Supergiant Games’ Bastion was a favorite of mine in 2012. I loved the art, music and integration of a narrator/commentator; It was a fantastic mix of style and substance. I was equally impressed by Bastion’s action and mechanics which invited comparisons to titles from the 16-bit era. After Bastion, I was ready to give whatever Supergiant Games’ next game a chance.
The developers said we were going to notice that Transistor was obviously made by the same people who made Bastion, however it was going to be a different style of game. It turns out Transistor was an action role playing game.
I approached the game like I did with Fallout 3; I could play it as an action game but I was better served freezing time and issuing commands through Transistor’s “V.A.T.S” equivalent, Turn(). Attacking enemies in realtime was an ill advised move because enemies were often faster than Red. I executed a series of actions and then had Red run around waiting for Turn() energy to recharge.