“If you want peace, prepare for war”. It’s strange, to say the least, to get a game like Triangle Strategy in these troubled times we live in. The new game from Square Enix puts players at the center of a whirlwind of political tensions, just as a fragile peace is broken across a continent, forcing all of its parts to oppose each other for power and control of resources. Yes, it might sound awfully familiar given what surrounds us.
Coincidences aside, Tomoya Asano’s team returns to the fray with a tactical RPG that doesn’t fall on the shoulders of combat, unit management, unit progression, and affinities. Triangle Strategy isn’t Fire Emblem, it’s Final Fantasy Tactics, but combined with a story of A Song of Ice and Fire or Game of Thrones if you’re more into series than books.
Its protagonist is Serinoa Wolffort, son of the patriarch of the Wolffort family, one of the most important in the kingdom of Glaucoburg, which, together with the Archduchy of Frostforge and the Holy See of Dunalgid, forms the continent of Norselia. It goes without saying that although the three nations have made peace after a brutal war, it is tenuous and takes little time to shake from the ambitions of power, the hustle and bustle between leaders and mysteries far beyond what is this middle age is to be broken Fantasy appears at first sight.
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The overall storyline development is Triangle Strategy’s strongest point, although it sacrifices the rhythm of the game to do so. Between fights, you can face conversations and scenes of more than half an hour or almost an hour. To make matters worse, all dialogue is important because it provides important information for decisions that in turn affect the course of the story. This is usually in the options (beliefs) that you select in the skin of Serinoa when conversing with others, although the key moments occur when it’s time to use those persuasion scales.
Engaging in this implies a vote, generally between two groups of opposing characters, where you have to convince one or the other to vote for what you want. The decision may benefit your people but sacrifice others; or the other way around. Some moments are particularly intricate, putting you between a rock and a hard place, although things get more complicated than necessary when you see how characters who had intentions to vote end up voting for something else.
To give the player more tools for those moments, Square Enix is introducing a phase of researches which also serves to study the terrain ahead of possible battles in the future. In them you collect items, chat with characters and can carry out small missions that are mainly based on talking to each other and making things happen. The most important thing about these stages is that they unlock dialogue options that can completely change the course of certain votes and the storyline in general. And that’s very important, because Triangle Strategy has several endings that will depend on our beliefs and choices.
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It should be noted that they are the only ones that offer some freedom of movement. In this title, there is no world map to roam freely, nor cities to find and visit. You have a map that takes you straight to the events and when you investigate you move through fairly limited areas that open up in a totally linear way in the chapters that the story is divided into. In the long run they almost get buried in tons of lines of dialogue. It’s annoying to see that the game card shows an optional event in one place, go and see that it’s just a matter of reading a few lines between two characters (there are dozens of them), and the worst thing is that they may be required to activate something in the main event of a game chapter (marked in red on the map). The problem is that some slow down progress and only serve to delve a little deeper into the “lore”.
The pace is slow in case there was any doubt, although the story does have some really good moments and some of the most memorable characters. The overall distribution is completely different, and in your squad you can have a very diverse range of units, with more than 18 unique individuals, both in terms of combat and type, who also have marks based on the route , which they take build during the game. Although it is true that clear classes are seen, such as Mage, Support, Swordsman, Spearman, Archer…
This brings us to Triangle Strategy’s most solid section, courtesy of an HD 2D that looks better than ever and that dominates its use of light and shadow even more (some environments and particle effects are surprising): its fights. While we’re dealing with an RPG that’s limited in its freedom of exploration, in its desire to give weight to freedom of choice, it doesn’t falter in its combat system at all.
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Every fight requires attention and reflection. When choosing which units to fight and where they are located, you must consider from the outset what type of enemy you are facing and the nature of the location you are fighting. Weaknesses and strengths depend not only on the type of unit and its equipment, the environment also plays an important role: grass can burn and burn enemies or teammates, rain can create puddles that amplify electric shocks, or even ice can cause slips, the attacks miss .
All this “environmental” level is added to the usual titles of this type, to typical mechanics such as spells, ranged, melee or area attacks, power-ups, objects, attacks from behind or even combos when a character is ahead and surrounded Behind. What is surprising is that the equipment level of the characters has been restricted. In Triangle Strategy, you can’t choose armor or weapons, you can only upgrade what they have or equip accessories that enhance certain traits. It challenges something that seemed immobile in the genre, and it works well because it gives more weight to the environments, a strategy that requires studying locations and enemies to achieve victory.
For this reason, it is a pity that there are so few battles in this game, despite offering a number of optional battles that are unlocked in the camp (a place accessible from the menu where you buy objects, promote class units, improve can use their weapons or their traits). ). Asano’s team should have focused on action rather than conversation because it would help maintain interest and enjoy more of mechanics that take little time to bond with the player.
Triangle Strategy is a game with many lights and shadows. There is a very interesting central idea, but an execution that doesn’t help. It’s beautiful, it sounds wonderful, it commands attention from the first minute and its story is full of twists and turns, some as harsh as they are unexpected, but always letting the player lead. Yes, sometimes it’s difficult to get the wind on your decisions due to most random variables, but in the end all responsibility for what happens rests with you.
It was a more pleasant surprise than we expected but less than we would like. The change of direction of the development team after Octopath Traveler was as unexpected as the complex storyline that hides in this adventure and while we’d like to see more combat and enjoy a higher level of complexity in the character development, we can’t deny that we enjoyed every fight like never before, although more than one drove us to despair. Another interesting and attractive RPG for lovers of the genre, which joins the ranks of Nintendo Switch, although not everyone is convinced.
