Review: Trine (Frozenbyte)
Note: Played through the entire game in single player mode for this review. The co-op mode was untested.
On paper, the concept behind Trine sounds like a real winner. Switching between characters with different abilities in order to defeat enemies and get the better of platforming-based puzzles sounds just like my cup of tea.
Yet while Trine is incredibly polished and play flows along smoothly, Frozenbyte also miss the mark in many areas, leaving a feeling of unbalance and wasted opportunity. It had the potential to be fantastic, but have no fear - it's still damn good fun.
The concept goes something like this: A wizard, a thief and a warrior are stuck together by forces unknown, and set out on a quest to find means of separating themselves. Oh, and there's an army of the undead on the loose too.
Our three heroes can only be summoned one at a time and are useful for different situations. The wizard can move objects around with his levitation powers and conjure up objects like boxes and bridges - clearly advantageous for progressing. The thief can use her ninja-like rope swinging skills to traverse chasms and the like (as long as there is a helpfully placed wooden ceiling, of course) and hold enemies back with her bow and arrow.
Last but definitely not least is the rather cliched strong-but-dumb warrior who swings his sword around and can reduce a room full of animated skeletons to piles of bones. He is easily the weapon of choice when taking on any baddies.
And this is where the first problem with Trine lies. Meeting enemies is a regular occurrence and, while the wizard can shower anything evil with objects and the thief can arrow the undead, there really is no substitute for simple slicing anything that moves to their second death.
This means that generally I spent the majority of my time lugging the big fat brute around. He can kill easily, he can traverse platforms just as well as the other two classes and really the only reason to switch is to pass puzzles which honestly don't come about as often as I would have liked. This unbalanced nature of play leaves a sour taste in the mouth. A better spread of combat and puzzles would have eased this problem.
See, if I had it my way, I'd like to see more use of the wizard. Creating objects out of thin air is great fun - especially when combining all your creations in the construction of a tower, bridge or other useful structure. One strange design decision, however, comes from the wizard's levitation powers. Picking up carets and the like is fine and they spin satisfyingly around your point of pickup. However, try lobbing your ammo of choice and you'll find it simply stops instantly in the air before falling straight downwards. It baffles me as to why Frozenbyte would choose to deny their near-perfect physics system something which could be great fun.. Perhaps during testing the team decided chucking huge rocks around made everything a little too easy.
I should probably get round to mentioning those graphics, right? Yeah, it does look as stunning in action as it does in the trailers. An incredible amount of effort has gone into creating a gloriously detailed fantasy world full of personality and charm. From the dingy dungeons to the beautiful outdoor ruins sections, Trine really sets the bar for how independent games should look, yet gives off a feeling that it's all done with relative ease.
In fact the whole game as an experience feels pretty easy going and it's that feeling which was most enjoyable. Take death, for example: If you die as one character, you simply spawn as one of the remaining three a little way back and continue until your comrade is revived at a checkpoint. Even the collect-a-thon that is grabbing lots of green and blue bottles isn't much of a chore - I found myself keeping my eyes peeled for them along the way because I actually wanted to find them all. That's rare for me!
Yet it is this laidback attitude which digs Trine into a hole that gets deeper and deeper with progression. The enemies aren't exactly varied - we've got skeletons, skeletons with shields, skeletons with armour, skeletons with bows and arrows, skeletons with shields AND armour... oh, and bats. Those damn bats. OK, so there are a couple of slightly larger enemies too now and again, but that's pretty much it. After killing the same enemies for 5 hours straight, it does get slightly boring.
Trine is great platforming fun let down by a number of silly niggles, but the question is should you give it a go? I'd say if you really enjoy the demo then go for it - the rest of the game follows suit, so you won't be disappointed. For anyone else, it might be best to wait for a Steam weekend sale and pick it up then instead, as it's a little pricey at $30.
Comments
I feel the same way about the mage, so many times i tried to hit the enemies with box just to see then stop in middleway and drop down. Same thing with the plataforms, trying to swing then to get to high places, but guess what, mage can't do that...
I remember a place in the game that i created a plank with the mage, put a magical box so the plank had enough weight, then put a diagonal plank on top of that to reach a place, so i though "hey, this is pretty clever" just to find out that i could just had grabbed the wood ceiling.
The only chalenge that i found in the game was the last level, but my pc lagged a little, so this probally added the chalenge.
But still a great game and is really fun trying to find all the chests and potions in the game. A great game indeed.
Posted by: jack_in_the_Dark | July 17, 2009 5:22 PM
The Wizard's disability to throw objects is easily explained by the Knight's ability to lift and kick them away himself. Was the wizard able to do so from any distance, there wouldn't be any use for the Knight to do so, while using him to knock enemies out with giant stone fists for example is great fun :)
Otherwise, I can agree with your criticism. But! Trine truly misses opportunities to *make* the player use the characters in very fun and varied ways. As you've explained, there is no actual need to use any character but the Knight for combat. Once you've leveled up the Thief, though, she can kill enemies with a single rain of arrows, which again makes the Knight rather obsolete. But, the real fun comes from still using the characters in fun ways, even if the game doesn't enforce it. This is greatly helped by the gentle difficulty, as you've explained. At least I had great fun trying out all kinds of different ways to dispose of enemies. Yes, I could have just whacked them with the Knight's hammer all the time (and oh is that satisfying!), but I just had more fun to for example find out that you can kick them with the Thief during a swinging maneuver, or make them get crushed by some of the Wizard's wicked contraptions.
Similarly, I had a lot of fun finding ways over chasm by building different kinds of bridges, or throwing a wooden box as the Knight and then grapple onto it as the Thief while it is in flight - even though there was already a wooden plank there I could've easily used to swing over the chasm. Yet, I didn't use it, because I had more fun experimenting :)
So, long story cut short, I think that's what it boils down to: If you don't want to "stray from the path" and just do whatever is actually most practical in any situation, you will likely have a fun experience with a game, that may be rather too easy and maybe a bit monotonous, yet still pretty cool. But, if you really try to use all the possibilities Trine offers, feasible or not, you will get a lot of replayability and many more hours of great fun out of it :)
Posted by: MisterX | July 17, 2009 5:42 PM
This game demo crash on my computer. Too bad, I think I would've bought it.
Posted by: Kapser | July 17, 2009 6:15 PM
Co-op mode had it's issues along the way, but the main one would be that if you had 3 players playing on the final level it would be downright impossible to progress due to the first part requiring only the thief to continue as she is the only character who can get up there.
Posted by: Herasy | July 17, 2009 6:55 PM
Yep, I played the demo and thought it was pretty fun...but I'm waiting for the first weekend deal before buying it.
Posted by: Chetyre | July 17, 2009 8:08 PM
I can only agree with the review, although my favourite character throughout almost the entire game was actually the thief;) The non-enforcing of using different characters can be both a pro and a con, since it allows people to suit the gameplay to their liking - I must admit that I thoroughly enjoyed it all my way. On the other hand, this way the other characters quickly become useless. The ability to restart with all characters from the last checkpoint instead of the entire level makes it all to easy, and was my main 'pain' with this game.
Having said all of this - it is a truly wonderful title, regardless of its small flaws here and there, and I would strongly suggest everyone to give it a go.
Posted by: Hiacynt | July 17, 2009 9:25 PM
Trine really should be played with three players simultaneously. Then all characters are better balanced in that the wizard usually is the only one capable of helping the fat warrior across, while the warrior on the other hand, becomes a chore to bring with you past any kind of death-trap gaps. I recommend it warmly, if you have two friends, a few bottles of wine and a bunch of x-box controllers (logitech's didn't work out)
Posted by: Jakob B Rogert | July 17, 2009 11:07 PM
Hi there:
IMHO
-the graphic is awesome but THEY STINK!.. its pretty hard to find where the platform start and end, sometimes a small shadow is a platform.
-Physics is a bit broken in some cases.
-Is way less frustrating than Bionicle Commando (stupid game where you can die even in the tutorial level), so yes, it is playable.
-While the switch of character is fine but soon you will find playing with only one character at once, mostly the warrior is kinda useless (because he lacks of a ranged weapon).
-Is repetitive and its lack of strategy, it is not a The Lost Vikings.
Posted by: magallanes | July 18, 2009 2:41 PM
I wasn't digging that grappling hook. I felt like I was expected to use it all the time but it was too awkward.
Posted by: Andrew | July 18, 2009 3:31 PM
My problem with the game is the total lack of surprised the game puts in the way. The wizard is given the most character and even he doesn't have much. The story could have space for more than "three people go about with magic artifact and kill (again) the big, bad, final end boss.
For example, the three characters should have interacted more. They did so in the first levels or so, on some meaningfull level but it leaves it there.
Posted by: Zixinus | July 18, 2009 8:31 PM
I personally think trailer 3 should have been released before the game.
Seriously, it shows some great ways different puzzles can be solved.
Posted by: Bob | July 19, 2009 3:29 AM
Review quote: "Trine really sets the bar for how independent games should look".
I just want to say, please bare in mind that Trine is NOT an indie game. It is developed by a company of 20 people and they are backed by a publisher. I have no affiliation with them, just wanted to set the record straight: I think it's unfair to judge the level of production of indie games against the high level of production of a professional developer with a publisher.
Posted by: redrex | July 28, 2009 9:37 PM
Huh... Is it like, The Lost Vikings 2009? :-)
Posted by: Kos | September 16, 2009 8:42 AM