@jesus_phish said:

The difference is that because the voiceover isn't a narrator, the conceit doesn't work nearly as well.

It was cool in Bastion because not only was it awesome to hear the narrator describe whatever cool shit you were doing, it made sense because you later learn in the story that he is relating this whole tale to somebody (I believe he is telling Zia the whole tale of what's happened so far to pass the time while The Kid chases Zulf back to the Terminals and you play through the final area). I think the problem in Transistor isn't that the voice "never shuts the hell up." I think he probably talks about as much as the narrator in Bastion. The difference is that because Red is right there beside the Transistor, and they've known each other for years, the problem becomes that it would seem condescending for the Transistor to describe what's going on or spout off exposition, because Red isn't a blind idiot, she has also lived in this city all her life and is also seeing all the wild shit that is going on. So everything the voiceover says is kinda pointless filler because he never explains a damn thing, nor does he have any opportunities to elaborate on the backstory of Red or Transistor boy or Cloudbank. I honestly wish he would've reminisced way more about ANYTHING, because despite having hundreds of lines of dialogue, I feel like Transistor voice guy contributes very little to what I remember of the story. He just becomes white noise after a while, except for the really contrived parts where he gets drunk and they never explain why the Spine does that to the Transistor.

It's still well voice acted, but nothing the Transistor voice over guy says ever endeared me to the character, and then Red is such a cipher that I never cared about her either. The only character in that game worth a damn is Royce, and maybe Asher.

@bisonhero: I 100% agree with everything you said.

I had some serious problems with this game (dead serious) but it ended up being the first one I ever platinumed.

The difficulty modifiers make a huge difference and it's my first recommendation to anyone having fun but not really loving it to take a look at turning a few of those on. I don't mean this because the game is "so easy" or I am "teh master" but just that some of those modifiers make the game more interesting.

Also make 100% sure you use your abilities in all the slots to unlock the ability types. Once you beat the game the first time you start to get doubles of abilities and then the game gets BUCKWILD.

So uh, you know.... hit it up styles?

Well, I finally hopped into it after totally running out of Giant Bomb, WTF, Grantland and various other podcasts to listen to plus total fatigue from my current Destiny/NBA 2K/Far Cry 4 rotation and man am I glad I did. I'm not sure I have the brain to fully grasp the combo system though the game really does do a good job of explaining what does what, it's just a matter of reading the instructions the right way and then keeping them in your head straight when you go to un-assign and reassign them. So maybe I'm just daunted a little, plus the game hasn't made it clear what's going to make my memory go up but I see there are trophies assigned to it so I'm worried it'll be obscure? I've only been able to have three functions (plus subs and a passive) for a minute now and that's kind of a bummer.

The art style and general mood I really like, though. I know some people said I was just making excuses for Destiny when I said that I found the Ghost dialogue and overall repetitiveness of the game to be relaxing in an odd way, but then a while later a I read an article on Kotaku or Polygon or someone that made my point a little clearer - everything is just so smoothed out in such a comforting way that it actually supports the perfect mechanics of the gameplay, allow you to drift into this odd zen state where the stakes are never exceptionally high but nothing is ever pulling your focus away from the art or the action. Transistor has a really solid gameplay foundation (and I'm the type of person where if I can figure out an OP load out by the end of a game I feel like that game's actually doing it's job rather than vice versa) and totally amazing styyyyyyyyyyyle. Though I can see the fights beginning to get very complex and the contrast between the two becoming a little more jarring, I really like what I've seen from the game so far (about 30 minutes past the first boss fight which almost wiped me out, in a really fun way).

Wasn't able to post this earlier so I kept it in a file and hoped for the best, just felt like adding I just beat the second boss and while I think there are a LOT of useless combinations I do like how the game incentivizes you to keep on flipping things around, even if they're using pretty typical progression obsession tactics to do it.

@nodima: FYI, you level up over the course of the game, and some of the those level ups have memory increases associated with them (or I think it lets you choose from a few different things, but more memory is absolutely always the one you should pick). The maximum memory you can ever have is 32.

@bisonhero: Yea, I should've also added I came across one of those when I hit level 8. I know it increased because I saw the trophies but I just wasn't sure when it was going to come up since I hadn't seen much besides new abilities pop yet. Now I'm really trying to make use of limiters that give the biggest boosts but don't imply too much of an extra challenge, plus those skill challenges in the backdoors are a lot of fun.

I enjoyed it. I had been wanting to play it since it came out and since I got a PS4 with a free year of Plus, I finally got to try it out. I enjoyed the hell out of it, although I wish the story was a bit better. Despite that, I was surprised by the ending and enjoyed where that went.

So, I made my first post in this thread four and a half hours ago and I've already beaten the first boss a second time. I've finished the story, I never died, I've finished five fights with five limiters, I've completed all the functions, unlocked everything to unlock, finished just the stability challenges, and I'm almost level 16.

In some ways, I can see why someone would read that and thing it's a bad thing, but the secret with this game that I don't feel I ever got a good impression of is that this is that rare sort of game where the first play through is really just a training ground, and if the gameplay grabs you then it has a LOT more to offer. The final two skills aren't even available until you finish the game, and to my bemused surprise you start unlocking doubles of the skills as you play the second time.

Once you have all the passives open, multiple double upgrade opportunities, and can add your favorite secondary boosts to multiple primaries (or simply double boost your favorite primary) the combat just opens up in some really fun ways. I admit that there was a point when the Men with their Haircuts started showing up I started forgetting I could mark an attack, run off and mark another and was getting frustrated melting everything and losing all my skills, but by the end I recaptured a grasp of it and I'm seriously off to the ground running ever more ecstatic with the gameplay than I ever was during my first play through.

Seriously, it's a very, very brief experience, but that's only if you play it once. Still have several challenges to figure out in the backdoors, still have at least 8 levels to grow if the trophies are any indication, and still curious what kind of shenanigans I can get up to with various skill combos. It's a shame this isn't something that just happens in a much longer, much more substantive campaign (Transistor feels a little like it wanted to one-up Bioshock Infinite but just didn't have the budget or marketing and falls into some of the same narrative traps even) but it's fine because the art is fantastic and it feels good to go back and see environments you loved, even just a few hours after you first saw them.

@nodima: I think the leveling keeps going until you have three copies of every function (I guess to go along with primary, secondary, and support slots, respectively, though you could use the same function as a secondary on several of your primaries). Or maybe it just keeps going, but I thought I read somewhere that the "end" goal is three copies of every function. So that might actually be level 48, though I forget whether that lines up properly with the fact that the game kind of gifts you a few functions at the start of the game that aren't associated with level ups.

So yeah, there's that achievement for getting to level 24, which you will almost certainly get to on New Game Plus unless you turn off every single limiter.

But yeah, I wish the campaign were longer too, but part of me also wishes it was kind of a different thing altogether. Setting up all of your functions in the menus to have a bunch of cool effects was rad, but I feel like I might've liked the systems more if the whole game were turn-based, because the sections where your Turn() is on cooldown just aren't particularly interesting. It just means that you have to either use Mask() as a primary (which I think you can use right after using Turn()?), or use Jaunt() as a primary or secondary so you can spam something right after Turn(). Also, even if the campaign were longer, I just never got that into the characters. The world seemed cool, but the two protagonists are two blank slates that I just couldn't care about.