It’s got a lot to be praised. The mix-and-match combat system is genuinely brilliant, there’s over 4000 different moves you could feasibly do, and something in the millions of possible combos, but I would have liked more motivation to experiment. The bonus challenges were good, and I assume there’s a few left to do, but it would have been cool if the battles had varied to such an extent that you had to radically change your arsenal every fight or two. I loved the final confrontation because my standard setup was absolutely terrible against it, and my backup setup was too top-heavy and easily countered and I had to go away and think long and hard about what to use and execute it well. That was great! And then the game was over.

I would have liked to have seen a greater variety of enemies, arenas, environmental hazards, and so on. What it does have in its favour is the way you had attacks knocked out of your arsenal when you lost a fight, rather than losing lives or restarting. This forced innovation at least. The limiters, I didn’t like because it didn’t feel like enough reward to stack them up. I put them on anyway cos I’m a masochist but oh well.

The non-combat side is definitely its weakest, I think. Logan Cunningham was a stylish narrator in Bastion – he described what you were doing in this charming, off-kilter way that made swinging a hammer feel much cooler than it was. In Transistor he tells you what to do, his choice of words is less interesting, even annoying in its repetition. But that’s just a reflection of this being a game with less freedom than Bastion. Yes ultimately they’re both this collection of linked, linear maps but you made your own way through them in Bastion, whereas they just come one after another here in the prescribed order. The Kid had a choose your own adventure, Red has a story. And it’s a story that, despite the vast quantities of text in dossiers, terminals and monologues, I still only *sorta* understand.

I would love to see something more campaign-focused and freeform take on this combat system.

As for the combat, apparently the jump ability (can’t remember what it’s called but it teleports you forwards) works even when your turn meter is recharging, so at least you can escape. Might be an extra ability, though, unsure. I admit I’m not playing terribly tactically; I’ve also started fighting more in real-time when I can get away with it.

This is the problem with the gaming media’s obsession with novelty: fawning over something new that may not actually be that good if you really analyze it.