The one thing I like about indie developers is that they're always willing to take on new ideas. Without the restrictions of a Triple A publisher they are able to create whatever game they desire without the fear of the publishers demanding them to make one specific project targeted towards an audience you didn’t even want to appease. Open workspaces, good communication, healthy work ethics, and no specific deadlines for a project can lead to many great things. Innovative ideas, complete projects, or just a well designed video game. Even if an idea doesn't work I’m willing to forgive the developers, because they are on a limited budget and they can’t create the big Triple A releases we usually see from the industry. There have been many great indie games developed by solo auteurs and small teams. Lucas Pope brought the one-two punch that were Papers, Please and Return of The Obra Dinn. Yacht Club Games made the nostalgic side scrolling platformer Shovel Knight which evolved into an entire franchise. Then there’s Team Cherry who made the heavily souls inspired metroidvania Hollow Knight which will forever be one of my favorite games of all time. If it’s one team of independent developers who have been on a hot streak the last decade it would be Supergiant.
The studio was founded in 2009 by two individuals, Amir Rao and Gavin Simon. Both of them originally worked at Electronic Arts helping produce the Command & Conquer series, but once they started getting fed up with the company they both planned to quit their jobs and start their own game studio. I mean it’s Electronic Arts. Who wouldn’t want to quit the greediest game company in America? Anyways the two of them left Electronic Arts and formed their own studio, Supergiant Games. They hired a few freelance programmers, found a few talented musicians, and began working on their first dream project. In 2011 they published their first game Bastion, an action role play adventure that took place from an isometric view, had a colorful glossy artstyle, a consistent combat and progression system, and intriguing storytelling. Bastion was published under big company Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, but it’s thanks to them that Supergiant Games got their audience. Critics praised Bastion claiming it to be a pure work of art, and doing something different than other game developers at the time. After the successful release of Bastion, Supergiant Games went full indie. Deciding to publish future games under their name and name alone.
Their next project would be entirely different from Bastion, sure it would follow a similar formula, but the changes made it feel more like a traditional RPG and focus more on telling a deeper narrative. In 2014 they released another action role playing game taking place yet again from an isometric view this time named Transistor, and much like Bastion it too received quite a bit of praise. After their second success, Supergiant Games went on to create Pyre which can easily be summed up as both a visual novel and a magical sports game. Then there is Hades, a fast paced roguelike influenced heavily by Greek mythology and I’m dying to play when the full version is released sometime in the future. All of these games have received well acclaim and nominations across media, but out of these four listed titles about one of them wasn’t remembered for what it achieved. Not saying it was a black sheep or that it was a bad video game. In fact, it was really good overall. However, it’s the most forgettable out of the four listed games. Not trying to mean or anything, but it’s Transistor.
I was planning on playing Bastion first out of the Supergiant four, but coincidentally Limited Run Games manufactured physical copies for Transistor and I wanted to get one before they ran out. I went to a local Best Buy, bought a copy, and after beating the game I can say it’s good. Maybe a little more than just good. I don’t know if it is as good as Bastion, Pyre, or Hades because I haven’t played any of the other three yet. However, the ideas Supergiant Games packed into this one were pretty cool and helped set a sturdy foundation for what was set to come. I would even say Transistor is one of the better narrative driven experiences I’ve played from the indie scene and helped elevate the means of how I see narrative in indie gaming. Supergiant Games set the gold standard of indie driven narratives with each of their landmark titles, and Transistor is one of those golden exceptions. Today we’ll be talking about why I loved Transistor and why it deserves your attention. So rev up your cycle and hum a lovely little song as you ride across the cyberpunk neon lit city of Cloudbank.
Story
The first thing we see when booting up the game is a young woman with a gold shining dress and stylish red hair pulling a strange USB-like sword out of the chest of a corpse. The sword is named the Transistor, a technological blade that glistens with green and has mysteriously absorbed the deadman’s consciousness and voice. The Transistor tells the woman where to go next and we soon learn that the woman whom we are controlling. Her name is Red and she is a famous singer with a voice unlike any other, and she is one of the major voices within the glistening cyberpunk city of Cloudbank.
When Red picked up the Transistor it also absorbed her voice, preventing her from being able to speak to communicate back to the talking blade. They venture deeper into the streets and try to recollect what happened before Red got a hold of the Transistor. Red and the Transistor eventually encounter the Process, a corrupt robotic intelligence that has been going around killing civilians and causing chaos around Cloudbank. The Process was sent out by a group known as the Camerata, four corrupt individuals who sent an assassin out with the Transistor to kill Red.
The unknown man from earlier, who is revealed to be Red’s lover, stepped in to save Red from being killed and got impaled with the blade. Control over the Transistor was transmitted over to Red, and there was nothing she could do as her lover gasped his last breath. She then picks up the sword and decides what to do next. I would explain more of the game’s plot, but that would lead to me having to spoil late game events and what the intentions of the villains are. The Transistor doesn’t know it is Red’s lover and doesn’t possess any of his memories, but Red seeks vengeance against the people who killed the only person she could ever care about. So with the Transistor in her hands, Red must journey across the streets of Cloudbank, fight off against the Process, figure out what happened for the Camerata to send an assassin after her, and seek vengeance on the four members who dared to try and kill her and her lover.
The Camerata were obviously trying to achieve something, and Red doesn't seem like the type of person to be your enemy. The Process was designed to fight, but it wasn’t programmed to protect or adapt mentally in any sort of way. The Process is spreading faster by the minute, and it seems like no one is actually in control of them so they are spreading like parasites. These vague questions will be answered as you progress through the city of Cloudbank. Discover the bodies of the fallen and look into what happened for their minds to be transformed into the chips you use to power your weapon. Figure out the fate of the city and how far you will go to achieve your goals.
Gameplay
The story and presentation for Transistor is pretty well presented to the player, but does the gameplay hold up to the action packed combat of Bastion or Hades? Maybe even the competitive matches of Pyre? Well glad you asked that question because Transistor’s gameplay is… decent enough. It has a lot of good design choices and complexity to the combat, but it just didn’t click all that well for me. You walk around a beautiful world with loads of sites to behold, secrets to discover, and enemies to fight. It’s quite a nice world actually. Supergiant Games are known for creating 3D models for their characters, but hand drawing the background and set pieces for each location. There’s a lot of color, shine, visual effects, and objects that pop towards the players. The polished streets you dare so walk on and the spiraling buildings always being in the background. You even have a dedicated button called Flourish where you gallantly hop into the air and occasionally a snapshot is taken of Red and her sword. It’s a world that’s just beautiful to look at and I took my time to just gaze at the backdrops.
On the opposite end of the spectrum the combat has quite a few interesting ideas and for the most part they work together well, but ultimately it doesn’t feel great to play and just becomes a slog after a while. Enemies will occasionally pop on screen and you have to fight them to progress further. Luckily you have the Transistor, which can be outfitted with four different attacks. There are multiple abilities to unlock throughout the game allowing you to create whatever playstyle you want. Strike enemies up close, fight from afar with projectiles, summon support, make the screen explode, and a bunch of other stylish moves. Abilities not equipped into one of the four attack buttons can be equipped as buffs or perks to your current attacks. So at least extra abilities, especially the ones you may not consider using, aren’t completely useless as they can be experimented with on the side. It’s hard to keep track of the numerous enemies hurtling towards you and thrashing about on screen, but that’s why you have Turn ().
Turn () is basically the equivalent to VATS and allows you to freeze time and plot out a pattern of attacks. By activating it you can strike enemies without taking damage or get to safety easily. The downside is that when you use Turn () you aren’t allowed to use your attacks until it fully recharges. Leaving you wide open for damage. This breaks the flow on combat a lot throughout the game, I know Supergiant Games had to balance Turn () out but having to walk around aimlessly until a meter is full kinda prevents reaction during combat. However there is another unique mechanic which has both an upside and downside. Instead of a health bar you have this bar of spark which fuels your sword. If you take too much damage you run the risk of malfunctioning one of your four attacks. Making it unusable for the next few fights. You can fix your malfunctioned abilities once you discover two new checkpoints, but other than that you’ll have to switch to new attacks to use. This is a good idea because it gets the player to try out new playstyles and experiment with what they have, but remember how I said earlier some attacks won’t fit a player’s playstyle and they would rather gravitate to what works best. A lot of RPGs give you weapons and spells to work with, but it never tells you that one specific playstyle is best or what you have at the moment is bad. You can run around with the claymore and buckler the entire game, but this giant sword made of dragon scales is pretty cool.
Everytime you kill enemies you gain experience points and if you gain enough you level up. Leveling up increases your strength, increases your energy bar, and allows you to gain access to new attack chips. The energy bar being the thing that allows you to equip more chips at one. New attacks are picked up from corpses and some of these corpses are well hidden so you are at least motivated to explore and go off the designated path. Besides that there really isn’t much else to talk about with the gameplay. There are occasionally bosses, but none of them are too complex and can be beaten with the simple strategy of using Turn () and the runaway for a bit. The wait and bait playstyle. So Transistor does a good job being an experimental RPG, but it doesn't do a good job executing it’s combat. At least Supergiant Games tried something new and they improved later with Pyre and Hades. Hopefully you should be able to find the Camerata, , and put an end to whatever is happening to Cloudbank.
Thoughts
I think Transistor is a fantastic experience, but when it was time for this review I struggled to explain my love because the faults this game has are awfully big to the eyes of others. The game is awfully short, only taking me around two to three hours to beat, but maybe it was because I just blasted my way through the main story. However, a benefit of having a short run time is that it doesn't overstay its welcome unlike some games which drag out by throwing in bloat or story elements that weren’t needed.
The combat is okay, you can’t really dodge enemy attacks and melee abilities stop being a viable option after a while. At first I just walked around smashing down with my greatsword using the Crash function, but then I realized that’s what left me exposed to attacks that scraped away at my damage meter. It’s slow, clunky, and feels awkward to use unlike most slam attacks in other games. So I swapped to a ranged attack called Spark and equipped a dash ability named Jaunt halfway through the game and I realized they were more efficient than your basic melee attacks. Spark had a good blast radius and it was Jaunt that started to help me avoid enemy attacks. Not only that, but that’s when the game actually started to feel fun to play. Turns out it takes awhile for Transistor to open up and offer more options for combat. This was late into the game though, so it’s sad that I wasn’t having complete fun up until then.
It’s also a terrible design choice that the main ability to allow you to dodge is an equipable you must find during your playthrough. There’s enough enemy types to switch up your basic fight, but not enough to keep you on your toes. The strategy for half the time for chaotic fights is to slow down time, attack, run away, wait, and repeat the process until all enemies are dead. There’s a rest area in between your adventure and optional challenges you can take on, but there’s not many good reasons to visit this area or do any of the side challenges. So the gameplay falters left and right when it comes to core design and flow. Then why do I even love Transistors in the first place?
The reason why I loved Transistor so much was because of its storytelling. The story and world building took me by complete surprise. It starts off very simple as a story about revenge, but it slowly evolves into a tale of loss and corruption. It has the type of storytelling that Bloodborne or Hollow Knight has where everything is vaguely explained, but by looking more into the world or skimming through character descriptions you piece together more of where you are and find reasons as to why you should care. I really like Red as a character and her outfit design is very cool. She’s just a badass lady on a hunt to avenge her lover. The villains get more explanation as the story goes on, and the explanation to their endeavors is justifiable. Their villains who took sacrifices for the greater good of the public, but failed to realize their dreams were too much to handle and it slowly grew out of control. The ending I thought was extremely satisfying and it wrapped up the story in a nice bow tie.
The graphics are beautiful like I stated earlier with it’s wide array of colors. A gleam that helps Cloudbank pop towards the player’s eye and even guide them towards the right direction. The soundtrack is great, Darren Korb who composed the soundtrack for Supergiant Games’ titles deserves a big gold medal for his work. The soundtrack can be calming for the most part, and those moments where a voiced out song comes into play makes you appreciate the world even more. The singing can even depict the softness within Red and her good intentions, and the writing constantly leaves you wanting to figure out what happens next. I want to say the game has replay value, because Transistor has a new game plus mode where you keep all the abilities you unlocked in the previous playthrough and use them for a new one. However, due to the linearity of the game you’ll be experiencing the same stuff in the same order again, so there’s no good reason to replay Transistor. Yet replay value shouldn’t be the factor that prevents me from recommending what is basically art. You remember what art is, don't you? I missed when developers were making games for more than just the money.
I highly recommend Transistor just for how it unveils it’s lovely narrative and world building. It may not be as good as Bastion, Pyre, or the upcoming Hades, but it is still a game you have to experience from beginning to end. Incredibly well told story, lovely art direction, interesting design choices, and appreciation for what Supergiant offered with this title. I’m still waiting for Hades and hopefully lives up to the expectations. I am going to give Transistor a 9/10 for excellence at best. It's a work of art!
Comments