health system. Getting hit in combat hurts Red, that's pretty standard. But instead of dying when she reaches zero life, instead one of her abilities crashes. It becomes unusable for the remainder of the current battle and, if Red wins, she has to visit a couple save points to restore it. Any upgrades applied to that ability do not crash, however, so only a single ability is lost. Normally I reload to avoid any setback--when I played Baldur's Gate II, I constantly reloaded when anyone died even though the game contains resurrection magic--but in Transistor I would play out the battle and then change my lineup at the next save point. I was already constantly swapping my Traces around every few battles anyway, so the loss of a particular ability didn't hurt me. While there were some Traces that I was less fond of than others, there were no Traces that I thought were must-uses. The one I used most consistently was an upgraded Crash() because of its ability to increase the damage of later abilities, but there were plenty of other good combinations I found too. Switch() upgraded with Spark() and then hiding while the enemy killed each other. Liberal use of Mask() and backstabbing before using Jaunt() to run away. Pulling several enemies in with Get() and then hitting them with Void() to weaken them and triggering a Load() explosion.
All of these combinations worked. The only battle where I had to change up my Trace selection because I was having trouble winning was the final boss, and it's possible that I just wasn't devious enough and with a little more persistence I could have won. If you go to GameFAQs and search for a thread like this one about overpowered combinations, some Trace()s show up more often than others, but people are posting a wide variety of tactics that they consider best. The lack of one true path and ability to freely experiment is a huge mark in Transistor's favor.
Take your time.
Combat is fast-paced and chaotic. Red's Traces all have charge-up or cool-down times, she moves slower than most of her enemies, and when an enemy is defeated she has to collect the cell left behind or it will respawn. If you had to play Transistor as a real-time action RPG, it'd be a terrible game and this review would mostly be ranting.
But while I have heard of one person who hated the game because they tried that, it is neither optimal nor necessary. The Transistor gives Red the ability to freeze time and plan out her abilities on a grid, setting up a backstab Crash()/Cull() combination to seriously injure one enemy, darting over to throw a Spark() into a group of other enemies, and then hiding behind a wall, all in the space between moments. Red only has a certain amount of action capacity and each Trace(), as well as movement, requires a certain amount of it. Traces like Crash() and Jaunt() are very quick, whereas Cull() or Breach() take much more capacity to use. Moves are listed across the top and it's easy to undo any action until you're satisfied, at which point you confirm your Turn() and everything executes at lightning speed. Then, Red needs to wait until her action capacity recharges, after which she can perform another series of moves.
This is where I ended up loving Transitor more than Bastion. Bastion had a good combat system with fun weapons, but I loved the planning aspect of picking out a Turn() and Red alternating between empowerment and disempowerment. Do I use the time between Turn()s to try to pick up the cells that enemies drop and risk being damaged, or do I spend some time doing it during a Turn() at the cost of not being able to kill a particular enemy? How do I deal with enemies like the Younglady, who teleports on being hit and so can't have Traces chained against it during a Turn(), or the Man, who often has its own Mask() to hide with and summons explosives that I can't leave Red next to when Turn() ends? How do I make sure that I'm in a good place when Turn() ends?
I'm sure.
I would honestly play an entire game that's just puzzles based around Transistor's combat mechanics. Have a series of levels with a set palette of Traces and upgrades and have to kill all enemies within a certain time limit, or within the bounds of a single Turn(), or have to survive until a timer expires. I know this would work because at certain points in the game, Red finds a Backdoor that leads to the Sandbox, peaceful beach outside the bounds of Cloudbank where she can relax and practice her skills. There are several doors which lead to challenge rooms that require exactly those conditions I just suggested and I tried them every time they were available. Even without any of the context from the story that the combat in the main game had, the challenge rooms were great. Give me more of that, please.
Other than that, Transitor is like Portal in that it knows how long it needs to be and doesn't try to overstay its welcome. About fifteen minutes before I beat the game, I figured that I had reached the halfway point, or maybe the two-thirds point, and then I was at the final boss battle and it was over. And when I thought about it for a moment, I was glad that it ended there. I had already learned all the information I really needed to figure out what had happened to Cloudbank and it was time to bring an end to the story of Red and her paramour. Once the game ended, I clicked the option for Recursion and then turned off the game, but I'm sure I'll pick it up again later.
Hmm. Recusion. Cloudbank. A Backdoor into a Sandbox. Traces. (). The Process. Hmm.
I loved Bastion and thought it was a masterpiece, but with Transistor somehow Supergiant made a game that was even better. I don't know why I was skeptical about Transistor for so long, but it was all unwarranted. This is a fantastic game.
Though I can't blame them for that. Everything should be narrated by Logan Cunningham.
This would make a very good album cover.
Transistor is the story of Red, a jazz singer in the city of Cloudbank. Something has gone seriously wrong, and at the very beginning she's standing over the body of her paramour which has been impaled by a giant sword. Red takes up the sword, which seems to have the spirit of her paramour inside it, and sets out to find some answers.
That's basically all that's explained at the beginning, and since the story is ambiguous and most of it is never clarified, it's hard to talk about in a way that both avoids spoilers and says anything definite. Cloudbank is intriguing--it becomes obvious almost immediately that it's not an ordinary city, with the OVC terminals that Red interacts with allowing her to vote on the appropriate weather and the color of the upcoming sunset. On the way back to her apartment, Red orders food for delivery but no price is listed, nor is there any mention of payment, money, or even having to work at all. Transistor looks like an art nouveau cyberpunk metropolis, the kind where one might expect Red to have to go through the slums or confront her privileged existence as a famous singer versus the squalid lives of the working poor, but there's no class conflict in Cloudbank. There's every indication that life there was pretty good for the majority of people. A perfect democracy, responsive to the will of the people, where its citizens are free to pursue personal fulfillment in the way that they deem most satisfying.
Until a small group of people decide that this arrangement is too inefficient and if they controlled it, they could make it better. It does not go well for them or, in the end, for anyone else.
Flatbread, every day of the week.
Most information about the world comes from exploration and from the narration. While the events that led to Red gaining control of the giant sword--the eponymous Transistor--caused her to lose her voice, her paramour is perfectly willing to comment on anything and everything in the world. Searching out places off of the main path leads to terminals where Red can find news broadcasts from Cloudbank authorities or open votes on how the city should change, commentary on the city itself, or memories of her time together with her paramour.
Most of these are relatively short and the narration continues while you explore, so there's no reason not to seek them out. The rest of the information comes from the game mechanics themselves. During the game, Red acquires powers that she can use in combat, but each of these powers is a record of a specific person, termed a Trace. Using them in combat fills in the information about that person, and using them in a different capacity adds different information, so there's an incentive to constantly adjust powers to unlock new information rather than stick to a single powerset. While I have a tendency to find a sweet spot or favored set of moves and play that way for the entire rest of the game no matter what game I'm playing, in Transistor I would constantly switch up what abilities I was using. I couldn't go more than two or three battles without changing my loadout around because I wanted to learn more about everyone whose Traces I had picked up, and it also made sure I tried out every move for the space of an entire battle at least once. It's an excellent way of encouraging versatility by tying it to the story progression, and it puts narration volume in the hands of the player, which I always appreciate. We have enough games with long speeches in them.
Take that, creep.
Several people mentioned that they didn't like the gameplay of Transistor as much as Bastion, but I loved it. Even considering the beautiful world, I think the gameplay is the best part.
Throughout the game, Red is attacked by out-of-control robots--or perhaps "enemies with a robotic aesthetic"--called the Process and has to defend herself using the Traces she picks up. Each Trace has three separate capabilities: as a direct ability, like how Crash() is a short-range attack or Mask() is an invisibility cloak; as an upgrade to other abilities, like how Breach() increases the range of other powers or Ping() makes them quicker to use; or as a passive ability that improves Red herself, like how Void() increases her base damage or how Help() gives Red a chance to turn into a super-powered form for a single combat turn. Changing these abilities and making sure that upgrades and passives are properly applied within the limits of Red's Memory allocation is the key to winning battles.
There is one other mechanic that encourages switching abilities, and that's the health system. Getting hit in combat hurts Red, that's pretty standard. But instead of dying when she reaches zero life, instead one of her abilities crashes. It becomes unusable for the remainder of the current battle and, if Red wins, she has to visit a couple save points to restore it. Any upgrades applied to that ability do not crash, however, so only a single ability is lost. Normally I reload to avoid any setback--when I played Baldur's Gate II, I constantly reloaded when anyone died even though the game contains resurrection magic--but in Transistor I would play out the battle and then change my lineup at the next save point. I was already constantly swapping my Traces around every few battles anyway, so the loss of a particular ability didn't hurt me. While there were some Traces that I was less fond of than others, there were no Traces that I thought were must-uses. The one I used most consistently was an upgraded Crash() because of its ability to increase the damage of later abilities, but there were plenty of other good combinations I found too. Switch() upgraded with Spark() and then hiding while the enemy killed each other. Liberal use of Mask() and backstabbing before using Jaunt() to run away. Pulling several enemies in with Get() and then hitting them with Void() to weaken them and triggering a Load() explosion.
All of these combinations worked. The only battle where I had to change up my Trace selection because I was having trouble winning was the final boss, and it's possible that I just wasn't devious enough and with a little more persistence I could have won. If you go to GameFAQs and search for a thread like this one about overpowered combinations, some Trace()s show up more often than others, but people are posting a wide variety of tactics that they consider best. The lack of one true path and ability to freely experiment is a huge mark in Transistor's favor.
Take your time.
Combat is fast-paced and chaotic. Red's Traces all have charge-up or cool-down times, she moves slower than most of her enemies, and when an enemy is defeated she has to collect the cell left behind or it will respawn. If you had to play Transistor as a real-time action RPG, it'd be a terrible game and this review would mostly be ranting.
But while I have heard of one person who hated the game because they tried that, it is neither optimal nor necessary. The Transistor gives Red the ability to freeze time and plan out her abilities on a grid, setting up a backstab Crash()/Cull() combination to seriously injure one enemy, darting over to throw a Spark() into a group of other enemies, and then hiding behind a wall, all in the space between moments. Red only has a certain amount of action capacity and each Trace(), as well as movement, requires a certain amount of it. Traces like Crash() and Jaunt() are very quick, whereas Cull() or Breach() take much more capacity to use. Moves are listed across the top and it's easy to undo any action until you're satisfied, at which point you confirm your Turn() and everything executes at lightning speed. Then, Red needs to wait until her action capacity recharges, after which she can perform another series of moves.
This is where I ended up loving Transitor more than Bastion. Bastion had a good combat system with fun weapons, but I loved the planning aspect of picking out a Turn() and Red alternating between empowerment and disempowerment. Do I use the time between Turn()s to try to pick up the cells that enemies drop and risk being damaged, or do I spend some time doing it during a Turn() at the cost of not being able to kill a particular enemy? How do I deal with enemies like the Younglady, who teleports on being hit and so can't have Traces chained against it during a Turn(), or the Man, who often has its own Mask() to hide with and summons explosives that I can't leave Red next to when Turn() ends? How do I make sure that I'm in a good place when Turn() ends?
I'm sure.
I would honestly play an entire game that's just puzzles based around Transistor's combat mechanics. Have a series of levels with a set palette of Traces and upgrades and have to kill all enemies within a certain time limit, or within the bounds of a single Turn(), or have to survive until a timer expires. I know this would work because at certain points in the game, Red finds a Backdoor that leads to the Sandbox, peaceful beach outside the bounds of Cloudbank where she can relax and practice her skills. There are several doors which lead to challenge rooms that require exactly those conditions I just suggested and I tried them every time they were available. Even without any of the context from the story that the combat in the main game had, the challenge rooms were great. Give me more of that, please.
Other than that, Transitor is like Portal in that it knows how long it needs to be and doesn't try to overstay its welcome. About fifteen minutes before I beat the game, I figured that I had reached the halfway point, or maybe the two-thirds point, and then I was at the final boss battle and it was over. And when I thought about it for a moment, I was glad that it ended there. I had already learned all the information I really needed to figure out what had happened to Cloudbank and it was time to bring an end to the story of Red and her paramour. Once the game ended, I clicked the option for Recursion and then turned off the game, but I'm sure I'll pick it up again later.
Hmm. Recusion. Cloudbank. A Backdoor into a Sandbox. Traces. (). The Process. Hmm.
I loved Bastion and thought it was a masterpiece, but with Transistor somehow Supergiant made a game that was even better. I don't know why I was skeptical about Transistor for so long, but it was all unwarranted. This is a fantastic game.
