The Therapist Gamer

Transistor was made by the same people that made Bastion, though the gameplay is quite different.  Transistor is probably best described as a tactical strategy game, but you can play the game more as an action game if you want.  It has the illusion of being an open world RPG, but the game is very linear.

 

The combat happens in isolated encounters.  You can press a button to freeze time and plot your next few moves.  When you unfreeze time you execute those moves much faster than normal.  You have to wait a few seconds before you can use that ability again, but you can still battle the enemies in real time.  

 

You have a giant sword that is actually a transistor, and the enemies are programs (or something?).  Every so often you earn a new move to use with the transistor.  For example, you might unlock the ability to shoot a projectile that explodes on contact with enemies.  The cool part is that you can mix and match every special ability in the game.  You could match the exploding projectile with one that bounces to create a move where your projectile explodes into bullets that bounce around the screen.  There are about a dozen different moves and there is a unique attack for each combination - it's an impressive show of balanced game design.  It's fun to discover new moves all of the time, as well as come up with a few good combos to use in battle.

 

The game is a good length in that it doesn't get tired before the final boss, but it doesn't really feel too short, either.  If you want to extend the life of the game, you can start over after you've finished - the story will be the same but you keep all of your stats and the battles the second time around are scaled to how strong you are after beating the game.  There are also a variety of challenge room that require your very best skills.  Like Bastion, there is no difficulty setting but you can activate various things that make the game harder in exchange for giving you more experience.  This effectively means that you can make the game as hard as you want, and it caters to just about everyone's tastes.

 

I thought the story in Transistor was better than Bastion, but I still don't remember much besides the ending.  To me, the story was somewhat secondary to the atmosphere of the game and the sense of being in a unique place - those aspects of the game are well done.  And the final boss battle was exceptional.  There's lots to like about Transistor and basically no real flaws with the game, so if you like or can tolerate strategy games you should give it a try!