Full disclosure: I haven't finished the game yet, I've played about three hours so far. I'll keep my impressions spoiler free.

Bloody hell this game looks good. Astonishingly pretty. I thought Bastion was intentionally a bit slapdash in how objects and environment geometry were layered on top of the world while Transistor is slick and elegant as hell in contrast. I don't know how I feel about the story. There are so many different themes, some of them only gleaned through subtle hints, that I can barely wrap my mind around each one individually. It's intentionally oblique in a way that Bastion wasn't. Bastion obfuscated the point quite a bit but it did so you could infer aspects of the Calamity's effect on the world and what life was like beforehand. This feels more like a mystery, and it definitely has me hooked but I haven't quite figured out why.

The combat mechanics and systems are crazy deep compared to what I expected. There are so many possibilities in terms of combining the different functions. I generally like to do a lot of damage but it hasn't been serving me too well now I've activated some of the limiters. I'm barely scraping past most encounters despite having a reasonably good grasp of the mechanics. It's really satisfying to take out a room of dudes with a couple of well-placed, complementary moves.

Overall, I'm so wrapped in the game that it's hard to form a full opinion yet but what I've seen I've mostly loved.

How are you finding Supergiant's latest?

EDIT: Finished the game today. I loved the gameplay, absolutely adored it. Didn't run into the problems people had with abusing certain Functions to break the back half of the game. The final cutscene did manage to give the story the emotional punch I felt it was lacking but overall too many of the character's motivations were left unexplained. I didn't fully understand why the antagonists were doing what they were doing for most of the game and even by the end I only felt I had 50% of the story down. Also I didn't like how the talking sword was written. Some of his comments felt like they were superfluous, doing exactly the thing that Bastion smartly avoided which was narrating the moment-to-moment combat. I also thought the menu where you change all your functions sucks because you have to uninstall them from that menu and then go in and reassign them in the sub-menu. It looked pretty but annoyed me no end. I also had the freezing issue on the PC which sucked considering how intoxicating the atmosphere can be and how easily that was broken by a fat pause during combat.

Overall, the game isn't nearly a close to my heart as Bastion but I still had a good time with it enough to want to play through it again. Bastion is one my favourite games of all time though, so I had high expectations going in.

I'm feeling pretty similar on this. Just the sheer number of loadout combinations possible is just crazy, and the whole Turn system is incredibly well thought out.

I posted my opinion in the review thread, so I guess I'll go ahead and say it again here:

The game is just ok.

I don't like the level designs, I don't like how the story is told, and I'm not a fan of the combat. I like the art style, and the narration. So far I'd give it a 6, but it may move up to a 7 if the game improves later on.

I can see the potential about an hour in. I loved Bastion, and I currently like Transistor. We'll see what happens.

I love the style so far and the idea of the combat- for some reason its kinda reminding me of Parasite Eve- but movement speeds too slow so far and the failure system is tripping me up hardcore.

Love it so far. Love how the story and mechanics are presented, the music and art is amazing. So far it's hooked me way faster then Bastion did, and I liked that game a lot.

I beat the game and wow. Found the combat system pretty fun if a bit formulaic near the end when I was just using the exact same solution for every enemy type. The graphics are stunning and the 2D and 3D elements blend really well. The story was interesting throughout but really picks up in the last hour when you start finding audio logs, and the last 5 minutes are amazing. The soundtrack is really damn good, especially the lyrical tracks, love the Opera-esque vocals mixed with Synth Rock. Not a long game though at about 4 hours without the optional challenges and 6 with. An extremely solid 9. Worth the money.

The ending of the game was sorta sad and happy at the same time. Course, there is an achievement for beating the game again, so I wonder if there is a difference.

are there difficulty levels?

i love pause combat, and i'll spend ages figuring out a fight as long as the challenge warrants it, i know there are optional limiters, which I'm all for, but is it possible to start off on something like hardcore mode for example?

@hh: No, not really. It's pretty much like Bastion in terms of difficulty. You want a harder experience, you have to use Limiters.

The game has an awesome atmosphere and really fun combat, and between the soundtrack and voice work the game has a very 'spoken word' performance feel to the storytelling.

I've finished it after about 5 hours, and here's my short verdict:

Gameplay and presentation are stellar, story and narrative focus are both severely lacking. You could skip Transistor and not really miss much, which is something I would never ever ever say about Bastion.

I agree, although I only think the gameplay is stellar during the first half of the game. By the end I was only using one combo for all enemies (stacking damage boosts on breach or cull to one shot everything).

After a night's sleep, I still really really like Transistor. I don't like it as much as Bastion(but to be fair I think Bastion was easily one of the best games of last generation). I agree that the upfront narrative could have been stronger, but I actually enjoyed and looked forward to reading through all the text entries unlike most games where I wish there was less of that stuff. I found the world to be really interesting to the point where I would be perfectly happy to see another game set in this universe(same with Bastion).

The combat is about as interesting as you make it. I have a habit of finding things that trivializes most encounters, and this was no exception.(My final build was Cull(Mask, Ping), Jaunt(Crash, Load), and Spark for good measure. Void and Bounce as passives. Insane single target damage. Jaunt on to the enemy, backstab with cull, collect cells, repeat.) That said, I still enjoyed it and thought Jaunt especially was fun to use. I wish I was a more experimental type because the time I did spend experimenting at the beginning was a lot of fun.

And naturally the visual presentation and the music are stellar. Almost worth the price of admission alone.

As for where I land in the end, I'm not entirely sure. I feel like Greg said somewhere that there are narrative changes on the second playthrough, so I want to beat it again before I pass my final verdict, but I like it a lot.

I'm about and hour and a half in. My initial thoughts are. . . not great. I think it makes a terrible first impression. It crashed my PS4 when I first started it up. When I rebooted it, the opening was so cold and the tutorials so confusing I was certain that I must have missed something in the crash, so I restarted only to find that nope, that actually was the opening and the tutorials were that useless.

I'm slowly getting used to it. The combat got easier after I played with it a bit (no thanks to the game), as long as I'm mindful to stay away from border areas in the combat, which the isometric perspective seems to have trouble handling. My primary issues right now are how the game got so wrapped up in telling its story that it kind of forgot it needed to be a game at the same time. The central gameplay loop of combat-->skills-->skill hub thing-->story unlocks is really not doing it for me. It's a series of what I would call "additive problems," where the design decisions would be fine on their own, but don't work well when combined together. To wit:

• I like the pause/plan portion of the combat, but I don't like how I'm prevented from doing pretty much anything while it recharges. It means there are huge chunks of time where I'm doing nothing but running around waiting for a recharge. I know there are ways to alter skills so that I can use them during recharge, but those seem few and far between where I am in the game right now.

• I really like that there is plenty of room for experimentation, but they've hobbled this by making you go to one of the pillar thingys every time you want to try a new load out. If experimentation is the goal, why not let me change skills anytime I'm out of combat?

• Making me go to the pillar thingys wouldn't be a problem by itself, but they've placed them in weird spots. Sometimes they're just steps away from each other, other times they seem really far apart. This means that they are either too close for me to want to use them, or so far away that it is a problem if I want to try a new loadout.

• The pillar placement is also a problem given the death penalty, since I need to find one to swap out the busted skill. This has resulted in unnecessary backtracking. Again, I think they'd have been better served by letting me swap skills anytime you're out of combat.

• Once you actually find a pillar thingy, the menus seem to be designed with the goal of preventing you from getting anything useful done. The selection of skills works exactly the opposite of how I would expect, with it making me select a skill, then a slot (I think slot-->skill). Critical data on the skills is hard to see, and some of the most useful data is in the same place as the story material, where I wouldn't think to look for it (And over a couple of tabs from the story. And with no tooltip). As a result, I'm disinclined to experiment with my skills because they are such a pain to set up.

This all probably sounds really negative. I don't intend it to be. The game looks great, it sounds great. I'm liking what I've seen of the story so far. I'm getting more and more used to the combat and the menus. It's more disappointing that Supergiant couldn't manage to land the gameplay stuff like they did in Bastion. There's a really good game in here somewhere, I'm just not certain that I'm going to want to play enough to find that game. That's a shame, particularly if, as rumors suggest, there are significant changes on a second play through. Right now, I don't think I'll really want to play a second time.

I only played for about 45 minutes last night but the game clicked with me almost immediately. After only the first handful of fights I was setting up attacks and messing up mobs using all the moves in my arsenal without getting touched.

The fact that the combat just felt right to me without any drawn out tutorial is really cool. I love the setting and general atmosphere too, can't wait to get play more.

I've only played about an hour, so I'm not sure if I can really weigh in too much about the game. So far, though, I'm (not surprisingly) enjoying the artwork and soundtrack. The combat... I'm getting used to, bit by bit. There seems to be a lot of depth to it that I still haven't quite mastered, and it really wants you to experiment with different ways to play.

I think @lawgamer made some good points about the overall design/flow of the game, though I suppose I need to play a bit more myself to really determine if it's a huge problem for me. Other than that, Not-Rucks' voice is kind of bothering me for some reason though that's obviously a matter of personal opinion. Once I get the hang of the combat I think I'll really start enjoying this thing a lot more.

I've put about three grueling hours into the game and I keep hoping that it gets better. It hasn't yet, and if people are clearing the game in five hours, I'm just going to stop where I am because Jesus Christ.

+

• Game is gorgeous. Amazing art.
• Game sounds great. It's evocative without sounding like a rip off, if that makes any sense. It's got a real cyberpunk vibe, but it also carries tones usually found in something like club jazz or lounge music.

-

• Gameplay leaves a lot to be desired. It's a half-assed turn-based battle system that somehow manages to mix and match the worst elements of real time and turn based. I'm not sure how a developer manages to do that, but SuperGiant managed it. Having an active battle timer mixed with pause-and-play, mixed with turn-based strategy elements, mixed with enemies that do a fuckton of damage while the game hobble your run speed... the combat is a fucking mess. There's no other way around it. It's like the studio decided to mix the worst of everything in a blender to see if anyone would notice.
• The sword narrator is annoying. It's baffling to me, but I think I find him/it annoying because he talks to Red, and not the player. Rucks in Bastion was talking directly to you. He was telling you The Kid's story. It helped to reinforce the themes being explored in Bastion's narrative, providing a context for events as well as the people you meet. The sword in Transistor is just as confused as you and (presumably) Red are. Half of my time with the game has been spent wishing he'd shut the fuck up already.
• The story so far is just gibberish. It's too simple to be mysterious, which is what I think SuperGiant was going for. The simplicity in Bastion worked because the who, what, where, and how didn't matter as much as the why. It was a game about the aftermath of a tragedy, and how various characters dealt with it. Your choice at the end of Bastion to move on or to rewind the world and hope the same mistakes won't happen again provided a poignant approach to themes like regret. There's nothing like that at all so far in Transistor. I'm just not feeling it.

My expectations weren't exactly high for this game, but still; I thought they could do better.

I've played it for about 2 hours and here are my thoughts so far.

The combat mechanics are really good, but also kinda of bad. I like the pause mechanic. What I don't like is how after lining up your shots, you're left unable to attack unless you have linked the right abilities together which leaves you naked for seconds at a time. Against those dog enemies it's the worst. So far there's nothing I can do against them if I don't kill them outright. I get that they wanted combat to be different than Bastion and that you can't play it like an ARPG, but leaving you completely defenseless is just mean and dull. It puts combat into 5 seconds chucks of "plan and attack, then run around until you can attack again".

The levels look nice, but not nearly as nice as Bastions. So far there's been no variety in the game and I don't get the feeling that this was ever really a city. The art style is very pretty sure. I'm not crazy on how they're doing cutscenes in the game though. If I have one major complaint about the presentation its that the text is just waaay to small. Yes, I get it, minimalist and all. But if I can't enjoy playing your game from a few feet away because your text is too damn small to read then that's an issue. This is something that all games seem to be going towards and it's something I wish would stop.

The music is good, but it's not used very well. I feel like mostly all I've heard is some woman going "hmmmm hmmmmmm hhhhhmmmmhmmmm" for the last two hours except when I go into the back doors and listen to something else.

But here's the part that I can't believe I'm actually saying. I wish the narrator would shut the hell up. I loved him in Bastion. He told the story so well. But in this. He just never stops talking. Every little thing you do, he has something to say. It's like they reacted to how much people liked that guy in Bastion that they thought "well we better ramp up his dialogue 200% for this".

I'm hoping that this gets better. I really had high hopes for Supergiant after Bastion blew me away.

I really love almost everything about this game. The gameplay is unique, fun, strategic, and challenging. The art and sound are both beautiful and work together to create a very engaging atmosphere.

The only thing that I really feel doesn't live up to the hype are the characters and plot. It feels like its trying hard to be concise and poetic, but it just comes off feeling a bit cold, emotionless, and bogged down in trying to be as roundabout and obtuse as possible. It overall just ended up feeling like a big step down from the connection I felt to the characters and the world of Bastion.

Unlike the way Bastion roared to an emotional crescendo at its climax and rode that wave straight through the ending, this game just coasts. The biggest source of excitement in its climax is a purely gameplay related twist - the emotionless drone of the final member of the Camerata left me feeling almost emotionless about confronting him. Yes, the scenery and the sounds and the act of playing through it all is fantastic, but it's lacking the same heart as Bastion. When this mystery man in the computer sword tells Red, "I love you," several times throughout the game, I was left just scratching my head and wondering why and how. When Red seemingly reciprocates these feelings in her own ways, it similarly felt more baffling than heartwarming.

This is still a great game in spite of that, and I plan on immediately jumping into the New Game+ because I want to further explore the depth of the incredible combat system. However, if you're expecting it to deliver in the exact same ways that Supergiant's last game did, you might be left a little disappointed.

Just finished it in one sitting, and I can't really settle on what I think about the game. Firstly the game is a tad too long for a single sitting, but at the same time when I had reached the point where I felt like taking a break I knew I was close enough to the end to just push through. The mechanics of the combat and the skill-system is great, but the encounter design is lacking. Towards the end I also happened to stumble upon a build that literally breaks the game (you can do nothing but spam a single button and beat at least every non-boss encounter with it). I like the setting and story-telling a lot, but I felt like I didn't get all the info/answers I wanted. The game also felt a bit too "familiar" at times, not that it doesn't diverge from Bastion but the same "tricks" aren't as intruiging the second time around.

I just don't know if I would recommend it. The scope of the game isn't big enough to really feel like a single playthrough is a substantial experience, and the gameplay just falls a tad too short of making me want to jump back in again.

I gave myself like an hour after beating it to really gather my thoughts about the game. I think I will make a review/blog thing that will be very spoilerriffic since a lot of my biggest gripes come from later on in the game and could involve story. the tl;dr version Transistor is a good game with good atmosphere, but I feel the direct narrative wasn't what I was looking for out of the creators of Bastion. I'm going to go through the game once more, to see what the new game + adds before writing anything out.

As much as I agree with some of the complaints about the story (tries to do a bit too much, a bit flat at the end, etc.), I can't help but love everything about Transistor. Bastion was tighter and shaper, sure, but the overall aesthetic and tone of Transistor is much more up my alley; I couldn't help but get wrapped up in the world and never want to leave.

The only real problems I had with it were the flat "villian" (who kept making me picture Jeff Goldblum) and the boring, predictable ending. The trophies seem to hint at a second ending, after NG+, so maybe that will solve that issue. Everything else from the combat to the overall design is impeccable and filled with small little details that keep bringing a smile to my face.

Ask me again when the game stops randomly freezing for 1-2 seconds every few minutes or so.

I just finished it and I loved it. The combat got a little annoying at the end but I found the best combination for me to get through them pretty quickly and easily so it wasn't that big of a deal.

The final act is a letdown plotwise. It doesn't explain enough about what's going on, which leads to more confusion than emotional investment. It was bad enough they didn't explain details about the assassination attempt that Red witnessed, but then they had that tease about the true purpose of the Transistor which felt like a jab at the player's ignorance. I understood Bastion's story from beginning to end, and everything made sense; I can't say the same about Transistor.

So far, I'm not a huge fan of the combat. I don't like to use the pause because then it leaves me (slowly) just running around for too long. However, I almost feel like a lot of the encounters assume you will be using the pause. A lot of the attacks just feel too sluggish too.

I never thought I'd be the one to say that the narration is flat out annoying in this game, and the slow ass combat just makes it unenjoyable. Not even the pause-play combat - that is definitely not a problem. The huge downtime between "turns" unless you play one function at a time brings the game to a lurch.

@siroptimusprime: I'm just gonna take a guess here, but do you run with Jaunt() as a main ability? I think this is sort of a trap most people will fall into ("having a dodge is good"), but using Jaunt() to enhance one of your main abilities really changes up the pause-play dynamic.

Just finished it. I'm amazed how most people's thoughts mirror my own. I, too, thought the story was confusing (although I thought I was just being stupid and not understanding something - I feel better knowing other people had similar issues) and I also agree that the combat has issues. It's a shame, really, because Bastion was great.

I think the only improvement that this has over Bastion for me is the art. I thought Bastion kind of looked crappy, but this looks great. I also prefer the soundtrack in this game over Bastion's (although I liked Bastion's). Overall, I'm disappointed.

I found the story perfectly reasonable to understand, though I did unlock and read all the bios, which helped. The combat also felt way tighter and more interesting than Bastion's, especially in NG+ where it starts really ramping up.

Yeah, I unlocked most of the character bios, too, but the only thing I thought that it helped with was just developing the world more and it showed some interesting stories within it. I didn't necessarily think it helped with the main plot at all. I'll have to look up a plot summary when it becomes available since there's nothing out there that I don't already know. Maybe someone will post a topic about the plot and put a spoiler tag on it.

Yesterday I put in another 2 hours into the game, which should be putting me close to the end by now but it feels like it's just spinning up.

While initially the combat was fresh and interesting, I'm starting to find it tiresome. It's the same rinse-repeat forumla of moving to an area and waiting for the inevitable "ambush" by the enemy processes. I especially dislike it when in pause mode it will display an enemy taking the hit, only for that enemy to dodge out of the way when time resumes. There is a lack of consistency there in that I'm never 100% if the plan I just devised will carry out the way it shows in freeze-frame or not.

Not sure why people find the narration in THIS one annoying as opposed to Bastion. Maybe it's because I didn't think too much of Bastion but I think having a character narrating from within the story is a lot less grating than some omnipotent voice from the sky.

Story exposition is still lacking. Maybe there is a large contingent of people that love reading massive text logs in games, but I thought this was something generally frowned upon even more so than audio-logs.

The mechanics are all really poorly explained. That menu is very stylish but it's just too much at once. In hindsight everything makes sense but it's not that clear up front. For instance it took me a while before I realized that the limiters I had turned on were making combat more difficult because I simply didn't understand what they were. I mean 'Limiter', duh, but graphically it sort of looks like you're upgrading something? Overall I can't believe that after play testing no one came to them and said "guys this combat system is really deep, but it's confusing as fuck for the first 2 hours."

The painted art style is really pretty at first but after a while the world simply looks flat and I experience a huge dissonance between my character and the "place" she occupies - more often than not I can't shake the feeling that Red is standing on a flat piece of paper. The city also looks largely indistinct and as I move from area to area the same color palette perseveres increasing the feeling of walking through the same place over and over again.

Not sure where the 9's and 10's came from, but then again I don't understand how someone can say Bastion was one of the best games of this generation either.

@humanity said:

I don't mind text logs, but the game has to kind of go all-in on it. Games like Shadowrun Returns (and the amazing Dragonfall expansion) are solely text-based, but I was engrossed in both the campaigns all the way through because there was no distraction from it. In games like Transistor, you have massive text dumps that don't really serve any purpose and all the while you're reading the fucking sword is still talking.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that text logs aren't bad, but their implementation in Transistor most certainly is.

@oldirtybearon: I agree in that one of my biggest issues with text logs in any game is that you're taken out of the action and forced to sit there in a menu reading. In games like Transistor and Dishonored, this really takes you out of the experience. Audio logs at least play in the background. Hell, I wish you could just press a button and let the Transistor read the damn thing to you. Lord knows there isn't much else going on in the game apart from a combat encounter every few steps.

@randyf: It explains the assassination attempt on Red, as well as some other things the Camerata do.

i find it funny that a lot of people who disliked bastion so pointedly are giving this game a go. i know there's some pretty hefty differences but it seems like they'd realize supergiant games probably aren't their thing...

@humanity: The part that stood out for most to me was early on in the game, just before the first boss when you has a flashback to what happened. The screen goes monochrome except for Red, her dress and the sword and you're meant to walk up to the guy on the ground with the the sword in him, but there's a text log just up above you. I went to read it, because it's the nature of video games and instantly regret my decision because it took me completely out of the moment.

Probably tons of spoilers ahead.

I've finished the game once and want to go back and try ng+.I felt the story was a bit lacking compared to Bastion's. I also didn't understand why everything had the programming theme, is that just the world this takes place in and it's never explained? It was nice to see little things like the passive which gave you a chance of becoming a superuser which allowed you to use the kill() move on processes but I wonder if anyone who doesn't use the linux command line will even understand what that means.

The thing that really frustrated me was how a lot of really nice story pieces were in terminals and random points on the map which were very easy to miss. At some points story nodes are hidden behind doors which are identical to ones which you cannot backtrack from and it becomes a coin flip as to whether you're going to miss part of the story or not. It just reminded me of scavenging through Columbia for key audio logs in Bioshock Infinite. And say what you will about endings where you get a choice which basically boils down to picking cutscene A or B but I would have liked to have the option to end it differently.

I did really enjoy the combat and I liked how the game encouraged you to try each move in every type of slot to get the full character bios, it made me try combos I didn't think would work and then surprised me when they ended up being good. The difficulty curve was pretty odd though. By the end I could 1-shot just about everything. The challenge rooms though were usually pretty difficult and I enjoyed how they gave you only a certain subset of moves to kick you out of your comfort zone. They were much better than the 15-minute roll-fest that was the Bastion challenge.

The art and music were definitely the high points though. At least once per area I would just stop and hum for a while and look at the scenery.

Surprised me as well but then I applaud them for giving Transistor a shot. Whatever you think about Bastion or Transistor, they're important games that a lot of people would like to have an opinion on.

@ares42: I did exactly that after I used Jaunt in the first encounter that you get it, then swapped it out. Meter recovery and movement just feels very, very slow to me.

Just beat NG+, there is no second ending.

It's fine I guess, but it's just not grabbing me like Bastion did.

A lot of it comes down to the enemies I think, I just don't feel any satisfaction destroying abstract shapes. It's the same reason I never finished Defense Grid: Awakening.

Tonics/Limiters too, something about their design just makes me go; "fuck that, i can't be arsed" instead of using every one Tonic there was available in Bastion like i did. Enemies do double damage for 4% extra xp - thanks but no thanks buddy.

Certain encounters I found I would just press ESC and select 'Retry' if a Function ended up overloading. The only real design flaw I can find in the combat.

Played for a couple of hours, and so far it's amazimg. The combat mechanic is great and offers a lot to play around with, plus the game sounds and looks lovely.

What's different story-wise on the second playthrough? You can be vague, but I want to know if it's worth doing.

@yi_orange: Absolutely goddamn nothing, all it changes is the combat encounters by adding more enemies, different enemies and always the super beefed version of enemies, though the bosses aren't changed at all so they were complete chumps. It does give you a second chance at terminals and stuff you missed though, and it unlocks the rest of the tests as you go through.

Just got around to beating it. I really enjoyed my time with it despite some issues I had with it.

I kind of wish that the game was harder even if you didn't equip any of the Processors. I never felt the urge to gain more experience since I was doing just fine through most of the game. By the end of the game I felt like a killing machine, which was satisfying but it was kind of weird that the last boss was a chump rather than an actual challenge (I really liked how the last boss played out too).

Music, graphics, voice work is tremendous. No complaints at all on that front. It's also kind of eye opening how much better the presentation of the game is with the Dualshock 4 controller. Playing in a dark room really helped the light bar effect and there's a few moments when they mess with it where it's really effective narratively.

I do feel like there's missing dialog throughout the game. I'm never going to read a wall of text on my TV screen, so even though it's a tired gimmick, I think it would have benefitted the game if they had some sort of Audio Logs scattered about to reveal the story to you. That and all of the early OVC terminals should have had dialog behind them (the reporter articles especially).

But still, I really enjoyed the gameplay flow overall and I'm planning on beating all of the side challenges and going through the NG+ mode soon.

I just finished it in my second sitting in it. I started enjoying the combat, but only towards probably the last quarter of the game and only because I found out that Help() + Load() combined with Crash() with Ping() and Mask() would pretty much one shot anything, including the last boss. I played a little of NG+ and liked the combat more having unlocked almost everything from the start.

The story, its ok, but it's presentation is lacking. The game pauses itself way too much. It's such a slow game when you look at it. After every combat, pause. Every terminal (of which there are a lot), pause. Every point of interest, pause. The very few audio logs, pause. Why couldn't combat end and the progress bar just pop up while I'm running to the next one? Why pause the flow of the game to tell me I killed 3 of this white enemy, 4 of that one and 2 of this other one. The narrator I found really annoying. I liked him in Bastion. Someone here pointed out that in Bastion he's talking to the player while in Transistor he's talking to Red. And that's not as enjoyable. I feel like I'm tagging along, eavesdropping in on someone else's conversation. Only it's a one way conversation. And it doesn't come across as natural. Why does he have to say something as a reaction to everything you do? At one point towards the end there's a left and right branch. The left leads to a terminal and that's it. On your way back he says "now, the other way". Well duh? I also found that because a lot of his speech is tied to locations or events, if they don't trigger at the right time it can end up causing him to talk in a very, very unnatural way.

It was a shame that they didn't use the Turn() structure more outside of combat. They use it that one time at the start where there's two pads you need to trigger at once and you have to go into Turn() so you can hit them both in the same time frame to open a door. And then that's it. It's never used again except for combat.

The game was alright. I wish I enjoyed it more though. I'll probably give NG+ a shot just to see if the combat gets better (it looks likely anyway) and just ignore the narrator and all the terminals etc.

I was honestly really disappointed with the game. Didn't enjoy the combat and quite honestly there isn't much else to like. The art is beautiful, but the story didn't grab me either.

To be fair I only thought Bastion was okay, mainly down to the gameplay which I thought was great.