Game of the Month #23 (December) - Transistor

Transistor



From the creators of Bastion, Transistor is a sci-fi themed action RPG that invites you to wield an extraordinary weapon of unknown origin as you fight through a stunning futuristic city. Transistor seamlessly integrates thoughtful strategic planning into a fast-paced action experience, melding responsive gameplay and rich atmospheric storytelling. During the course of the adventure, you will piece together the Transistor's mysteries as you pursue its former owners.

I have access to this so count me in this month!

I may appreciate you for sharing such nice information over here. Transistor is a science fiction action role-playing video game. Few days ago I was looking for battleborn,ovewatch game and in a search from popular gaming Website like Instant-gaming, PC-CD keys, I got to know about the new release of Transistor this winter.

First book club thing I'll be participating in. Honestly been meaning to play this game for a while, so it'll be good to finally get it done alongside everyone. :D

Game is amazing. Hope You enjoy it!
Great visuals. Beautiful soundtrack. Still listen to it. Gameplay is original, too. I had problems getting used to it though, but after about 2 hours of playing it's not a problem anymore and gameplay is actually quite fantastic (feels a bit like strategy game flawlessly combined with real-time action). Story isn't straight forward and that's great. Makes You actually think and ending is really sweet like everything else in this game. Very well made.

I will be playing this one, looks pretty interesting, and I've been meaning to play a ''Supergiant Games'' game.

I think I bought this in the Steam Sale last Christmas... Glad I finally have a reason to make a start on it!

This is one of those games I've gotten an hour into and just let it rest. And then restarted once more to play through finally but then haven't continued <.< so doubt I'll be getting through this one even if it's short.

I was pretty disappointed by it after Bastion, which was one of my favorite games the year it came out. For the first 80% of the game I couldn't really get into the story or combat, but they both finally got interesting at the very end and made me glad I stuck with it. I also liked the art style and music they went with in Bastion more, but that's just personal preference. I'd give it an "I guess it's ok" out of "could've been better".

So, I just finished it, I didn't do much extras and mostly stuck to the main story. It wasn't bad, but I must say, the story was very confusing and hard to get into, in my opinion. The combat system was interesting, though it got pretty repetitive after a while. The soundtrack, however, is very good, and I would sometimes stop just to listen to it. As a whole, it was okay, but I feel like it could've been better. Still worth playing since it's short, had it been longer than that I don't think I would've finished it. I haven't played Bastion yet, but I heard it's pretty good, so maybe I'll try it later this month.

This is a great game! I just played it a few months ago and actually got the platinum trophy. This game will always be special to me as it is my first platinum trophy. Fantastic visuals and music, with a good gameplay loop. I love that you can constantly change the difficulty throughout the experience, just like in Bastion. I never really felt 100% comfortable with the gameplay, but as it becomes more comfortable, the game becomes more rewarding. I would highly recommend at least a play for Transistor and the platinum trophy is obtainable if chasing trophies is up your alley.

As mentioned in the "Wins" thread, I finished this earlier today. Long story short, Transistor is a good game, but I really didn't enjoy it. I wanted to enjoy it so very much, but at the end of the day it just ended up annoying me more than it had me enjoying it.

First things first, like I said, it's a good game, it's well made, visuals are stunning, music is phenomenal, the gameplay is unique, innovative, there's a lot of customization potential with all the skills etc. It's clearly a game made with a vision and executed with skill, to that end the developers should be very proud with what they've made. The reasons I didn't like the game will largely boil down to personal preferences, perceptions, choices I made etc. others easily might not have issues with what bothered me about the game.

The game falls apart mostly at a mechanical level for me, the battle system in particular. All the skills the game provides you, all the numerous combinations and usages of each skill, and at the end of the day nothing ever felt particularly useful. Effects that only last for 1 - 5 seconds, skills, that even while boosted and backstabbing do pretty meagre damage, it leads to a situation where combat simultaneously felt chaotic and spammy as I tried to dispatch enemies as quickly as possible without incurring too much damage. That is really difficult to do when nearly the enemies are all particularly annoying, shielding enemies, stealthing enemies, those stupid snapshot robots that do insane damage. Combat just never flowed well or felt particularly tactical, it just was a case of "get this god damn enemy away from me" or "please give me a moment to figure out what is going on". I absolutely hated the cell mechanic on enemy death as well, just felt really unnecessary for it to exist as extra punishment in combat.

The thing that bugs me most about the combat system is their approach to death. Instead of killing you, if your health is depleted without turn remaining your highest value skill overloads, rendering it unusable until at least 2 access points are reached. The problem I have with this is how it punishes gameplay and experimentation on the first playthrough. Let's say you have a setup you think will work well, you have an encounter with enemies in which your set up is not well suited, you take a lot of damage, you lose your skills. Now you go to your next encounter, turns out the skills you just lost would have been perfect for this one, but unlucky you, you couldn't see the future, you no longer have them, to which you'll probably have a tougher time using another subpar set up. Just not being able to change your set up outside of access points I find really restrictive considering the game's huge amount of variation.

Otherwise, the non combat sections just got really tedious for me as well, walk around, lots of things to interact with but at the end of the day it's nothing really. Click E listen to a voice clip, if you're lucky, the dude in the transistor seems to talk non-stop so half the time interacting with things doesn't play anything. I got really, really tired of listening to mr. transistor, just seemed that they didn't understand why the narrator in Bastion was so interesting, sometimes even funny, here they just play it straight and it doesn't work as well. Hell I enjoyed the narration between when you meet the other guy towards the end but that's so brief. And going up to each terminal and getting some random little choice thing and what not, it just exposes how repetitive and gamey it all is, every terminal Red will type out and delete at least 3 times a response or whatever, just little things like that suck the life out of an otherwise interesting idea, just overused and uninteresting a lot of the time.

Anyway, I'd like to know how everyone else gets on with it. If I'm offbase with anything let me know, I'd also like to know what skill set ups did you find effective? Are there any enemies you found difficult to deal with? etc

As mentioned in the "Wins" thread, I finished this earlier today. Long story short, Transistor is a good game, but I really didn't enjoy it. I wanted to enjoy it so very much, but at the end of the day it just ended up annoying me more than it had me enjoying it.

First things first, like I said, it's a good game, it's well made, visuals are stunning, music is phenomenal, the gameplay is unique, innovative, there's a lot of customization potential with all the skills etc. It's clearly a game made with a vision and executed with skill, to that end the developers should be very proud with what they've made. The reasons I didn't like the game will largely boil down to personal preferences, perceptions, choices I made etc. others easily might not have issues with what bothered me about the game.

The game falls apart mostly at a mechanical level for me, the battle system in particular. All the skills the game provides you, all the numerous combinations and usages of each skill, and at the end of the day nothing ever felt particularly useful. Effects that only last for 1 - 5 seconds, skills, that even while boosted and backstabbing do pretty meagre damage, it leads to a situation where combat simultaneously felt chaotic and spammy as I tried to dispatch enemies as quickly as possible without incurring too much damage. That is really difficult to do when nearly the enemies are all particularly annoying, shielding enemies, stealthing enemies, those stupid snapshot robots that do insane damage. Combat just never flowed well or felt particularly tactical, it just was a case of "get this god damn enemy away from me" or "please give me a moment to figure out what is going on". I absolutely hated the cell mechanic on enemy death as well, just felt really unnecessary for it to exist as extra punishment in combat.

The thing that bugs me most about the combat system is their approach to death. Instead of killing you, if your health is depleted without turn remaining your highest value skill overloads, rendering it unusable until at least 2 access points are reached. The problem I have with this is how it punishes gameplay and experimentation on the first playthrough. Let's say you have a setup you think will work well, you have an encounter with enemies in which your set up is not well suited, you take a lot of damage, you lose your skills. Now you go to your next encounter, turns out the skills you just lost would have been perfect for this one, but unlucky you, you couldn't see the future, you no longer have them, to which you'll probably have a tougher time using another subpar set up. Just not being able to change your set up outside of access points I find really restrictive considering the game's huge amount of variation.

Otherwise, the non combat sections just got really tedious for me as well, walk around, lots of things to interact with but at the end of the day it's nothing really. Click E listen to a voice clip, if you're lucky, the dude in the transistor seems to talk non-stop so half the time interacting with things doesn't play anything. I got really, really tired of listening to mr. transistor, just seemed that they didn't understand why the narrator in Bastion was so interesting, sometimes even funny, here they just play it straight and it doesn't work as well. Hell I enjoyed the narration between when you meet the other guy towards the end but that's so brief. And going up to each terminal and getting some random little choice thing and what not, it just exposes how repetitive and gamey it all is, every terminal Red will type out and delete at least 3 times a response or whatever, just little things like that suck the life out of an otherwise interesting idea, just overused and uninteresting a lot of the time.

Anyway, I'd like to know how everyone else gets on with it. If I'm offbase with anything let me know, I'd also like to know what skill set ups did you find effective? Are there any enemies you found difficult to deal with? etc

I agree with pretty much all of that. The only significant exception is that at some point I did find a loadout and way to use it that completely wrecked everything in the game with little risk to myself. I'd have to load my save to see what it actually was though, and I don't have a computer I can do that on at the moment.

This game is a georgous game in both soundtrack and graphics but does not meet the lofty acheivements of Bastion.

Like Bastion this is isotrophic game with a narrator describing your jorunery. I felt that the bastion was a better narrator as it was written in a more 2nd person narrative then the passenger style which this narrator is set. It was able to offer a much more stronger story narrative and set up then this game which is unfortunately comes across as fragmented. I was able to follow the main theme and basic plot of the game but the underlying motivations weren't explained well enough.

In terms of gameplay they have changed the setup to be a mix of real time and turn based action which gives a unique but problematic gameplay style. In the game you are given a set of functions which can act as actions move, passive abilities or augmentations for actions and offer a large amount of customization for the game and it can be fun trying different sets of moves to find your favourite setup. Due to the way the game is setup positioning can be very important and can either improve or hinder your actions.

Unfortnately the main problems with the game are based around the mixture of rts and turn based actions which don't fully mesh well. The biggest problem is the downtime between waiting for your turn to come up so you can use your actions means you end up mainly using hit and run tactics which can come tedious. This means the game is only good in short bursts.

The other problem are the limiters. These are functionality meant to make the game harder but allow for more rewards to reap but they ultimately feel cheap and don't really difficulty in any meaningful way and just cause annoyances for a small reward.

Ultimately this a visual and audio beautiful game which i'm glad i played. While not as good as Bastion it is not terrible either and had a flawed but interesting mix up of the formula

As mentioned in the "Wins" thread, I finished this earlier today. Long story short, Transistor is a good game, but I really didn't enjoy it. I wanted to enjoy it so very much, but at the end of the day it just ended up annoying me more than it had me enjoying it.

First things first, like I said, it's a good game, it's well made, visuals are stunning, music is phenomenal, the gameplay is unique, innovative, there's a lot of customization potential with all the skills etc. It's clearly a game made with a vision and executed with skill, to that end the developers should be very proud with what they've made. The reasons I didn't like the game will largely boil down to personal preferences, perceptions, choices I made etc. others easily might not have issues with what bothered me about the game.

The game falls apart mostly at a mechanical level for me, the battle system in particular. All the skills the game provides you, all the numerous combinations and usages of each skill, and at the end of the day nothing ever felt particularly useful. Effects that only last for 1 - 5 seconds, skills, that even while boosted and backstabbing do pretty meagre damage, it leads to a situation where combat simultaneously felt chaotic and spammy as I tried to dispatch enemies as quickly as possible without incurring too much damage. That is really difficult to do when nearly the enemies are all particularly annoying, shielding enemies, stealthing enemies, those stupid snapshot robots that do insane damage. Combat just never flowed well or felt particularly tactical, it just was a case of "get this god damn enemy away from me" or "please give me a moment to figure out what is going on". I absolutely hated the cell mechanic on enemy death as well, just felt really unnecessary for it to exist as extra punishment in combat.

The thing that bugs me most about the combat system is their approach to death. Instead of killing you, if your health is depleted without turn remaining your highest value skill overloads, rendering it unusable until at least 2 access points are reached. The problem I have with this is how it punishes gameplay and experimentation on the first playthrough. Let's say you have a setup you think will work well, you have an encounter with enemies in which your set up is not well suited, you take a lot of damage, you lose your skills. Now you go to your next encounter, turns out the skills you just lost would have been perfect for this one, but unlucky you, you couldn't see the future, you no longer have them, to which you'll probably have a tougher time using another subpar set up. Just not being able to change your set up outside of access points I find really restrictive considering the game's huge amount of variation.

Otherwise, the non combat sections just got really tedious for me as well, walk around, lots of things to interact with but at the end of the day it's nothing really. Click E listen to a voice clip, if you're lucky, the dude in the transistor seems to talk non-stop so half the time interacting with things doesn't play anything. I got really, really tired of listening to mr. transistor, just seemed that they didn't understand why the narrator in Bastion was so interesting, sometimes even funny, here they just play it straight and it doesn't work as well. Hell I enjoyed the narration between when you meet the other guy towards the end but that's so brief. And going up to each terminal and getting some random little choice thing and what not, it just exposes how repetitive and gamey it all is, every terminal Red will type out and delete at least 3 times a response or whatever, just little things like that suck the life out of an otherwise interesting idea, just overused and uninteresting a lot of the time.

Anyway, I'd like to know how everyone else gets on with it. If I'm offbase with anything let me know, I'd also like to know what skill set ups did you find effective? Are there any enemies you found difficult to deal with? etc

For my main set up I Had:
Actions:
Crash
Cull (with Mask and Load)
Void (with Get)
Jaunt(With Switch)

Passives:
Breach
Bounce
Help

This setup could one shot alot of enemies (3 stack of Void and then a Cull). I practically one shot the final boss first phase with this set up. It is expensive though. Crash i used as a cheap backup to Cull and Jaunt as a mean of getting away. I gave it switch as i found that you can easily switch weeds for a short while and then use them when available for healing

For my main set up I Had:
Actions:
Crash
Cull (with Mask and Load)
Void (with Get)
Jaunt(With Switch)

Passives:
Breach
Bounce
Help

This setup could one shot alot of enemies (3 stack of Void and then a Cull). I practically one shot the final boss first phase with this set up. It is expensive though. Crash i used as a cheap backup to Cull and Jaunt as a mean of getting away. I gave it switch as i found that you can easily switch weeds for a short while and then use them when available for healing

Your set up is interesting to me. I never really played around with the Get function, I assume it worked really well with Void. Cull also I never really played around with. Very interesting seeing the different approaches people can take with it.

On the topic, I forgot to mention what skills I used as well

Jaunt + Purge + Crash - simple idea, dash around the arenas both in and out of turn, passively take out enemies while stunning them and staying as safe as possible
Ping + Bounce + Switch - sort of a panic mode button, if things got hairy just smack a nearby enemy and it'll turn most enemies close by giving you breathing room. It was slow but also very safe way to take down problem foes like the Fetch bots and the Jerks
Spark + Load - just a boosted spammable AoE.

Passives

Flood - because 2 of the skills are about keeping enemies away, you have plenty of time to keep your hp at 50% or above. I got this really late in the game though so it wasn't around at times I could have used it more.
Mask - I think I used this, just to get some extra breathing room after killing an enemy.
I used Help alot before getting flood, depending on available Mem.

Ideally, I would have loved to run Bounce in both passive and with Ping, something I believe you can do in recursions is get duplicate functions. Used it this way on the final boss, not that he could touch me, but the few times he got too close and used his turn the shield tanked most of the damage.

Your set up is interesting to me. I never really played around with the Get function, I assume it worked really well with Void. Cull also I never really played around with. Very interesting seeing the different approaches people can take with it.

On the topic, I forgot to mention what skills I used as well

Jaunt + Purge + Crash - simple idea, dash around the arenas both in and out of turn, passively take out enemies while stunning them and staying as safe as possible
Ping + Bounce + Switch - sort of a panic mode button, if things got hairy just smack a nearby enemy and it'll turn most enemies close by giving you breathing room. It was slow but also very safe way to take down problem foes like the Fetch bots and the Jerks
Spark + Load - just a boosted spammable AoE.

Passives

Flood - because 2 of the skills are about keeping enemies away, you have plenty of time to keep your hp at 50% or above. I got this really late in the game though so it wasn't around at times I could have used it more.
Mask - I think I used this, just to get some extra breathing room after killing an enemy.
I used Help alot before getting flood, depending on available Mem.

Ideally, I would have loved to run Bounce in both passive and with Ping, something I believe you can do in recursions is get duplicate functions. Used it this way on the final boss, not that he could touch me, but the few times he got too close and used his turn the shield tanked most of the damage.

I only really start using Get at the end with the idea of pulling my enemies into the center before a cull. Cull is def most powerful function in the game but can't be stacked so best as a end turned move it also has a sweet passive move (moving into enemies during turn hurts them).

Yeah I can see a completely different style which you play compared to me. You seem to play in a form of run and gun while my was set as a move heavy hitter style. It's definitely interesting to see what ways people can customize and play this game out.

I only really start using Get at the end with the idea of pulling my enemies into the center before a cull. Cull is def most powerful function in the game but can't be stacked so best as a end turned move it also has a sweet passive move (moving into enemies during turn hurts them).

Yeah I can see a completely different style which you play compared to me. You seem to play in a form of run and gun while my was set as a move heavy hitter style. It's definitely interesting to see what ways people can customize and play this game out.

[Just finished the game; I will post my thoughts in full later on]

The great thing about the combat system (for all its flaws) is the flexibility for different approaches. My loadout was:

Crash (with Bounce & Ping)
Breach (with Jaunt and Purge)
Switch
Help (with Mask and Flood)

Spark (passive)

Mask gives your helper 200% back attack damage and Flood gives it contact damage. My strategy revolved around drawing aggro with Red and bringing the helper around to attack from behind, in a similar way to Of Orcs and Men's setup. I also lent heavily on Breach, using it while my turn() recovered. Bounce and Ping give Crash a lot of good chain/AoE damage. Completely different to the way you and Chronoja approached the game, but equally viable.

I participated in a prize draw on gamesdeal and got free new EP The Sims 4))i'm very happy) it's good prize on Christmas for me)))

I honestly hate myself for waiting so long to play this haha. Then again, that's kind of the state of my gaming life haha.

I absolutely loved this game.

Surprisingly I didn't get tired of Transitor talking. A lot of the time he didn't really have anything to say, but I very much enjoyed the voice. It just sounded super nice. On that note I found the interactions with the terminals very clever; with Red's voice gone, typing her thoughts and having Transistor respond made for an interesting way for the two to converse. I also got kind of sad when the Spine was affecting him... the change in demeanor and his confident facade crumbling to reveal how he really felt, even if he tried to say that he didn't mean any of it when exiting the back door, was kind of heartbreaking.

I don't mind games where walking is a large part of the gameplay. I can see how that would be offputting to some folks though, since a lot of it is walking.

The visuals were so damn pretty. That painted style fit the atmosphere so well and really gave even more emphasis to the Process taking over, since those smooth corners and beautiful walkways turned into stark squares. The contrast of the two brought on the feeling of impending doom quite well.

I also didn't get tired of the combat, and enjoyed it. The exception to that would be the fact that when Turn() is active it doesn't anticipate anything that your actions cause. So like if you destroy that wall to get at an enemy it'll still say the enemy is blocked. The damage will still happen, but having it adapt a little more to the inputs would have made it feel a lot cleaner. This also came to be a minor annoyance with chaining attacks, since just because it says it will hit that doesn't actually mean that it will.

The soundtrack is amazing and I think I might have to get it. I actually ended up letting the game run while I did other stuff so I could have some real nice tunes to work to.

The customization was crazy. My final loadout consisted of Help and Tap and Jaunt in the passive slots (Help activates god mode randomly when going into Turn, Tap gives more life, and Jaunt recovers Turn more quickly), and I relied mainly on Cull with Ping and Crash (devastating attack that's a bit cheaper to play that also stuns enemies, Void with Breach (weakens enemies and they also take damage over time while they're weakened), Mask to get some wiggle room and set up for the next Turn, and Switch (in case I needed a bit more time to deal with specific targets, a good diversion), and it was pretty unstoppable.

I focused on getting Mem at all opportunities to allow the loadout, and had a pretty similar setup throughout most of the game. Some variations as I progressed, but my functions only became overloaded like... 3 or 4 times through the whole thing. Void multiple targets and Cull one, then Switch someone as a distraction and Mask myself to recharge and set up for the next turn. It worked dang well. Most of the experimenting I did was done in the Backdoor, so the loadouts I used were tested at least a little bit beforehand to make sure I didn't lose the functions.

Could have done without the cells, but honestly it was easy enough to scoop 'em all up in time. It added a mundane element to the fights but provided a good opportunity to put the limiters to use to gain more exp faster. I'm kind of on the fence about this one, kind of take it or leave it. The limiters were definitely appreciated, though; the game was too easy so I had 3-5 on at all times (once I had that many).

The story was a bit abstract but I think I got most of it. Enough to understand and get that emotional bond to Red and Transistor, at least. The final scene was really sad but also made me super happy. The people behind the whole thing felt... lacking. I liked how the final fellow talked, it gave off a kind of 'I've been working on this too long and I'm obsessed and have gone a touch mad' vibe, but for him and the others it was just very... boring. No real annunciation, no emotion. Just a monotone delivery with a few ups and downs. I get that they regret their life choices but that's all the more reason to be a bit hysteric, or anything really. It was a huge contrast to Transistor, whose lines had more life to them.

I also dug the whole programming setup of the thing. Processes, the functions, Transistor's little "Hello world" near the beginning. I've only dabbled in programming a teensy bit but it was enough that I understood most things based on name alone (the actual functions aside, obviously) and got a bit of fun out of that. Then again, I can be a total sucker for things that do this... Reboot, anyone? =P

But yeah. I enjoyed the game thoroughly. It had a few flaws but I was easily able to look past them and had a good time.

As I said in an earlier post, I finished this a few days ago. A lot of my opinions are shared by the rest of you, so I'll just be throwing a couple of my observations into the hat:

-The game is really pretty. Like, really, really pretty.

-The soundtrack is even prettier. Darren Korb made a great OST for Bastion, and this surpasses that for me.

-Combat is a mixed bag. There are a lot of fair criticisms being made here about the combat. The bottom line is that it works, and it does allow for a lot of customisation and variety if you are willing to take the time tweaking your loadout. For anyone interested, my loadout is in an earlier post.

-The story is not as compelling as the world it is being told in. I was kinda indifferent to the central story; Red has no personality, and the 'Transistor' can't carry them both. The world, on the other hand, is phenomenal. The art, flavour text, and any number of other little touches, makes a place that feels lived in. It's current emptiness is even more jarring for how successfully they pulled it off. Which leads me to my final observation...

The story isn't really about Red - my interpretation is that Royce Bracket (the engineer of Cloudbank and the game's final boss) is meant to be the central character. The story is really about a brilliant engineer, driven to madness by a predictable population and undone by his desire to continue to innovate. I wish more had been made of this character, as his was a far more compelling story than Red's.

Overall I enjoyed the game - in spite of, not because of, the combat. I'm glad that I finally got around to playing it, and that some of you enjoyed it too.

I played this this month. My first impressions were not very hot. I liked the story and the atmosphere and the combat was a nice new way of handling it. However the first boss left alot to be desired due to the fact I didn't think the combat was made for bosses. I dropped it right there not wanting to go through any more bosses.

A week later I picked it back up just to finish the story and it's better then I thought. The story is still a little meh and the combat is still not made for bosses IMO. However the atmosphere and background events do a better job telling the story then the story they are trying to tell themselves. The world that is decaying right before your eyes and you can do very little about it. This is brought home even more when you start to return to the first areas in the last chapter and everything is mostly corrupted. As someone else brought up, this is only Red and her boyfriend's story on the surface. It's about their journey to get her voice and his body back or to get revenge (it's kinda hard to tell since Red only speaks through the terminals), but little clues sprinkled in the terminal headlines and flavor text in the character bios and doorways say alot more is going on then is being told. It also doesn't help that an info dump is dropped on you as you are heading to the final area, which to me sounds like a lazy writer tring to have backstory but not knowing where to put it and still make it an ambiguous story. Though What do I know, since the game was made by the Bastion people and I've heard that has a great story.

Slight spoiler, but there aren't many bosses in the game. Just three. You could probably count the Younglady and Man enemies as bosses in themselves, but even then, the battles aren't hard if you understand how all the attacks work. As proven with a few other posts, everyone has a different lay out that works for them and that is what makes the game great. Want to deal damage from far away? Choose Bounce or Breach. Want to use it while you wait for your turn to recharge? Add a Jaunt. Want a friend to fight for you? Use Help or put Switch as a passive. There are tons of combinations that can work for anyone. As such, only the first boss should really give you any strive due to having only three or four abilities to work with.

Nobody seems to have done the optional challenges when they did their run. I don't really blame them. The Tests are a good work out to see how everything works and test if you do know how to use them. From seeing how fast you can beat a group of enemies to fighting with random abilities to fighting your own shadow, their a good way to get use to the combat and earn some free XP. However, unless your going for all achievements, they are not worth doing to completion.

Lastly, the soundtrack. It's good, but I can only remember one song, In Circles (the song Red sings) and it's corrupted version _n c_rcl_s (I think it's played during the first boss). The Backroom has a jukebox that plays all the music in the game and I did listen to a bunch of it, but it's more to add to the atmosphere. I like it, but it's nothing I would go back to the game just to listen to. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

In review, a good game that everyone should give a chance. I had more fun on the new game+ when I had all my abilities on hand and I knew what I was doing.

I didn't like this game much. I think Bastion is better and even that one I don't care for. I thought the writing and story were pretentious, the gameplay was dull, and overall the game didn't offer me anything worthwhile. I'm glad I got this game for free as a gift, because I don't think it's worth spending money on.