Developer: FuRyu
Publisher: Marvelous Europe
Platform: PC, PS4, PS5, Switch
Tested on: Switch
Trinity Trigger – Review
If you’re a sucker for retro-inspired RPGs, then we reckon that Trinity Trigger has been on your wishlist for quite some time now. The game promised an interesting premise, an original weapon system, and of course, an entire world for you to explore. In this world, a massive battle between the gods of Order and Chaos took place, and now humans are also recruited to fight their battles. We were intrigued by this unique title, but we were rather disappointed when we finally were able to try out the game.
Story
Trinity Trigger takes place in the world of Trinitia, where a long time ago the gods of Chaos and Order duked it out. The war seemingly ended at some point, but nobody knows exactly when. The gods’ gargantuan weapons crashed down on the planet, now serving as massive landmarks that emit a certain aura. Cities are often formed around the so-called Armas, and they attract a lot of scavengers wanting to explore said gigantic weapons. You’ll be playing as Cyan, one of such scavengers, who has a chance encounter with a Trigger, an animal-like creature, who helps Cyan conquer a particularly strong foe. Cyan later learns he is in fact a champion of Chaos and that he would have to battle one of Order’s champions in the future. When he encounters a few other people who also have Triggers and who are also chosen by the gods, they decide that it’s time to set out on their own and change their destinies.
Overall, the story is quite enjoyable, but it remains rather shallow throughout the experience. The voice-acted dialogues are very much the highlight of the story exposition, and this creates an incentive to press onwards.
Graphics
Graphically Trinity Trigger left us with some mixed feelings. On one hand, the artwork during conversations looks quite spiffy and the overall chibi character designs during the gameplay aren’t too bad either. On the other hand, the NPC designs are bland and uninspired, the monsters lack a bit of variety for the most part, and the game never truly fleshes out its world in an appealing way. There is so much talk about these grand and majestic ‘Armas’ which you’ll be exploring as well, but you’ll never truly get to witness their grandeur. When you are about to explore an Arma, you’ll see the staircase leading up to the entrance, and that’s about it. This feels like a missed opportunity. Nonetheless, the small colorful world is still somewhat entertaining to explore, and we did enjoy that each biome feels fairly unique.
Sound
Similarly to the graphical quality of the game, the sound design is also of mixed quality. The game’s key dialogues are fully voiced, and they are done so in a cheesy ’90s kind of way. The latter adds a lot of charm to the mix, and it also makes the characters quite likable. The secondary dialogues in the game, however, are not fully voiced and during these, your characters will blurt out a word or two when a new text window appears. This gets quite annoying very quickly, as you might hear your characters just shout ‘okay!’ numerous times in the course of a minute or two. The soundtrack of the game isn’t too bad, but the music gets repeated ad nauseam, to the point it will also start to get a bit annoying in certain locations.
Gameplay
Trinity Trigger is an old-school adventure RPG in which you’ll explore the world around you with your party of three heroes trying to stop an invisible war. The game is a fairly linear experience, as new locations only open up the moment you have completed key story quests in the previous region. While exploring, you’ll battle a lot of monsters, gain experience, unlock new weapons, and dive into crafting. The game is pretty straightforward, and that might be one of Trinity Trigger’s redeeming qualities.
The game revolves around your Triggers, which can transform into different weapons. This means that each of your party’s characters can swap weapons on the fly, making the game a bit more versatile. The combat mechanics, however, are very basic, as you’ll just have a basic attack, a few special attacks that need to charge over time, and one stronger party attack. The latter also felt a bit underwhelming as it took a long time to charge, and its damage output was not that impressive. That being said, the controls were fairly responsive, and having a dodge readily available was also a plus. Some of the weapons’ combos did make our character move forward, often also resulting in damage for just moving too close to enemies.
Sadly, even though the game does have an enjoyable concept and formula, it does get dragged down by a plethora of issues. For example, the different weapons feel very useless in the game, as all characters have basically the same base stats and they will eventually all end up having the same weapons at their disposal. Not only are the weapons the same, but the attack speed and base damage also remain the same, making it so that not a single character feels unique anymore. We didn’t mind having each character bear the same arms, but when they play almost exactly the same with no variations, the game’s shtick wears off very quickly. There are still minor differences between the characters, but we felt these didn’t stand out enough, thus resulting in what we described here. You can of course alter the weapons’ combos a bit, but that’s basically all there is to it. Equipping Manatite (gems) will also change your damage output and other stats, but the system feels too basic and barebones to remain interesting throughout the course of this 20-hour adventure.
On top of the weapon system feeling very simplistic, everything else also feels very rough around the edges. Not only is combat extremely basic, but you’ll also notice that your AI-controlled allies are utterly stupid. We reckon the developers also figured out how stupid their AI must have been, as your allies take reduced damage when running into hazards and other obstacles. Nothing beats having your AI-controlled ally just dawdle around in a strong enemy’s AOE damage or taking continuous damage when standing still on a spike trap (don’t get us started about the one that just kept touching a cactus in the desert). Instead of making the AI better, the reduced damage feels like a lazy attempt to cover this up. We understand switching characters is a part of the charm during combat, but as you’ll end up with the same weapons on each character after a while, you’ll stop switching as often. This is because you’ll likely go all out with your character of choice anyway. During boss battles you’ll probably also just select one character and only swap to others when you can perform their special attacks. Boss battles are dragged out due to you having to break their armor before being able to dish out actual damage.
The game also includes a co-op mode, which is another nice idea on paper, but the execution also feels a bit lacking. You’ll be able to tackle the challenges around you with two friends in local co-op, but you’ll have to stay within reach of each other. This basically means that everyone has to stay within the same screen, as other characters will not be able to move when another character is standing at the edge of the screen. The game does not even zoom out a bit when the party splits up, but you’ll instead have to stay within arm’s reach. That being said, we did enjoy the boss battles a bit more with friends, as you’ll chip away their health a lot quicker and you don’t have to worry about the AI not even attempting to avoid strong enemy attacks.
Conclusion
Trinity Trigger had a lot of interesting ideas on paper but fails to flesh them out properly. The game is a run-of-the-mill adventure RPG with a few unique ideas that are implemented in such a simplistic way that they lose their edge. While we did enjoy the overall story behind the adventure, which sadly suffers the same fate as the rest of the game as it remains rather superficial throughout the course of this fairly short RPG, we expected a bit more. Even though we still had fun with the general gameplay loop, the game’s shtick ended up becoming rather dull, and combat was often ruined by our pea-brained AI companions. If you can pick up this title in a sale, then this one might be worth it, but with its current price tag, we suggest waiting to see if certain aspects of the game are improved upon by updates or patches.
Trinity Trigger - Review,
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