Supergiant Games second outing may not live up to the high bar set by their first, Bastion, and granted, that's a pretty high bar, but Transistor is no sophomore slump. What Bastion has in wonderment, Transistor has in depth.
In Transistor you play as Red, a songstress and newly rendered silent protagonist, aside from a hum. Narrowly saved from death, the savior not so lucky, she sets out with the weapon of her would be demise, the Transistor. Anime sword meets USB stick, the purpose of which yet unknown, now embedded with the consciousness and voice of the as yet unknown to the player formerly living Red shield. Digitized defender in tow, Red makes her way through the city of Cloudbank looking for answers. On the end of Red's ire, the Camarata, her assailants with unclear motives, and former holders of the transistor, but in between them and her are the Process. The Process are what the player will spend most of the time in Cloudbank dealing with, a robotic group of enemies that have started attacking the denizens of the city.
The look of Cloudbank is of a similar style to Bastion, replace western with light colors, for future virtual city with darker hues and golden lights. The world feels connected in its art throughout, however the digital city setting does lead areas to begin to appear somewhat repetitive near the middle, losing some of the joy of exploring new areas. That said, there is some amazingly beautiful artwork in the motion graphic-ish cutscenes and the skylines of the city. This quality is matched by excellent and intriguing writing and voice work. And the soundtrack. Damn it's good. Back from Supergiant's debut are composer Darren Korb and vocalist Ashley Barrett delivering, again, one of the best soundtracks in any game. From the distorted electro-jazzy sounds when in battle, to the building themes underscoring and bolstering character moments, the work done fits so well within the moments of play, and holds up outside of it.
As for the story itself, be warned, it is not assembled for you. The voice in the transistor does quite a bit of talking to Red, but as she cannot speak back it is a one sided conversation for most of the game. Occasionally you will find terminals, and through text Red will comment on news stories and address the voice directly in an very interesting way, giving a bit more insight into of her current though process, typing and deleting text and refocusing thoughts. The talking transistor and the muted singer ends up working quite well, with some good payoffs and is the most transparent of the storytelling in the game. Everything to do with the greater fiction of the world however is takes much more work and construction from the player to parse. There will be forum discussions filling databases with interpretations and attempts to connect the dots of what feels like a purposely ambiguous world, which may be in intriguing or maddening depending on your point of view. I for one find this fascinating and a bit evocative or how the Demon Souls/ Dark Souls games stories are sussed out. In a very specific way even.
The majority of the background and setting requires interpretations and analyzations of text, e.g., the names, descriptions and musings attached to things, abilities, news stories, and even doorways. Your combat abilities are known as functions, and your functions come from traces, the trace of a person in the form of a cube over that appears over the dead physical form that once owned this essence. So each function is tied to a character and as you use the function in one of three ways, more on that later, more information is unlocked on that character. It's an interesting way to flesh out the story and world while encouraging experimentation, however a disconnect occurs for me as you also earn functions by leveling up for earning xp in battle. These functions earned from leveling up are also traces of characters, but they aren't found in any construct of the world itself. It's a repetitively minor glitch in the system for me, but stood out as a break in the fiction. This combined with a large backlogged narrative and some pacing issues bog down an intriguing, if challenging to parse, cohesive setting.
Mechanically the combat is a mix of real time and pausing to plan. A bar that refills over time is at the top of the screen, and once full all of the four functions you can assign to the face buttons are available in direct control combat. The majority of these attacks are slow to come out, preventing a hack and slash spam of attacks, forcing more careful considerations and use of your turn. Your turn is governed by the refilling meter. Triggering it pauses all the enemies allowing Red to move and set up attacks and combos. Each movement uses some of the meter, and each function uses a specific amount it as well. Once all is planned out you trigger it and Red moves into action, executing each planned attack. Many of the enemies do not move during this pre-planned route of damage, but eventually you will come across enemy process types that will move throwing a wrench in your plans, unless of course you plan accordingly with the right function combinations.
Functions can be placed in one of three slots, provided you have enough memory to equip them. Each function has a memory requirement, and you only have so many mem slots to use. You unlock upgrades/ expansions to your memory by leveling. Active slots are where you functions main mode of attack is used. Upgrade slots are where you add modifiers to active functions, each function has a secondary effect if used as a modifier. And passive slots are where you place functions that give, yup, passive abilities and character buffs. There are so many combinations available that this is wear the depth of the mechanics really shine. Mere hours from the end of the game I was still trying out new combinations of functions continuously finding a new “right way to play.” Experimenting is the best way to learn how each function, um, functions, as there is really no tutorial explaining new abilities. This experimentation is encouraged not only the unlocking a different piece of character information depending on what slot a function was used in a battle, coaxing you to try each function in each slot through at least one fight, it's also a necessity to getting through challenge rooms that unlock as you get deeper into the story, and more in the essentially new game plus mode upon completion.
These challenge rooms are found through doorways that appear in the world leading you to a sandy beach in the middle of space. Infers all sorts of things right? Essentially this acts like a hub for challenges and a place to listen to music unlocked by completing them. I know, unlocking songs for the jukebox by completing optional side challenges, you are on board already. And you get xp! I mean, not a lot... but music tracks! In my opinion these trials are extremely useful, as they force you to try out different combinations, learn to be more efficient and use you're turns better. Knowledge of how other combinations of functions work is invaluable and you may find the triad and true combo you have come to rely on may not be available to you until reaching another checkpoint, or two if you aren't careful.
Red can deal some serious damage and disrupt the f out of those functions, but she doesn't have an overabundance of health and as she levels up with new abilities, so do the enemies. If you lose all health in a fight, it's not restart from last checkpoint. A turn will be triggered, at which point you must avoid any damage otherwise your last used function will be unavailable until you progress forward to a new access point, wherein you can re-equip. Get downed twice and you'll lose another function and have to reach two new access points. I love this system as it leads to a nice sense of desperation and the need to improvise and adapt. Restarting at the last saved state isn't interesting, loosing my dash ability and having to make better use of the environment to keep from losing another function, then putting trying to come up with a good function sequence while while juggling memory limitations, now we're-oh god I need that dash! I'm ok, I'm ok.
If you wish to make the battles even more challenging you can equip limiters, and yes, by using a limiter you unlock more expertly crafted text to devour, learning more about the world. Limiters essentially make the process stronger in varied ways while awarding a boost in xp. The more powerful the limiter the more xp is awarded. This plus the Recursion mode, in which you carry your level and unlocks to second playthrough with more difficult enemies new game plus style will more than likely test your best function sequences.
Transistor is a delight to look at and listen to, and its systems are just as solid. While the overall fiction of Cloudbank may take a bit of work and discussion to put together, the main plot-line between the mute singer and the talking sword works, and is even quite moving at times.