Darth Vader Transformation is a set released June 2nd 2017 and retired April 14th 2018. The set depicts the final scene of Episode III in which Anakin completes his transformation into Darth Vader. The set originally retailed for $24.99 and now sells on ebay or bricklink for between $37 and $87, I was able to pick mine up for $45.
The set comes with four minifigures, in order, Emperor Palpatine (sw0634a),Anakin Skywalker (sw0829), Darth Vader (sw0834), and a brick built DD-13 Medical Assistant Droid (sw0835). Palpatine is a very standard figure he has torso and leg printing and a double sided head, not a very notable version of himself.The battle damaged Anakin is really great all things considered, he has dual molded and printed legs, a fantastic torso print and two different coloured arms.Unfortunatly both the legs and especially the torso suffer a similar printing defect to Commander Fox from the Coruscant Guard Gunship (2023) where the different colours of the print seem to mix together which results in his skin looking grey, a noticably different shade from his head. The Darth Vader figure is also very standard, from what I can tell its the exact same as the figure we have been getting in recent sets, minus the arm printing. That being said this set included the, at the time, new Darth Vader Helmet which is comprised of two pieces the which make a more accurate helmet. This set served as a relativly cheap way to get this new and exciting piece (also a little bonus point both Vader and Palpatine include the newer "spongy" capes which I actually like :3) Finally we have the DD-13 Medical Droid, which, just like Vader and Palpatine, is a servicable and boring droid figure. Overall for as boring as I keep saying they are I really like this collection of minifigs, they're all very well done and Anakin, Palpatine, and the droid we all completely new to my collection so I was very happy to be able to pick them up, especially that Anakin.
In general I'm usually indifferent to play features in Star Wars sets since I buy my sets more or less for display only. I totally understand why they're included and can generally appreciate them. That being said I'm always a little disappointed when the play features interfere with display which is unfortunately an issue with this set. There are two main play features, a set of knobs that you can flick to launch the medical droid and lightsaber storage thing like Darth Vader does in the movie when he learns about Padme, and a mechanism that you can attach Darth Vader’s helmet to which you can use to lower the helmet onto the figures. Sadly I am not able to get the helmet thing to work properly and the way the droid and storage thing are attached makes them very easy to knock off the set without meaning to. All in all I could see the knobs being fun for kids to mess around with but the helmet feature would probably just frustrate them.
This set displays really well, the figures and both droids look great and the base everything is built on leaves tons of room for making little scenes. The only things I'm able to complain about are that either the Darth Vader or Anakin figure will probably go unused in most displays (though there isn't much lego can do about that) and the play features kind of make it annoying to set up. There's not a whole lot more I can really say, this set looks great and the pictures speak for themselves :3