I've read quite a few discussions on video games as an art form in many online fora and **Transistor** is sometimes listed as an example given its stellar art direction and visual presentation, which players have learned to expect from Supergiant Games.
The game starts with little context but at the first scene a murder has occurred, and the key to understanding the events leading up to this mystery is spread across disparate pieces of lore revealed in checkpoints and character background information that you progressively unlock. Given the potential of this set-up, I thought there would be a greater sense of urgency in locating the killer but I felt that the character Red coasts through the empty cityscape dragging the weapon, the titular transistor, behind her. For me the story started to feel cohesive about midway though the game, after around 3 hours, and the ending somewhat anticlimactic.
The enemy are these robots (?) referred to as The Process which are taking over the city and you pick up abilities and boons called Functions as you level up. Also, there are limiters that can be applied for faster levelling up. And all this is wrapped up in a peculiar real-time and turn-based combat hybrid. I'm writing this as there is no tutorial (which I'm okay with) but I felt it detracted from the potential enjoyment of the gameplay in figuring this out. There could have been some high-level guidance provided in the menus considering its short gameplay of 6-8 hours to avoid having to resort to an online walkthrough guide. As a result it felt like randomised experimentation to discover what each Function does in their active, upgrade and passive roles. Once I found a build that seemed to despatch the enemies quickly I maintained it until the end of the game.
After falling in love with Hades I was curious in the studio's back catalogue. Transistor certainly has a lot of love, and I can appreciate why it has a high aggregated review score but I personally didn't connect with it and left me with a lukewarm opinion. I even considered abandoning it after defeating the first boss, but I pushed on knowing it has a short duration. Perhaps it would benefit from a second playthrough sometime to properly appreciate it. **6/10**
