Heya, I've seen you criticize some Kohdok videos in the past, so here I am just giving you back the same :P
It sounds like you played the starter deck and kinda just judged the game there, and didn't continue, or explored a bit into set 1, and kinda just left it there. To be honest the game was pretty bare at first, but especially in that core starter box. It's one of the worst starter experiences I've ever had. You're right that most games in that box devolved into Slugfests of hitting and hoping you hit for the bigger number. That being said the game had a lot of depth from set 2 onward, and was very well balanced from a card design perspective, but also just had tons of room to explore.
This game was massive from a deckbuilding perspective. Because any card could go with any card, the teams were quite literally endless. While this isn't fully the case from a competitive perspective (especially in set 1 where some of the cards were just statted far better than others), by sets 2 and 3 there was a lot more exploring to be done, as the team tightened numbers far tighter and got a feel for powerful effects. I quite liked the limited action economy, and since turns passed back and forth so quickly, I didn't think not having interaction on the opponent's turn was a huge deal. It was more like in your game you attack once, then your opponent attacks and you can pass actions back and forth? Transformers did that by passing turns, instead of singular actions in combat. Since there were card flips, there was variation in how much damage you could do.
Additionally this game was actually monetized in such a friendly way for the consumer. Even though some of the SRs were really rare you could trade or sell them for the ones you wanted, and you really didn't need more than 1 (if you even needed one) in a team.
At the lowest level Transformers was a Slugfest, as you mentioned. But at the highest levels you were building a cohesive team and having them tank damage at opportune times for each other. The mechanic that tapped characters had taunt was really ingenious, and gave you a lot of optimization with damage. You wanted to leave your characters at just that edge where they survived and got an extra attack in, but it wasn't too crunchy.
Finally the pips were really great. I wished black pips had been introduced in the first set as opposed to the third, as they felt really natural to the triangle of pips (orange beats black beats blue beats orange) and you could tech your deck for whatever meta you suspected by making your decks hybrid, or opting for other pip combos. This game was quite well made, but unfortunately just didn't have the marketing and yknow... Wizards tcgs that arent magic. I found it like a year after its release and it only had just gotten its second set.
