A Baka and His Blog 1/30/15: Lights(), Camera(), Transistor();

Another one bites the digital dust. Transistor is done. I do plan on doing New Game+ but just not quite yet. I found the overall experience enjoyable, but there were some parts of the game that I'm still struggling to figure out how I feel about them.

I guess I'll start with what I liked about Transistor. On an aesthetic level it was very striking. The “cyber Gilded-Age” vibe was a unique spin on the typical cyberpunk style. Having practically every aspect of the world relate to computers was cool. As for characters; while I'm not a fan of silent protagonists, Red was intriguing. At least they gave a narrative reason for why she was mute. As for the narrator, well, he was there at least. The other really good thing was the music. In fact, it was through listening to the OST a lot that I finally decided to play the game.

Now here are some aspects of Transistor that seemed to be lacking. There were really only two things; the story and the combat. First I'll just say I thought the combat mechanics were interesting and even fun at times. My only gripe was when a function would be uninstalled after reaching zero health. Often it this resulted in me losing the most powerful function available. Some encounters got really annoying when this would happen. Maybe I was doing something wrong. Actually I was. It took me some time to figure out what the limiters were for and why combat seemed so hard. I also failed to notice the passive slots until very late in the game. So yeah, my bad.

Now on to the story. While the setting and some characters were interesting; the plot was not so engaging. The main reason was the way it was conveyed. While there were lots of characters, there was absolutely no interaction with them. None of them were shown actually doing anything. The character's bios were unlocked by using their functions, and that was it. Other than the narrator and a few audio logs, you don't see anyone else. That didn't exactly give me much reason to be interested in why this calamity and the people involved with it mattered any.

It is tempting to want to compare Transistor to Bastion. That's because there are so many similarities. From combat mechanics like the limiters. Even the story set-up; there's an unknown force destroying the world and it's up to you figure out what happened and stop it. There are just too many similarities not too notice them.

Transistor was a neat experience despite some questionable decisions. Now that I have a better handle on it, I will give New Game+ a go and see if my opinion changes any. Again, I liked Transistor, there were just a few bits that could have been better.

transistor's story makes you work for it. You have to mix up your functions, try the limiters and read up on your files. It's just encouraging you to try lots of different setups in yet another way. This works for some people, others will hate it unfortunately. Personally, this type of storytelling really draws me into a world. But it's not for everyone and you can't force yourself to like it.

Another thing I've noticed is the more powerful your setup, the more likely overloading just once is going to screw your over for a long, long time. You can have a mid-damage setup and afford to loose pretty much any of your skills, but the higher damage setups are going to struggle if you muck up and loose a function.

I love how the bonus rooms in the sandbox aren't just "side stuff", I felt that they made me a better player for playing them, and I got exp rewards. The limiters work in a similar way (except the no uninstall limiter, fuck that!) - risk and reward are nicely balanced in this game.