Author Topic: Trinity Trigger (Switch) Review  (Read 693 times)

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Offline NWR_Neal

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Trinity Trigger (Switch) Review
« on: April 24, 2023, 10:00:00 AM »

Well, they made a new Mana game and called it something else.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/63488/trinity-trigger-switch-review

Sometimes a game’s inspirations are easy to notice when you start playing it. In the case of Trinity Trigger - the latest RPG made by FuRyu and published in the west by XSEED - it is evident that Secret of Mana and Trials of Mana are core to the essence. The action RPG features a combat system that heavily evokes those vintage Mana games, complete with a pop-up ring to select weapons and items as well as three-player co-op. They even brought along Hiroki Kikuta, who composed the music for those Super Nintendo classics and has brought his A-game to this project. Other figureheads of the game’s staff have credits ranging from Octopath Traveler’s story to Xenoblade Chronicles’ character designs. The combined forces of the team have created an enjoyable nostalgic RPG that doesn’t overstay its welcome but might have benefited from some refinement along the way.

You initially control Cyan, a hero from a small village who just found out he is the Warrior of Chaos. You see, in this fantasy world, the gods of Order and Chaos have done battle for ages, and every generation features a warrior for each side who must do battle. Cyan quickly meets up with Elise and Zantis, and the trio tries to carve out a new path for their eternally warring world. They are also joined by Triggers on their journey, which are cute little magical critters that partner with a hero and can transform into a variety of weapons. Cyan partners with Flamme, a fire trigger, while Elise and Zantis have a water and lightning Trigger, respectively. Those elements factor into battle, though the more important aspects are the weapon types, including standard-issue arms like swords, bows, and spears.

The combat focuses on equipping different weapon types on different heroes to navigate weaknesses and challenges. You can’t button-mash because each weapon has a gauge that runs out as you do so. The optimal strategy is to chain combos, dodge away, recharge, and repeat. There are special abilities as well, such as a time-limited buff and a one-time special attack that both recharge over time. For the most part, the combat is a good time, especially as you’re navigating the visually pleasing overworlds and looking for secrets and landmarks. Where the combat starts to sour is with boss battles. Every boss has a shield gauge that has to be whittled down first. This gauge only depletes quickly when you attack with a weapon or element that the boss is weak to, so it can be a slog unless your team is very tricked out. The shield gauge also regenerates, so during the course of the average boss battle, you have to do the song and dance of depleting the shield gauge to get to their actual health gauge multiple times. As you get further in the story, sometimes bosses don’t have weaknesses, so these battles just become tedious wars of attrition. You can craft some accessories that speed up this process, but even still, it’s a sour note for an otherwise enjoyable combat system.

Those accessories are called Manatite, just in case you didn’t get the hint this game is inspired by Square Enix’s Mana series. You can earn these in many ways throughout, but one of the best is through crafting, which gets rather robust as you progress. That’s the way to get the best versions of the attack and defense augments. This is the only equipment upgrade that you run into, as there are no iterative weapons or armors to find. Your skill increases as you level up and then earn points that can be used to upgrade your Triggers for each weapon type. And then you use the Manatite to boost that further. It’s a relatively unique system that you can fiddle with a lot.

I’ll stress though that outside of some of those pesky bosses, I had a blast going through this world. The maps are varied enough in layout, filled with enough side quests and secrets that made exploration rewarding and fun. It’s also a great co-op experience, with relatively seamless drop-in/drop-out co-op play locally. This isn’t a terribly long game. An expedient playthrough can be done in under 10 hours and one more focused on side quests along the way can go to about 20. For this type of action-focused RPG, the generally shorter length is fine with me, but I definitely had a feeling of the endgame sneaking up on me. I felt like there was more you could build off of with this world and combat. While the story is presented well with good voice acting, I never grew too attached to the cast, especially because a lot of the driving force of the story happens because that’s just the direction that you haven’t gone yet.

Trinity Trigger still scratches a specific itch very well. This Mana-inspired game brings the three-player co-op fun back from the Super Nintendo era, but now without the need for a Multitap. This is a good romp for a single player, but it is best suited for a pair or a trio who want to traipse through a fantasy world slaying foes and finding treasure chests. This won’t rival the highs of action RPGs, but it’s an adventure well worth playing.

Neal Ronaghan
Director, NWR

"Fungah! Foiled again!"