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Mento

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Mento's May Mastery '16: Day Five: Transistor

Transistor

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Part of what I love about this new variant for the May feature is how, by incrementally discussing a game over two or three entries, I can start getting past the surface-level "what this is" stuff. We've discussed how Transistor looks, how it sounds, how its story is initially presented (and it's best to leave it at that to avoid spoilertown, I've found) and how the basic mechanics work. Now, I'm free to discuss the meat of the Function system; how each serves a different purpose in combat from direct damage to stealth to support to debuffs etc., how they take on new life in upgrade and passive roles, how the level-up system works, what the restrictive limiters can add and how the game smartly encourages the player to experimentally switch their Functions around with additional, indirect gains. I feel like Transistor takes a while, possibly more than one playthrough, to fully appreciate what it's trying to do. That isn't necessarily to say it fully succeeds or fully fails at that process either, simply that it has a new idea or two it clearly wants space to try out.

The game adds these additional elements slowly, as if to gradually acclimatize the player to the complexities of the engine by only letting them worry about so many elements at once. This extended tutorial brings to mind a certain other game that spent a few hours to get going, itself featuring a taciturn heroine running through a lot of linear areas with a sword cutting down robotic enemies, but in Transistor's defense it doesn't take quite as long for its story to get interesting and it certainly doesn't feel the need to continue holding your hand after the first few areas of the game. I mentioned that the game felt like a cakewalk last time, but after the first boss the game takes a big up-swing in difficulty and I barely scrape through every other battle these days. Thankfully, I've also learned a thing or two about staying alive in the interim.

If the music wasn't so good already, I'd be half inclined to stick on some Kavinsky or Perturbator with visuals like this.
If the music wasn't so good already, I'd be half inclined to stick on some Kavinsky or Perturbator with visuals like this.

The two biggest additions since the last update are passive Functions and Limiters. Functions can be placed in one of your four active slots to use them in combat, but there's far more than four Functions. The rest can be used to upgrade one of the four you have, which provides different benefits depending on the Function you're upgrading with and the one you're adding the upgrade to - those built purely for offense, like the initial Crash() and Breach(), end up offering some interesting benefits in a secondary role. Passives are the newest: these Functions are always working, though when they actually activate can be fairly conditional. My favorite one so far is Help(), normally a Function that summons a helper for distraction purposes, that when placed in the passive slot gives you a 1/4 chance of becoming a superhero for one turn with a single devastating move that can potentially win battles instantly. Of course, it's not something you can always rely on. Limiters, meanwhile, are the game's Idols equivalent from Bastion (sorry) in that they add enemy-boosting conditions to make the battles harder in exchange for an experience boost. I might wonder why someone who is so comfortable with the combat that they're willing to make it more challenging for themselves would need to level up faster, but I guess Supergiant has to offer the player some incentive to set these other than their own masochism or a worthless achievement or two.

Another new discovery are the intermittent appearances of a "backdoor" area that acts similarly to the hub of Bastion (Aside: I'm just going to apologize every time I namedrop Bastion from here on out. The similarities are legion, though many of those you could argue as being a stylistic through-line for the developer), in which the player can take on scenarios regarding specific equipment loadouts and are usually given a strict time limit with which to either destroy every enemy or stay alive against waves of endless grunts. These provide two boons, one concrete and one a little more abstract: It earns you some bonus experience and a new song track for the music player and alleviates the usual pressure of not knowing whether or not your particular loadout is sufficient for the task at hand, but it also provides you with ideas for strategies for the core game. If a scenario posits that you can defeat a tough mini-boss in one round by combining two Functions you rarely use, that knowledge is something you can apply elsewhere after the challenge is complete.

New levels now add new
New levels now add new "steps" of unlocks. As well as choosing between my next Function, I also have to choose between more "memory" to store multiple Functions, new upgrade slots or new passive slots. Sometimes I get a new limiter too.

The game does this again with how it provides the player a reason to switch Functions around in different roles - as an active ability, an upgrade to an active ability, or as a passive skill - by having each ability be the soul of a deceased person who ran afoul of the game's Camerata secret society antagonists, with three background story snippets that fill in as soon as you have completed a battle with that Function equipped in each of the three roles. You're once again encouraged by a separate narrative-based game mechanic to experiment and micromanage the abilities you have, ideally finding purpose where you couldn't see it before. To indirectly reference another Final Fantasy game - and I'm sure if these similarities are deliberate it's is due to Kasavin's influence - it's like how FFXII would entice you to grind enemies due to how hitting certain monster kill-counts unlocked new lore and codex entries about the world of Ivalice for you to peruse.

As with The Talos Principle, this looks like it's going to be a three-day affair. I've been a little distracted these past couple of days - yesterday with grocery shopping, a Captain America: Civil War matinee and that puroresu stream from GBEast, and today with the Bombcast - but I'm hoping I'm in the vicinity of a resolution (I just killed a big snake thing, for those who have completed the game). Not that I particularly want the game to end soon - I am enjoying it a lot, in spite of the fact that the sword refuses to shut up even when it's sick and delirious - but that I'd rather not leave it alone at the start of the month and potentially forget all these Function combinations and enemy strategies rattling around in my brain by the time May Mastery is finally over. See you tomorrow with some sort of conclusion for the adventures of Red and "Say More the Claymore", at any rate.

Tomorrow's adventures will probably have fewer pizzas, alas.
Tomorrow's adventures will probably have fewer pizzas, alas.

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