Transistor

If there’s one thing Supergiant Games, the indie developer behind Transistor [interviewed here], is good at it’s getting the gaming community talking. Supergiant’s previous release, 2011’s Bastion, was a delightful if somewhat divisive action RPG whose slick visuals and unique approach to storytelling garnered all sorts of critical acclaim but left many gamers wondering what all the fuss was about thanks to some rather threadbare and repetitive combat. The same criticism certainly can’t be levelled at Transistor, another action RPG with just as much imagination and considerably more depth, though it’s not without its own share of niggles.

Transistor follows the story of Red, a famous singer in the futuristic city of Cloudbank. At the game’s outset, Red is subject to an assassination attempt by the Process, a mysterious group of robotic assailants commanded by the shady Camerata. Red comes into possession of the titular Transistor, a greatsword inhabited by the consciousness of an apparently inadvertent victim of the botched hit on the singer. The attack leaves Red mute and capable only of humming and so it’s the sword who narrates the unfolding story as the duo attempt to flee the Camerata through a city rapidly falling into chaos. The game slowly teases out the plot, leaving the player to piece together the protagonist’s backstory from fragments of the Transistor’s stream of consciousness narration and the rapidly expanding corpus of text on the game’s supporting characters.

Transistor, like Bastion before it, is a visually striking game - although while the two share an isometric viewpoint and exceptional art direction, that’s about as far as the similarity goes. Supergiant’s new game eschews their first title’s cartoon fantasy styling in favour of a hard sci-fi aesthetic dominated by stark neon lighting in green, yellow and red against the backdrop of a nocturnal cityscape in blacks, greys and tans. The result, falling somewhere between a manga vision of a future Tokyo and a William Gibson-esque representation of virtual cyberspace, feels familiar yet fresh.

Music is inextricably intertwined with Transistor’s story and indeed with the game’s very identity. Bastion was lauded for its exceptional soundtrack, featuring original compositions by Supergiant’s audio director Darren Korb and vocals from Ashley Barrett, and Transistor sees the duo link up again to turn in another outstanding musical performance. While Transistor’s main theme, We All Become, is perhaps less iconic than Build That Wall (Zia’s Theme) or Setting Sails, Coming Home, the game impresses with the sheer variety of its original music, from piano-led synth pop to brooding post-rock and futuristic electronica. A particularly neat touch is the addition of a ‘Hum’ command – holding down the L1 button causes Red to wordlessly harmonise with the current background music.

Transistor’s combat is an unusual beast, ostensibly combining real-time and turn-based action. An ever-expanding repertoire of abilities can be mapped to the face buttons of the PS4 controller and used to attack groups of enemies in a series of discrete encounters. While the first few battles can be muddled through in real-time, it doesn’t take long before using the game’s Turn() system to plan ahead becomes a necessity. By pulling the R2 trigger, the player can pause the action and spend a finite number of action points to move Red around the battle arena and deliver attacks against enemies. Pressing R2 a second time causes the chosen actions to play out, at which point Red’s action points must recharge before she can enter Turn() again, forcing the player into evasive action as enemies retaliate.

Early battles against basic enemies soon give way to demanding encounters against multiple foes boasting special abilities and supported by an array of lesser robots, who bestow a host of ancillary buffs including shielding, area of effect damage and healing. Careful planning is required to emerge from combat unscathed. Thankfully, Transistor showers the player in abilities that can be used in a number of different ways, allowing for potentially hundreds of skill permutations. Though only four active abilities may be used at any one time, unused abilities can be used to boost the active ones via skill upgrade or passive slots. The tactical variety offered by this system is impressive – a stealth ability acquired early on in the game can be used actively to allow Red to become undetectable at a button press, passively to reduce her chances of being spotted by enemies at long range or as an upgrade to another ability to add a hefty backstab bonus when striking unaware assailants from behind. Further challenge can be added by activating Limiters, making enemies more dangerous but offering more experience in return.

Unfortunately, the price paid for the richness and depth of the game’s combat system is a loss of accessibility. If Bastion’s simplistic button mashing left some hardened gamers cold, then Transistor’s complexity threatens to overwhelm the more casual player. Though the game does a decent enough job of introducing the fundamentals of the battle system, the sheer number of permutations thrown up by the constant trickle of new skills very quickly becomes difficult to keep track of, let alone manage. Transistor is as much a puzzle game as it is an RPG; each increasingly complex enemy encounter is a tactical problem to be untangled and solved. While the first hour or so can be rolled through with relative ease, a not insignificant degree of patience in getting the best from the game’s combat mechanics soon becomes necessary to progress, particularly when faced with the increasingly difficult boss fights.

Transistor is impeccably designed, beautifully presented and contains a wealth of depth and imagination in its combat and storytelling that puts many full-priced titles from AAA developers to shame. However, its inherent obtuseness sometimes makes it a difficult game to love. Those with the persistence to learn the intricacies of its battle system and really get under the skin of its universe will find themselves richly rewarded but those made of less stern stuff may find the game somewhat wearying. Either way, Transistor is something of a flawed gem that is likely to prove just as divisive and thought-provoking as its predecessor.