42. Transistor (Supergiant Games, Playstation 4, 2014)

Transistor is the second game from popular independent studio Supergiant Games. I previously played their debut game, Bastion, and while I enjoyed its presentation, the gameplay was not anything amazing for me, but a solid 4/5.

I'm happy to report that Transistor pretty much improves on Bastion in every way (though I don't know if I can choose between the narrators), though it's a decently different game from a gameplay perspective. If I could categorize Transistor in as few words as possible, I would say it is a single-character deck-building strategy RPG. The combat can be played either in real time or turn-based, though the latter quickly becomes the better way to take on most fights.

Because you only have a single character, the variety comes from the abilities you collect. You can assign 4 abilities (one for each controller face button), but you can also stack abilities to augment them in different, interesting ways. There quickly becomes more combinations of abilities than you can think about at once, so the joy of the game becomes testing out new combinations and seeing what works for your play style. I also love that if your health drops to zero during combat, you don't have to retry anything, instead you just lose access to one of your abilities, which is a really novel take on failure, making the game more fun AND more punishing.

Story-wise, Transistor is a lot more ambitious than Bastion, which mostly had you learning about the history of a ruined civilization. Transistor's plot has a lot more urgency, and a slick cyberpunk setting that at least has some great colors and interesting jargon. For now I'm pretty early on in the story, so i can't say if it will stick with me, but I'm definitely going to keep playing just to see what new abilities I'm able to combine.

5/5, a great sophomore showing from Supergiant, and I'm more excited than ever to try Pyre.