Steam Sale Review: Trine

I can't find anything worth watching on TV so I guess I'll do a post. The world turns to antisocial nerds who live with their parents for blogs and who am I to say no.

The next game that I have played enough of to declare myself a legitimate authority on is:


This game is a 2D platformer where you switch between playing as a warrior, a thief and a mage depending on the situation. If the aforementioned classes didn't give it away, Trine is traditional fantasy, so don't expect much originality in the setting/plot.

The levels consist of a mix of platforming and action, with a considerable amount of physics applied to both. Each of the three characters have rolls to play, and a lot of the challenges you come across can be solved in multiple ways so you can afford to occasionally lose one of your team.

The warrior is basically pure combat. His sword makes quick work of enemies and his shield can block anything. As you level he can learn several new but fairly pointless abilities, and by the end of the game the warrior is the least useful character. Eventually I found myself only using him when I wanted to keep the others from taking damage.

The thief is the balanced party member. Her bow while weaker than the sword can naturally pick off enemies from afar and her grappling hook lets her swing from any wooden surface. The thief's upgrades make her a force to be reckoned with, as one increases how many arrows you fire at once and another reduces charge time. The capacity to spam four arrows every few seconds kind of makes the warrior redundant.

The mage is the problem solver; he can conjure boxes and levitate objects. Though he doesn't any direct attacks, with some quick manoeuvring it is possible to spawn a box above an enemy and crush them with the awesome power of physics. Gaining levels allows you to summon more boxes, as well as planks and eventually a floating platform, at which point all but the hardest of puzzles become trivial.

A big let down for the game is the combat; there's just not much to it. When playing as the warrior all you would do is:

raise shield > block attack > attack till skeleton is dead (again) > repeat

Not only is the combat simplistic but there is not much diversity in the enemies. Almost everything you fight is a skeleton, who come in several slightly different varieties (normal, shielded, bow-using etc). There are four other types of enemies in the entire game, and that includes the final boss, and the goddamn bats.

....I swear I hate those freaking bats.

Moving on.

Visually the game is great. I admit these days all games look good to some extent and when compared to 10 or 15 years ago, but what I like about this game is that it is consistent. All too often video games have good graphics in most places but in some situations the quality dips; such as if the environments are nice but the characters are residents of the uncanny valley. My point is that Trine doesn't seem to have a dip in quality anywhere in it, or if it does, I was sufficiently distracted enough to not notice.