Transistor is an isometric action RPG in which your goal is to revenge your friend's death by deleting The Camerata, a group of four people that cares about nothing but their own agenda. This game has a unique combat system that is guaranteed to keep you hooked with the many possibilities it presents.
The combat mechanic is essentially very simple, each enemy has their unique pattern and you have to bring their health down before they do the same with yours. What this game excels at is how you do this. You have four active skills at any given time, but you will have sixteen different functions (abilities) to choose from. On top of that, each active skill can have up to two upgrade slots, which means you can use two other functions to enhance the skill power and functionality. Some basic math will show you that each active skill has up to 240 combinations!! Don't worry, the numbers seem daunting, but in reality the system is very easy to understand once you start playing with it. You won't be able to use all that power and versatility until later in the game when you will already have a good understanding and practice experience with the system.
You also have four other passive slots, in which you can use your functions to give passive bonuses to your character. These bonuses might come very handy depending on your build or even your play-style.
Speaking of play-style, you have two major ways of fighting The Process (your enemies). You can either stop time and plan a limited amount of actions with the Turn() mechanic, which will make your active skills locked for a couple seconds but allows you to perform a set amount of pre-planned actions in hyper-speed, or you can specialize in real-time combat and use everything you have got at will. Still regarding play-style, there are some special "equipment" called Limiters. Once equipped they will provide you experience with boosts by giving your game a disadvantage. It could be something as simple as The Process doing double damage, or something very troublesome as reducing the memory you have available to install functions. The worse the disadvantage is, the more experience you will be given. One tip tough, you can replay the game as many times as you want and keep your progress through game plays. We do not recommend using all limiters in your first time around as this will make combat quite a challenge!
One last thing we would like to mention regarding the game mechanics is how it deals with failure. Once your character has it's life points depleted you will loose one of your installed functions by Overloading. Which means you will lose the access to that skill until you reach the next save point. If you have four functions installed you can "die" four times. Once you run out of functions you will have to load the last game saved.
Although the combat system is the most relevant mechanic in the game, there are many other little things that just add to the overall experience. On top of it all, Transistor has stunning art work and an outstanding soundtrack, as well designed as their mechanics, we highly recommend this title!
Final Score: 10 out of 10.
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