When I first meet him, “Strategy Triangle” protagonist Serenoa Wolffort appears to be a fairytale prince, riding a horse to rescue his fiancée from bandits. The lady in question, Frederica, is entering a political marriage with Serenoa as part of a new peace treaty between Glenbrook, Hyzante and Aesfrost.
Thirty years after a war over salt resources wholly owned by Hayzanter, the treaty aims to restore diplomatic relations and trade between regions, although the salt itself remains closely guarded. Of course, it’s all very different. The staunch Serenoa, loyal to his royal family and the people of the Wolffort area, soon proved to be imperfect – in fact just barely prepared for the many tough decisions he had to make.
In terms of how to approach war, Triangle Strategy takes some important inspiration from Yasunori Matsuno, creator of the Ogre Wars series and Final Fantasy Tactics. Like Tactics, Triangle Strategies explores why medieval societies fought over resources, and the ramifications of it all — all while accompanying Game of Thrones-style political intrigue.
The fights themselves are a bright spot, but also surprisingly rare, which creates a slightly odd imbalance between these fights and their heavy story. Not having a fight every few minutes makes sense, but since fights are often more engaging than simply watching cutscenes of many diplomatic discussions of triangular strategy, I could have done more.
However, they work just fine. Turn-based combat takes place on an isometric grid. During each turn, the character can both move and take action. At the end of each round, you also have to decide where your character should be facing, as any attack from behind constitutes an automatic critical hit, while attacking a character from the side allows for a follow-up attack, often with devastating consequences.
At the same time, certain actions, such as special attacks and magic, consume TP. Characters have a fixed range of movement and stats – for example, Prince Roland of Glenbrook on horse can move very far and hit multiple enemies in a straight line with his spear, while Elalador, the heavy knight, can take more than most. more hits, and use the shield to push enemies away.
The map also frequently involves obstacles and elevations, doesn’t offer cover like in XCOM games, but still works for you There are also some great map designs – meaning the combat is excellent, often costing me every encounter One hour. Tactical RPGs thrive on situations that force you to step back and think: Can I move my healer close enough to my injured teammate in time? Should I fire ranged spells now or save my TP in case it can hit more enemies next round? The triangle strategy definitely does it.
It’s also really challenging – for Square Enix and Artdink, adding a couple of difficulty options and removing permadeath was challenging enough based on feedback from the first demo. But it’s still fair: losing a battle will still reward you with experience points and the option to retry.
Since there are so few encounters for the event, getting your character to the recommended level also involves mentally simulated combat at your camp. Here you can try some scenes not in the story and gain extra experience. This is a great way to level up characters you may not be using enough, as only characters on an active party will gain experience, and it’s also a great way to simply try out their abilities.
This is important because Triangle Strategy has a lot of playable characters. So many that I can’t unlock all of them in one game, in fact, it’s probably intentional (by the way, the system’s decision on when to unlock someone and who it is is invisible). Each character has unique abilities, and frankly, that’s the variety I’m fascinated by. That said, starting from a certain roster size becomes difficult to manage. I’ll admit that there are some characters I’ve never played on my first playthrough, just because I need to work on leveling them up, but the triangle strategy is no different from Fire Emblem in this regard.
The range is good, but the characters in the triangle strategy could use more clearly defined personalities. For now, they often feel like stand-ins for arguments or demographics, not individuals. I know almost nothing about some of them, even though I’ve unlocked some optional side stories. I would have liked something more engaging, but this – coupled with the fluctuating quality of the English voiceovers (with Japanese options) and the fact that Triangle Strategy only shows its beautiful character art in the menu – are my only complaints when it comes to them .
The campaign alternates between cutscenes, combat, exploration, and decision-making sequences, and the time split between these aspects is where triangular strategy can get tedious. A battle is usually followed by a cutscene of over an hour. You do get thrown back into the world map quite often – just in case listening to the stories tires you out and you want to play a mental sim battle or two – it definitely helps, but I’ve played visual novels involving them more players than triangular strategy .
Between actions, exploration sequences allow you to move around a small area like Serenoa; here, you can gather some items and talk to your companions in the quiet moments before battle, or determine the future battlefield. These scenes are a great opportunity to appreciate Triangle Strategy’s beautiful 2D-HD style, which blends 3D and 16-bit elements similar to Octopath Traveller. Lighting effects such as fire and lightning look beautiful, there is often a small amount of dust in the air, pools glisten in the light, and grass swaying gently. With environments that look like small dioramas and you can always see their borders, seeing 16-bit characters in a game like this is a simple, nostalgic pleasure, often reminiscent of the game’s spiritual predecessors.
I also spent a lot of time on the upgrade menu after the battle. In triangle strategy, you can upgrade weapons and characters individually. Both methods broadly affect the same stats, but character upgrades are rare and involve special items (think Fire Emblem: Three Houses), while in weapon upgrades you can use materials like wood and stone to upgrade specific items stats such as HP, which will be different for each character. It’s worth noting that you’ll never have enough resources to upgrade everyone, as the cost of unlocking a material and the cost of the upgrade will increase each time you unlock it. It’s a system that takes time to get used to, but you can further differentiate the characters this way, making two spellcasters feel completely different, even if their starting stats are roughly the same.
Triangle Strategy is a dramatic, engrossing tale of medieval conflict – one that can proudly sit alongside the game that inspired it.
Regarding the topic of choice, sometimes events in a story require a decision to be made. In these cases, Serenoa will draw the scales of conviction. His retainers will suggest and discuss several courses of action, and you must try to convince each of them to choose the option of your choice. There will then be a poll, and responses to the story will vary slightly.
An example: The first decision concerns whether Serenoa should go to Hyzante or Aesfrost on a diplomatic mission. Most of these decisions won’t have a direct impact on the overall story, meaning they won’t be referenced when the story converges again. Still, they offer a different perspective on events, and also a reason to replay the game, rather than finding every character and chasing the big goal of finding three endings.
They’re still a highlight thanks to some great writing. I’ve played a lot of games that require you to make decisions based on the story, but Strategy Triangle’s understanding of the mechanics is fascinating. These decisions are all important, and obviously a lot of thought has been put into their ramifications. In one instance, I was asked if I would sacrifice part of a town to stop an enemy, and elsewhere I was asked if I would ally with a potential enemy. Each of your retainers has their own opinion, and there is no easily discernible way to change their minds.
Sometimes the extra information gained during exploration can put someone in your shoes, sometimes not. From a narrative standpoint, the fact that I looked at each of these decisions and the subsequent discussions they sparked, rather than choosing between a good choice and an aggressive one like in other games, is very worth.
This allows The Triangle Strategy, for all its thought and grace, to reveal some events prematurely, but overall it does a good job of showing that war is a complex issue and how it affects ordinary people, trade, And, since this is a medieval setting, concepts like honor and loyalty are even more obscure. Triangular Strategies talks about slavery in a measured way without even resorting to modern racial allegories that, elsewhere, often seem blunt when translated back into fantasy worlds.
I also found that none of the triangular strategies ended up being “good”, which was interesting. While you as a player have difficulties – in my case, 36 hours after the first playthrough – the job of running a nation is never complete, and there will never be a perfect way to do it. That’s a divisive thing for a fantasy game, as my first reaction as a player used to some level of victory was to be honestly a little disappointed. But games are better for it. As a result of all this, albeit often at a slow pace, Triangle Strategy is a dramatic, often engrossing, story of medieval conflict — and can be proudly adjacent to the game that inspired it.
