Trine is a beautiful fairy tale type game where you follow three characters that are spiritually bound together after touching an ancient artifact known as the Trine. Controlling either the dexterous Thief, lovable oaf Knight or the cunning Wizard, make your way through a 2D world of tricky puzzles and undead baddies.
First of all, Trine is gorgeous. Even if you don't have high quality graphics turned on, you'll spend half of your time playing just staring at the backgrounds. Varying from hidden wood lands to mystic temples, the setting always looks like a labor of love. You'll feel like you're in a far off land, in a well known tale about three brave heroes. The music also ties in nicely,a mix of harmonious harps and valiant trumpets; something a royal kings own court would play. Along with the deep voiced narrator, this is one of the best story book games, though there's not much competition in that field.
Most puzzles rely on the well made physics engine built into the game. Most objects fall, break and collide as the should and each puzzle can usually be solved in more than one way or with a different character, adding to the replay-ability. The only problems I've found are the times the physics don't work according to plan and in the difficulty scale of the puzzles. Most physics puzzles will be solved with the Wizard creating a box or a metal plank to balance something on and while creating the items are easy, turning and maneuvering the items exactly how you want has some issues. The best way I've found is to bounce it off the ceiling or floor but shouldn't there be a better way? Then there's the puzzle's difficulty. While all the puzzles are fun, they never change in difficulty from beginning to end. I was never stumped for more than a minute or two on the hardest ones but I guess being able to solve a puzzle three or more different ways can cause this problem. Just don't expect something like Professor Layton here.
The characters themselves are great. Each add their own view to the story through commentary made between them and control very differently. Wizard pretty much solves everything and leads the storyline along, the Thief is great for ranged attacks and for general maneuverability, and the Knight just kills everyone and smashes things. By kill everyone, I mean kill undead skeletons mostly. Which is a problem, considering when you've seen one sword wielding skeleton, you've seen all the game has to offer. Enemies only vary from normal skeleton to skeleton with shield to skeleton with slightly more armor to,(one of the bosses) a very large skeleton. Not only that, they come in waves of about 20 at a time and after killing them, you don't see another bad guy for at least 5 to 10 minutes. This game would be much better if they would at least put in, i don't know, trolls, wolves, witches; something medieval-ish.
Trine is good puzzle brawler, if you will, that delivers an interesting story line and looks beautiful doing it. Plus it's only $20! Can't beat that.
The Good:
Looks amazing, great story and puzzles are genuinely fun.
The Bad:
Wizard needs some refined controlling and the difficaulty never ramps up as uch as it should. Give me something else to kill besides a skeleton! Please Trine?
The Bottom Line:
With puzzles having more than one way to be solved and an purely astounding visuals, you can't go wrong.
Review based on the PC version of the game.
P2 is looking for suggestions for games again. Send me a message or reply in this thread some ideas. Also, I made a blog with all my reviews on it. Check the link in my profile.
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