Must be good right?

The visuals and overall aesthetic are fantastic:

If there is one thing Supergiant should be known for, it is their art department. It's vibrant, colorful and most importantly atmospheric. The soundtrack is alright. It's up on soundcloud somewhere should you wish to here it.

The game begins with Red (you) pulling that sword known as Transistor out of some dead guy. You've had your voice stolen but still make vocal noises so I assume its a metaphorical voice. This is one of the few remnants of Bastion that seeped through to this game in that the story is intentionally made vague in order to make it seem deeper than it is. You have various skills called "Functions()" that can either be one of the four active skills, an augment to one of those skills or a passive buff. You have a set amount of "memory" so you can't just mix 'n' match. You fight an enemy force called "The Process" because...alright this game is rubbish. 72 minutes in and I cannot bring myself to play any more of it.

One of the reasons being is the shitty combat system. You have a health bar but you can't heal unless you have the life regen function (which works more like the mourneblade from Castlevaina: Symphony of the Night, a much better game). When you "die" you either overload transistor which from what I can work out, doesn't do much or you lose an attack. Pressing space allows you to "plan" your attacks within a given time frame. Sounds like a good idea until you do that and can't attack anything until that ability cools down. Once you lose a function, you have to go to two access points (upgrade stations/save points similar to those found in Dino Crisis 2 and Devil May Cry, both being better games) to get the lost functions back. Because this game is kind of "hack and slashy" this is a major problem.

The other is the story. 72 minutes in and I know Red is a singer that was supposed to do a concert (I think) but couldn't because that's when the calamity "it" happened. I don't know why the process is there. The process wants me dead because vagueness and the reason I should care about any of it is beyond my simpleton brain.

Let's address the elephant in the room. Yes, this game was made by the same people who made Bastion. Bastion is one of my all time favorite games. I didn't expect this game to be like Bastion at all. While it does share some things, it isn't the same. However it probably should have been because outside of the visuals, Bastion did everything better. Better combat, better storytelling, better story in general, characters that were given life and a better sound track.

3/10 do not recommend