Transistor throws the player in an unique artistic sci fi world, where your main task is to fight through the enemy lines called "the process". You play the game from a top down view with a simple 4 button active skill system and you can move around with WASD or by simply clicking with the cursor on the ground. But what sounds like done a thousand times, becomes very special very soon.
Combat system - plan your moves
One of the specialties of the game is an ability called Turn. You can activate it via the space button and you can chain up movements and abilities, positioning you right where you want to be. Your moves are then executed at an accelerated speed compared to the normal combat. But after that your abilities are all in cool down for some time until the Turn is recharged, unless you invest to build around it.
However, you can also fight without the Turn system. Depending on your fighting style, enemy type and your build you might prefer the Turn based combat or the simple point and click combat similar but not the same as games like the Diablo series or Path of Exile.
Plan your build - Skill is life... literally
For me the thing that makes Transistor stand out is the build system. You have access to a variety of skills, called functions and slot them in up to 4 active slots. Each active slot has a passive slot to modify the function. You can unlock additional upgrades further down the road, including passive slots that either effect your functions further or give you additional passive properties in the form of trigger effects or constant passive bonuses. On each save point, called access point, you can redesign your build. And they are plentiful distributed throughout the game.
Experimenting with builds is really much fun and opens up a lot of possibilities. But having many options doesn't necessarily mean they all make sense. And while this may be the case for some combinations (at least I couldn't make them work), most of the possibilities can be highly effective. I for example went from a damage over time tank/self heal build over an insane spike damage build to a build, where I make the process my ally for some seconds and add a self heal effect when they are close to me.
If you then lose all your life, you will lose one of your 4 active function. That is called overload. When you have no function left any more, you are officially defeated. Basically with 4 functions equipped you have 3 additional lives until you finally die and restart at the last access point. But you might not have all 4 active functions equipped due to limitations like the memory space (MEM) each function takes up in active and passive slots.
Dynamic difficulty level - decide yourself
In addition to the functions, you can apply limiters. There are different limiters who let you earn more experience but also increase the difficulty, making the process spawn in higher numbers, deal more damage or let you overload more functions when your life bar hits 0 and more. This allows you to edit the kind of difficulty to have a higher experience gain. I currently play the game a 2nd time and have all limiters applied, giving me a big experience bonus but making the game significantly more difficult.
General impression - the game world
The world is very romantic, dreamy and at times dark, although ***deleted for spoiling reasons***. The game is accompanied by a narrator trapped in your sword, called transistor, and beautiful visuals and music. Over all this creates a very enchanting atmosphere while you venture through a very lonely city, however, you never feel quite alone. I for myself could not find a stopping point, on which I should take a break and that let me to discover one main weak point of the game. The story is very short and you can expect to finish the game in one or two nights. The story is linear, as far as I can tell, and therefor it doesn't give much incentive to try it again, unless you want to try out other builds, what can make the experience of the game indeed very very different, especially with the limiters.
Positive
- unique skill and combat system
- beautiful story telling
- graphics and sound form an elegant atmosphere
Negative
- very short story