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The age-old tale of the legendary triangle that builds the foundation of every fantasy–the fighter, the wizard and the thief.
Trine is a lot better than I thought it would be. Ever since the game’s release I’ve avoided it because of the masses that heralded it as amazing. I simply assumed that the fools had no perspective. Turns out, they were right; Trine is a pretty nice game–and not just for its visuals. Trine is a bedtime story. It’s a fantasy tale of a mystical world of beautiful things populated quickly by three simple heroes. There is no grand backstory or deep character motivation for any of the big three. They are who they simply are, as is needed by the tale that is told around them.
I’ve said it before, but the worst thing about the majority of platformer/puzzle games is that they stifle creativity in lieu of binary I/O puzzle switch solving. Trine expertly avoids this pitfall, in that puzzles can simply be solved in any way that makes sense. A pile of crates blocking your path? Play as the thief to swing past them from above. Play as the Wizard to stack a platform to climb over them. Play as the warrior to smash through them. Now, not every puzzle is so simple nor can every puzzle be solved with each of the characters every time but the “puzzles” themselves feel more like a play ground or an obstacle course. Yes, there’s probably a “correct” or a “most efficient” or “easiest” way to solve every puzzle but for those who love creative problem-solving, you can usually find one or two other ways around hazards if you’re willing to try.
Trine spices things up with a bit of combat as well, which keeps things exciting. Similar to puzzle solving, there’s usually an “easy” way to fight off your enemies, mostly in the form of swapping the Fighter and mashing the shoulder buttons. However, if you’re feeling crafty, you can always snipe enemies from afar with the thief’s bow or drop crates out of the sky onto their head. It’s not a complicated combat system but it rounds out the game to give it the adventurous feeling it needs.
Single player has you swapping between all the characters but if you have one or two other buddies you can team up for some multiplayer madness. Just make sure the warrior knows what direction to point the shield and that your wizard isn’t a total troll with the boxes. All in all, this is a much better game than I thought it was going to be. If more puzzle games were like this, I wouldn’t have to hate them so much. For me, this is Tier 2 but not because it’s bad. The game is great as it is and I can’t think of something it needs to be better and is (and has) bound to be the love of any low-key adventurer-lover.
