Transistor is set in a sci-fi city called Cloudbank, and revolves around a popular singer named Red. She survives an assassination attempt due to a guy pushing her aside and getting impaled by a big sword, the Transistor, which now has his consciousness trapped within. Wielding Transistor, Red tries to first hunt down the ones who targeted her, and after learning they've lost control of a program or artificial lifeform called "the Process", tries to stop the Process from overwriting and remaking the entire city and all its inhabitants.
The game is played from an isometric perspective, what I tend to think of as "3/4 top-down", and involves Red trying to cross the city. You periodically run into areas where you have to fight various Processes, and can't advance until the battle is over. Most of the combat is turn-based. When activated, you have a certain length of time available, over which you can map out Red's next movements. Advance to an enemy, use an attack, move away from the enemy. Or, if you're next to the enemy already, spam the hell out of attacks for the duration. While in that screen, you have as much time to plan your strategy as you want, and you can make a decision, then change if it you decide there's a better option, before finally committing.
The Transistor gains additional skills as you either level up or encounter people the Process has already killed and duplicated, at which point you can absorb their remaining consciousness/essence/whatever into the sword and gain an ability. You can assign the skill as a Primary, Secondary, or Passive skill. Primary is what you use in combat. Secondary modifies the Primary skill you attach it to. Passive is in effect pretty much all the time. So you might assign Crash, a sort of stabbing attack, as a Primary. Then depending on what you assign as a Secondary, using Crash might do more damage if you backstab (because the Secondary skill cloaks you), or temporarily make the enemy you hit an ally (because the Secondary turns their allegiance.)
So there's a lot you can do there, although each skill takes up a certain number of slots in the Transistor, and you only have so many slots at one time (though that increases as you level up.) In practice, while I would try to assign Secondary skill to complement the Primary skills, I tended to just spam Crash during fights. Plus, the first few times you "die" in a battle, you instead lose certain Primary skills for a time, and it seemed like I'd no sooner assign something than lose it in the next fight. That kind of turn-based strategy has never been a game-type I particularly enjoyed, so that's probably something I should've considered before I started.
The plot didn't interest me. I don't know if it was Red being silent (the attempt on her life has somehow taken her voice), or how distant the people responsible seemed. I couldn't muster any distaste for the so-called "Camerata", not aided by the fact two of them admit what they did to the entire city, and that it was a mistake, long before I get near them. The Process seems to have no personality of its (their?) own. It was thought of as a tool to redesign Cloudbank in the Camerata's vision, and has gone beyond their control. But when fighting it, I never felt like there was anything personal on either side. It was just following the end of its programming, trying to absorb something (me) that refused to allow it. From my perspective, it was just an obstacle. Something you fight to break up running through the streets and reading viewscreen news updates.
It doesn't help the guy who saved Red's life never shuts up. Maybe it's really boring as a consciousness trapped inside a weird sword, but I got tired of his constant chatter and attempts to assure Red that he was with her. I guess Red's supposed to fall in love with him over the course of the story, but that didn't land with me, either. Which sums up my experience with Transistor: A well-done game that just didn't work for me.
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