I have a hard time explaining how deeply in love I am with this game. It's a masterpiece.

(Spoiler Free)

The first thing that hits you is the world, and the art, and throughout my entire thirteen hours (on my first playthrough) the environments never get stale or old. Everything is gorgeous and feels handpainted.

The story and the characters are incredible and deeply engaging, but I won't say anything more than that all the voice actors involved are phenomenal.

Battles are fun, fluid, and tactical. The mixture between the strategy and turn-based combat and something more real-time never gets old. Bastion this is not, Transistor is more methodical, and much slower. You're allowed to take your time to plan out what you'd like to do and put it into action. The skills and abilities system keeps the variety up. Usually I'd find my niche and stick to what I liked, but Transistor had me switching up my abilities at every single checkpoint, and not just for all of the files that I was addicted to collecting to get every single tidbit I could out of the writing.

This noir wouldn't be complete without the jazzy cyberpunk soundtrack, which I could listen to forever and never get bored of. Not only is it good on it's own, but it sinks itself deep into the game and plays dynamically and reactively depending on what is happening at the moment.

But, above all else, what makes Transistor a masterpiece is the atmosphere. The absolute dedication the game has to it's world and how much it sucks you in at every opportunity. Optional environments and points of interest litter every single map just to get another line or two out of the Voice. The way the music works itself in, the way enemies interact with you and all your abilities, the way the environments twist and change, the terminals you find, the files you can read, and the small interactions and character moments out of Red herself are unlike anything I have ever played before. If I were making a "Videogames as art" list, this would top it off.

I will never forget this game.