What Are You Playing, Part 3: The Assassination of my Wallet by the Cowardly Sale

[Man_Over_Game]

Arrows are incredibly common. If you fimd the treasure chest scattered about, and hit the arrow shop or Beedle every time you pass a town or stable, you should very quickly have more basic arrows than you know what to do with. Meanwhile, all that ore you're finding is great for selling, and is used for upgrading the better armors after you unolck more fairies.

I've finally started to get into having arrows to spend, although they're still a luxury I can't abuse. Yet I have like 5 Knight's Bows and the 1 legendary bow I got, simply because I can't afford to use any arrows to break the damned bows with, and apparently Knight's Bows are the highest ranking of bow the game feels comfortable giving me. I still buy arrows as often as possible, they just go really quick.

I'm definitely sure you were supposed to be able to craft arrows. Ruby mention using Fire, Sapphire mentions using Ice, Topaz mentions using Lighting, and yet:

• Nothing those ores do correlates to those elements, outside of crafting a small selection of gear.
• There are exactly those elements as arrows in-game.
• There are no other ores that mention using an element in-game.

Eh, what can you do?


The Goron place is HARD, man. Really dumb, too. All the Heat Resistance stuff you can make doesn't help with catching on fire in 70% of the map. I'm holding an Ice Weapon just to help cool me off, and it isn't helping a bit. On top of that, it's like there's a border where the heat starts damaging you from. Despite heat being on a scale, passing certain invisible world boundaries cause you to go from 0 to 100, setting you on fire immediately. Link is actually cold when I'm outside of the heat borders. I haven't been disappointed by the world design until now, which is actually pretty good all things considered.

I eventually found a stable in the safety zone where a lady gave me x3 fireproofing potions for a bit of cash, and I've used x2 of them just to get to the next village. I met the guy that will give me fireproofing armor for giving him fireproof lizards, buuut I sincerely doubt I will be able to catch x10 of them before my last potion wears off. Not sure what I'm going to do, maybe stop by the Goron shop and see if I can just throw money at my problems. I dunno, we'll see.

[Gnoman]

Fireproof lizards are extremely common (use your upgraded sensor to fimd them, and the stealth armor set to make catching them easy), and you get a fireproof potion by tossing one in a pot with a bokoblin tooth or similar.

[Man_Over_Game]

Fireproof lizards are extremely common (use your upgraded sensor to fimd them, and the stealth armor set to make catching them easy), and you get a fireproof potion by tossing one in a pot with a bokoblin tooth or similar.

I thought about doing that, I just haven't been able to find one between the mines and the Goron town. Except one, but I had the dumb idea of trying to catch it instead of taking a picture.

[Edit] I researched the science on how cooking food and elixirs worked, made myself a 15:00 Fireproofing Potion with one of my coveted stock, and eventually caught all 10 before I ran out of time (literally, after the fireproof potion and like 30 hearts of repeated healing. Man, that fire damage really friggin' hurts).

I will say that the reward was swank. So far, it's the coolest looking armor I've gotten, much better than the cold armor you buy from the Rito.

...Not really sure if it has a set, though. It's just the chest piece, yet you only need one instance of Fireproofing for it to work, so....not sure if I'm just stuck having a warrant from the Fashion Police for the rest of my playthrough. It's notable, because every other piece of armor I've gotten seems to be part of a set (and has a mechanical reason to wear them all), and this has been the only outlier I've seen yet.

[Zevox]

So, I'm back to playing some Smash Ultimate online lately - partially because all of that FF7/Remake playing made me want to play Cloud in Smash more, partly just because it's been so long since I played. And... well, it's a mixed bag. I get those matches sometimes that are a ton of fun and just make me want to play more, and that's great. And then I try to go into Quickplay, the game's ranked mode, and run into nothing but people with terrible connections who are usually also playing spammy keepaway characters (one of the Links or Samuses, Mii Gunner, Min Min, etc), and I want to throw my controller at the screen sometimes dealing with that crap. And on the rare occasion that I get someone on Quickplay that isn't miserable to play against like that, they almost never rematch for some reason. Which is extremely frustrating in and of itself. But I'm also not a big fan of trying to stick to Arenas (the game's lobby mode), even though I seem to find people with better connections there, because it means sitting through other people's matches every time I lose - often a fair few people, since many players create 6-8 person Arenas despite using 1-on-1 battle rules, and you just form a line to play whoever wins each match. I try to find 3-4 person arenas when possible, but they're just not always available, and creating my own seems to mean a very long wait for anyone to enter it. So there's sadly not really a single mode option that's just good...

On the upside, I've enjoyed playing Cloud - although he's not one of my favorites in Smash, and I think after playing him more I can better identify why. His biggest weakness is his recovery, with his up special not covering a ton of distance and being strictly vertical, and it's bad enough that he's taking a pretty big risk if he ever tries to chase the opponent off-stage to secure the kill. I've lost a fair few stocks trying to do that, either by going too far and not being able to get back, or by getting hit by the opponent in the attempt and then being unable to get back, which ultimately discouraged me from doing so much at all. So, what that helped me realize is that I really enjoy using that particular option, and I think it influences who my favorite characters to play are. Joker and Banjo, my two favorite DLC characters, are pretty good at it (hell, Joker struggles to get kills in other ways when he doesn't have Arsene active), and many of my favorite base roster characters are pretty capable in that regard as well (Palutena, King Dedede, Pokémon Trainer, Inkling, Falco). About the only major exceptions are Ike and Chrom, and even they aren't as bad at it as Cloud, they just need to be more careful about it (and Ike has a fun alternative in charging Eruption at the ledge and timing it to the opponent's recovery).

Also, on a side note, I recently looked at my Switch profile and saw the play time records for each of my games. Amusingly (though not particularly surprisingly), around 85% of my total play time on my Switch has been dominated by only two games: Smash Ultimate and Fire Emblem: Three Houses. I've got a little over a thousand hours total play time on the system, and those two are at 440 and 425 respectively. I, ah, think those might have been particularly good purchases, to say the least.

[factotum]

Well, finished P5 Royal. Just shy of 129 hours according to my clear data save, and I was starting to think that final boss was the Energizer bunny considering how often he popped back up after you thought he was down! Bit of a shame:

Spoiler

Show

That they didn't add a "goodbye" gift scene for Sumire--there's one for every other confidant you max out, so seems odd they forgot about her.

[Razade]

Well, finished P5 Royal. Just shy of 129 hours according to my clear data save, and I was starting to think that final boss was the Energizer bunny considering how often he popped back up after you thought he was down! Bit of a shame:

Spoiler

Show

That they didn't add a "goodbye" gift scene for Sumire--there's one for every other confidant you max out, so seems odd they forgot about her.

Spoiler: Kasumi

Show

I honestly felt they kind of rushed her overall throughout much of the story. I get that she's in addition to the rest of the story and she had to fit in with all the rest of the activities and all but by the time they finally gave her over to have full party status I was already level 99 with a ton of top tier (also level 99) Persona for Joker and Ann, Ryuji and Morgana set up with gear and moves just the way I wanted. As soon as I got them back there wasn't ever really a need to use her or Akechi since I wasn't using any of the other team either.

I honestly loved the last fight against Maruki though I never found it difficult, it was the highlight of the Royal section for me. The first one is the real fight, the other two (three if you count the fist fight) are just window dressing. You can't, or at least not that I could see, lose them in any real meaningful way. The fact that they were just scripted fights was kind of a let down but I think the execution bore it out. Maruki has a top spot in my favorite villains for his affability and geninue desire to make a better world. He encapsulates the sort of villain Persona should always strive for, a foil to the heroes and one that makes you question your own goals.

[Cygnia]

Finished "Legend of Hand", a quirky little point & click game that's a homage to historical martial arts films. Everything was hand-drawn. Ending was a bit of a trip though.

[Renegade Paladin]

I recently picked up playing Freespace 2 again after about a decade of not. The Source Code Project has made explosions real pretty over the past ten years.



Also, Good Old Games has the game on sale for $3.49 at the moment, and all the upgrade mods and brilliantly produced community made campaigns you could want are free at Hard Light Productions. I voice acted for Blue Planet, and the campaigns' story is super good and involved. If you like the space combat simulator genre, I highly recommend giving it a try.

[factotum]

Slightly concerning--the only game I've played on my PS4 up to this point is Persona 5 Royal, and it turns out it's not hammering the hardware much at all. Been trying Horizon Zero Dawn today and the fans are absolutely screaming, hope there isn't anything wrong with the thing!

[Renegade Paladin]

Oh hey, since I posted that, the Freespace Open project released a new version.

[Man_Over_Game]

So I beat the fire dungeon in BotW, and I gotta say that I take back what I said about the dungeon design in this game. Yes, it's new and interesting to move parts around, but the dungeons themselves aren't much more than hollow shells with big empty rooms and a couple puzzles in the walls. No real enemies to fight, no minibosses, and even the boss fights themselves are easier than most Black variants of generic enemies you'd fight in the overworld. The bosses telegraph a lot more, making them extremely predictable while the normal enemies are extremely fast and chaotic, especially in numbers.

With the fire boss, I think I took about 4/11 damage (11 being my max), from a single chargeup explosion that I didn't realize required me to throw a bomb at him. So the fight became:

Chargeup: Throw a bomb.
Laser Charge: Shoot him in the face.
Weapon Charge: Run away, or Shoot him in the face.

Most of these stunned the boss, allowing me to get a good few swings in (as long as he wasn't too high off the ground, I actually had to wait for him to attack me to get close enough to hit him during his stun), and the rest was a cakewalk. Most of this was the exact same boss fight as the Rito/Air boss, but with a few environmental effect differences that didn't really matter.

I also was wearing some pretty crappy gear, like 15 defense total (when I usually have about 25) due to not having my fire armor leveled up by much (requires too many damned lizards, like 12 to upgrade the set twice).

Then after the boss, I felt cocky and tried to kill a Lynel that was just walking around in a field, managed to lose all of my HP in like 1-2 hits, and only got about 15% of his health bar down.

Guys, figure your game out. I'm loving it a ton, but damn did they kinda screw up the dungeon/boss design.


So far, at no point did the Divine Beasts actually do anything against me, really. I just chase them down, lower their defenses, board them, and activate all of their terminals, but I think it'd be a lot more interesting to have treated them like their own environmental boss fights. Like running up Goron Mountain trying to dodge laser blasts and maybe magentize/stasis specific objects that fall down the mountain to cover your advance or to launch them at the Divine Beast. That would have been enough of a fight to justify it. Instead, the entire Goron Arc felt like:

• Travel up the mountain. Whoops, the area is setting me on fire. Better get some fireproof potions.
• Travel up the mountain some more. Whoops, now THIS area is setting me on fire. Guess I need even stronger potions/armor.
• Work a bit to get the potions/armor I need.
• Travel more up the mountain. Use cannons to scare the Divine Beast around the mountain.
• Travel more up the mountain. The Divine Beast is using sentry bots to spot you, take them out by climbing above them and throwing bombs at them (or however you want to remove them).
• Travel more up the mountain. Blast at the Divine Beast one last time.
• Enter the Divine Beast. Rotate it a bunch to get chests and to find terminals (this dungeon was annoying, and wasn't well designed, IMO).
• Fight a boss that's the difficulty equivalent of 3 black Moblins (which is to say, not that hard).

That's it. Most of the overworld stuff feels great***, but the main plot stuff just feels very barebones. I'm hoping that the castle doesn't share the same problems.


***I think the shrine puzzles are really, really cool, but I also feel like they're...tutorials. Teaching you how to solve various problems using your tools, but those mindsets are usually very...isolated, making them feel like a tutorial. One shrine requires you to set everything on fire to reveal the objects you need. Another requires use of Magnetize to move a swing into having the momentum for you to ride it to the other side. Or maybe you need to use Stasis to make a moving switch stay at a specific position. Problem is, all of these are usually isolated events, ones you don't experience later. So even though it feels very thoughtful, you find yourself disappointed in never having to solve another puzzle that way again.

[warty goblin]

Been playing Iron Danger, an indie RPG that is going to make me eat all my complaints about real time with pause combat, because this game is entirely real time with pause, but also extremely excellent.

To be fair, although it is accurately described as RTP, it's a somewhat unique take on the idea that ends up feeling more like XCOM, and is really just a singleplayer variant of a WEGO system with time rewinding. Time is divided into one second ticks, and every action costs so many ticks to perform. At any point you can rewind time up to 12 or 16 ticks, and choose new actions. Even if your entire party just got eaten by demons, you still can rewind and retry, so experimentation isn't punished. Interestingly, although your control of time is discrete, everything plays out in realtime, and the game doesn't use a grid. This seems like it should be clunky as hell, but it really makes everything feel very dynamic and natural. You choose discrete actions - I want to swing at this dude - but if the enemy has already started their attack you'll get hit. It ends up actually making a melee fight feel like a proper melee fight, because timing and distance are enormously important, far more so than in pretty much any other top down RPG I can think of. You can step back to void an enemy's blow, then clobber them before they can recover, sidestep to dodge an arrow, and so on, and it's all playing out according to physics and animations instead of dice rolls.

The other advantage of the discrete-time manipulation is that it reduces the micro burden from literally infinite to actually humanly tractable. The usual frustration of WEGO systems for me is that because I can issue millisecond precise orders, I should probably issue millisecond precise orders. It's why I could never get into something like Frozen Synapse. The game also only gives you two characters (at least so far) which is all to the good. The control is granular enough, and the combat sandbox dynamic enough, that handling three or more people would just be mind-melting.

[Man_Over_Game]

Been playing Iron Danger, an indie RPG that is going to make me eat all my complaints about real time with pause combat, because this game is entirely real time with pause, but also extremely excellent.

To be fair, although it is accurately described as RTP, it's a somewhat unique take on the idea that ends up feeling more like XCOM, and is really just a singleplayer variant of a WEGO system with time rewinding. Time is divided into one second ticks, and every action costs so many ticks to perform. At any point you can rewind time up to 12 or 16 ticks, and choose new actions. Even if your entire party just got eaten by demons, you still can rewind and retry, so experimentation isn't punished. Interestingly, although your control of time is discrete, everything plays out in realtime, and the game doesn't use a grid. This seems like it should be clunky as hell, but it really makes everything feel very dynamic and natural. You choose discrete actions - I want to swing at this dude - but if the enemy has already started their attack you'll get hit. It ends up actually making a melee fight feel like a proper melee fight, because timing and distance are enormously important, far more so than in pretty much any other top down RPG I can think of. You can step back to void an enemy's blow, then clobber them before they can recover, sidestep to dodge an arrow, and so on, and it's all playing out according to physics and animations instead of dice rolls.

Kinda reminds me of Transistor. Action-Puzzle-RPG. You're pretty weak, but your special power is that you can temporarily stop time (so all of your slow moves aren't really all that slow). Pause time and queue a number of movements/attacks to act on when you decided on what you're doing with your "turn". Movement and different attacks all consume varying amounts of energy you spend during your turn, and you can redo/undo multiple times until you've decided on the combo that best uses your budget.

Move towards an enemy, hit him with a Knockback Crash, it'll launch him backwards near one of his friends, Jaunt behind the two of them and use a really big Cull attack to get a backstab bonus...until you realize that the HP of the second guy is estimated to still leave him alive, and you'd have no Turn left (which means you're basically useless while this thing chases you for 10 seconds), so...back to the drawing board...

[Sermil]

Kinda reminds me of Transistor. Action-Puzzle-RPG. You're pretty weak, but your special power is that you can temporarily stop time (so all of your slow moves aren't really all that slow). Pause time and queue a number of movements/attacks to act on when you decided on what you're doing with your "turn". Movement and different attacks all consume varying amounts of energy you spend during your turn, and you can redo/undo multiple times until you've decided on the combo that best uses your budget.

Move towards an enemy, hit him with a Knockback Crash, it'll launch him backwards near one of his friends, Jaunt behind the two of them and use a really big Cull attack to get a backstab bonus...until you realize that the HP of the second guy is estimated to still leave him alive, and you'd have no Turn left (which means you're basically useless while this thing chases you for 10 seconds), so...back to the drawing board...

The problem I had with Transistor was the parts in between the pauses, when you were running around trying not get hit, which were nearly impossible and not particularly fun (given the number of undodgables).

Also, since you had to choose your power loadout before battle, there was a huge emphasis on having unspecialized powers which would be at least somewhat useful against any enemy type, which meant I kept gravitating towards relatively boring 'do a bit of damage' powers that works against everyone.

[Razade]

Transistor is easily the worst thing Supergiants has done, gamewise. I feel it would have been better as a visual novel rather than trying to make it an action game.

[oxybe]

Welp.

So I got my new ram two weeks ago. worked fine for a week and and i was all hyped for a 5 day gaming vacation to destress and relax.

2nd day off: PC only loads to the bios, recognizes both hard drives, shows correct amount of ram.

power cycle the pc, reseated ram, removed ram, reseated ssd with windows partition, power cycled bios... nope.

sad oxy noises...

[factotum]

Transistor is easily the worst thing Supergiants has done, gamewise.

While I agree, considering their other major releases are Bastion and Pyre, that's not really saying much. Most studios would kill for a game of Transistor's quality.

[IthilanorStPete]

Transistor is easily the worst thing Supergiants has done, gamewise. I feel it would have been better as a visual novel rather than trying to make it an action game.

I'm in the opposite boat; gameplay-wise, Transistor's my favorite of the Supergiants games, but I think it has the weakest story.

[Man_Over_Game]

They're in the process of finishing up Hades, which is like a combination of Transistor, Bastion, but also a Roguelike akin to Dead Cells. I say "finishing up", but it's basically a finished game (most people aren't going to get to the "first" final boss they have) with virtually no bugs and a fleshed out plot until you reach the end of the content (where the game mostly fades to black). They did the whole "beta" thing right, by making the mechanics perfect first and then delaying the final launch until after they got all the content/bosses/story that they want tacked onto the end as they finish.

I've probably sunk about 30 hours into it, and maybe got past the 3rd or 4th boss. Haven't even fought any gods yet.

[Anteros]

They're in the process of finishing up Hades, which is like a combination of Transistor, Bastion, but also a Roguelike akin to Dead Cells. I say "finishing up", but it's basically a finished game (most people aren't going to get to the "first" final boss they have) with virtually no bugs and a fleshed out plot until you reach the end of the content (where the game mostly fades to black). They did the whole "beta" thing right, by making the mechanics perfect first and then delaying the final launch until after they got all the content/bosses/story that they want tacked onto the end as they finish.

I've probably sunk about 30 hours into it, and maybe got past the 3rd or 4th boss. Haven't even fought any gods yet.

There's only about 4 bosses total unless the latest update added some. You're closer to the end than you think.

[Razade]

While I agree, considering their other major releases are Bastion and Pyre, that's not really saying much. Most studios would kill for a game of Transistor's quality.

And Hades, which has received widespread praise. I'm just saying, as a follow up on Bastion it was a dip. Hindsight is 20/20.

[Man_Over_Game]

There's only about 4 bosses total unless the latest update added some. You're closer to the end than you think.

Thanks for clarifying. Looked into it, and it seems you're right. There are 4 areas each, with their own boss checkpoint, but digging a bit shows that there are also 2 variants of the first boss (that is, the checkpoint is the same, but the boss you fight can change), and there's also one secret boss.

[Spacewolf]

To be honest Hades really opens up once you reach the end for the first time.

[Man_Over_Game]

To be honest Hades really opens up once you reach the end for the first time.

Sounds like Dead Cells:

Play the game for 30 hours, finally defeat The Hand of the King using some dumb combo of traps and DoTs, brag about it online. Then find out that the first playthrough is just the first tutorial.

And Hades, which has received widespread praise. I'm just saying, as a follow up on Bastion it was a dip. Hindsight is 20/20.

I dunno, I'd rank Transistor as one of the best modern RPGs ever made. It didn't have a whole lot of replayability, I'll give you that, but most modern RPGs have some sort of glaring clunkiness that just prevents them from being good, whether it's atmosphere, mechanics, UI, story, or having bad playstyle options.

Transistor seems to hit every mark.

Even with Hades, I feel like it has some glaring problems:

• Your playstyle is generally determined by your weapon choice at the start, yet the validity of that playstyle is determined entirely by the random boons you get on your run. For example, the sword needs specific boons to scale late into the run.
• The difficulty of using certain powers doesn't match up with how powerful those powers are. For example, the spear chargeup is hard to use, and generally not worthwhile to invest in.
• Some of the attacks/controls have downright bad design. The most natural playstyle of using the bow is to charge a shot and dodge to another location to charge another shot, but the attack you make when you start your charge during a dash is almost identical (chargeup time and distance is slightly different), but it is categorically different as far as game mechanics are concerned (dash attacks and normal attacks benefit from different boons). This causes you to stagger your natural mobility for the sake of DPS in a clunky, roundabout way, and for a reason that's not all that easy to understand (as both your dash and normal bow attacks look and act pretty much exactly the same).
• Too much exposition for an action game. Don't get me wrong, the voice acting is great, but they did an excellent job in the previous games maintaining a consistent narrative that doesn't get in the way of the game. Feels like a step backwards in that regard.

Keep in mind, I haven't even unlocked all of the weapons, and I haven't completed a single run. These are just what I found casually.

Some of those could just be because Hades isn't a finished product, but it feels like Transistor doesn't have any flaws and instead just has players who want a different game. I regularly play Hades because it's designed around replayability, but my first playthrough of Transistor was a powerful experience, one I think I might have only felt after playing Chrono Trigger for the first time (like 15 years ago).

To put into perspective exactly how much love was put into Transistor, the game has two versions of almost every single background song in the game: One for when you're moving around in real-time, and one for when you've paused the game or acting during your Turn. Effectively, each song has a fast-paced version (which is what you're hearing while you're running away and trying not to die), and a calm background version (what you'd expect to hear when playing a turn-based strategy game). The music was planned to exactly match the player's mood.

[Zevox]

So, Smash Ultimate just dropped a surprise update on us without warning, and it actually adds a new stage - sort of. It's "Small Battlefield." Which appears to be just regular Battlefield, but with the middle (highest) platform removed, and the other two platforms moved just a bit closer together. That really came right out of nowhere. I guess they noticed how much competitive players like the hazards-off version of Pokémon Stadium 2 and decided to add an official stage that's similar to that, but a little smaller? (At least, I'm pretty sure that Pokémon Stadium 2 is larger than Battlefield horizontally. Not sure about the blastzones, I've never gotten quite that into the weeds on stages.) Weird. They made it an option in your stage preferences for quickplay, too. I'll probably stick with regular Battlefield, but it is nice to have something other than that, Final Destination, and two random options, even if it is only a small variant, I suppose.

The patch supposedly also improved online play in some unspecified way, but based on my matches tonight, I don't think that whatever they did affected how good connections are, because I ran into a lot of bad ones. More than usual, actually, although I don't think that necessarily means they accidentally made things worse, I probably just had bad luck tonight - or perhaps the patch brought some people on who haven't been playing recently. Sadly, Smash is possibly the only fighting game where more people playing probably makes the average connection that you'll see worse, since you're just paired at complete random and have no ability to see a connection rating for your opponent, nor any ability to accept or reject the match, the way literally every other fighting game out there lets you.

[Razade]

Sounds like Dead Cells:

Play the game for 30 hours, finally defeat The Hand of the King using some dumb combo of traps and DoTs, brag about it online. Then find out that the first playthrough is just the first tutorial.



I dunno, I'd rank Transistor as one of the best modern RPGs ever made. It didn't have a whole lot of replayability, I'll give you that, but most modern RPGs have some sort of glaring clunkiness that just prevents them from being good, whether it's atmosphere, mechanics, UI, story, or having bad playstyle options.

Transistor seems to hit every mark.

Even with Hades, I feel like it has some glaring problems:

• Your playstyle is generally determined by your weapon choice at the start, yet the validity of that playstyle is determined entirely by the random boons you get on your run. For example, the sword needs specific boons to scale late into the run.
• The difficulty of using certain powers doesn't match up with how powerful those powers are. For example, the spear chargeup is hard to use, and generally not worthwhile to invest in.
• Some of the attacks/controls have downright bad design. The most natural playstyle of using the bow is to charge a shot and dodge to another location to charge another shot, but the attack you make when you start your charge during a dash is almost identical (chargeup time and distance is slightly different), but it is categorically different as far as game mechanics are concerned (dash attacks and normal attacks benefit from different boons). This causes you to stagger your natural mobility for the sake of DPS in a clunky, roundabout way, and for a reason that's not all that easy to understand (as both your dash and normal bow attacks look and act pretty much exactly the same).
• Too much exposition for an action game. Don't get me wrong, the voice acting is great, but they did an excellent job in the previous games maintaining a consistent narrative that doesn't get in the way of the game. Feels like a step backwards in that regard.

Keep in mind, I haven't even unlocked all of the weapons, and I haven't completed a single run. These are just what I found casually.

I'm just waiting, and hopeful, that Hades comes to Switch honestly. I'd rather have a nice Roguelike to take on the go that isn't Binding of Isaac. Should probably get Dead Cells on console as well. I use controller on the PC anyway.

To put into perspective exactly how much love was put into Transistor, the game has two versions of almost every single background song in the game: One for when you're moving around in real-time, and one for when you've paused the game or acting during your Turn. Effectively, each song has a fast-paced version (which is what you're hearing while you're running away and trying not to die), and a calm background version (what you'd expect to hear when playing a turn-based strategy game). The music was planned to exactly match the player's mood.

I'm not denying a lot of love went into the game. Supergiant kills it with their OSTs and general art. It's one of their high marks. The games always look and sound great. I just found the combat in Transistor to be really clunky and not a whole lot of fun near the end. I own the OST for Bastion and Transistor however and am happy to have both.

[Zombimode]

I dunno, I'd rank Transistor as one of the best modern RPGs ever made. It didn't have a whole lot of replayability, I'll give you that, but most modern RPGs have some sort of glaring clunkiness that just prevents them from being good, whether it's atmosphere, mechanics, UI, story, or having bad playstyle options.

To be honest from just looking at the trailer and screenshots Transistor has not registered as an RPG in my eyes. Are the looks deceiving?
But I'm also very traditionalistic when it comes to RPGs, with Witcher 3 and Pathfinder: Kingmaker being the best "modern" ones without question. And I can't see grouping Transistor in the same genre as those two games.

Genre questions aside, Transistor has piqued my interest
It looks like a really well made stylistic and fun game. I will put it on my list.

[Man_Over_Game]

To be honest from just looking at the trailer and screenshots Transistor has not registered as an RPG in my eyes. Are the looks deceiving?
But I'm also very traditionalistic when it comes to RPGs, with Witcher 3 and Pathfinder: Kingmaker being the best "modern" ones without question. And I can't see grouping Transistor in the same genre as those two games.

Genre questions aside, Transistor has piqued my interest
It looks like a really well made stylistic and fun game. I will put it on my list.

It kinda is?

You do gain levels, which rewards you with either unique functions, or rewards you with more memory to work with (up to 32). Memory lets you equip more functions to other functions or to yourself. Each function you equip has a memory cost of 1-4. , and considering you have:

• 2 passive slots
• 4 active function slots
• 2 enhancement slots per active function

You can equip a total of 14 functions, so your starter 16 or so memory doesn't go very far.

The game itself is pretty dang robust. Take one function, Breach. As an Active function, it shoots a piercing, knockback laser. However, you can equip it to yourself to have more energy to spend during Turn. Or you can use it to enhance a specific function to make that function have more speed and range (so you can convert an otherwise melee attack into a ranged one, or turn a mid-range attack into a sniper shot). Or you can keep it as an Active slot and enhance it with a different function to gain a new effect, like how adding Switch to it will cause all enemies hit by Breach to temporarily join your side.

That's just 1-2 functions. Things get pretty crazy when you're experimenting with a Breach(Get+Bounce) that pulls and debuffs everything near you to set up with something big and lethal like Cull().

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I haven't tried Kingmaker, and unfortunately I was not one of the people that was swooned by Witcher 3.

Don't get me wrong, gorgeous game, big world, just couldn't get into it after multiple tries. Combat felt awkward, rewards didn't feel properly rewarding (I got better gear from random secrets rather than actually earning it), and everything felt like it took too much time. To be fair, I had the same gripes about Red Dead Redemption 2 (with its slow 2-3 hour tutorial after including load times), so maybe I'm not the guy most people should listen to. I'm a big stickler for mechanics, and both just felt weirdly out of date in that regard.

[Zevox]

It kinda is?

You do gain levels, which rewards you with either unique functions, or rewards you with more memory to work with[...]

Uh, not familiar with this game at all, but I do feel the need to say that none of that sounds like it makes the game an RPG. It's been a long time since gaining levels and such character-customization options as you power up was unique to that genre. It gets thrown into a lot of different styles of games these days.

[Cespenar]

Arguing about what a RPG "really" is a bit of a lose-lose situation in my opinion, but if we were to go that way, I myself wouldn't call Transistor a RPG by any stretch.

But on the other hand, its gameplay is similar to, say, Diablo, and that has been called an "Action RPG" (for some reason) for decades, so there's that argument as well. Though honestly, I would come up with something new for that genre if it were up to me. "Tactical Beat-em-up" or something like that.