Stunningly beautiful but frustrating!

When it was announced that a puzzle platform title involving a wizard, thief and knight was going to be launched on the PSN, it certainly caught our eye and with good reason too. The PSN is establishing itself for being the downloadable platform for quality titles that think outside the box and though Trine bares references to a number of titles, it’s certainly inventive when it comes to melding it all together.

Look at that leap!

The storyline of the game is very much like a fairytale whereby three different characters all were looking for treasure and you find yourself melded together as switchable characters. The developer Frozenbyte has cleverly introduced the beginning of the game by playing a very short segment of each character to lead to the plot line start. Each character in Trine has its strengths and weaknesses and all have a variety of weapons that can be used throughout the game. I don’t want to give them all away because I want you to discover them and discover them you shall because Trine’s side scrolling world is such a beauty to behold that you simply admire the fantastic textures and rich detail that has gone into play. People say that the world of Pandora is extremely impressive, well you are going to get that same level of mouth dropping with Trine. Whether it be beautifully ruined Aztec’s, rainforests and rainbows or dark dungeons wallowing in a mist of intrigue, the level design is simply exceptional.

That's a huge chunk of wood

The balance of action and puzzle based objectives in Trine is an interesting one. It’s kind of like eating a Trifle whereby all the best bits are at the top and the commonalities are at the bottom and we’ll get on to that, but in balance I would say that there is more action than puzzle elements, especially Level 13 onwards as enemies constantly re-spawn resulting you into combat. As said, each character has special skills and abilities and through collecting green potions that upgrade your XP you’re able to upgrade those abilities or find treasure chests to give you unique properties or additional weapons. The knight predictably is more combat orientated and uses a sword and shield system (you can get other weapons). The thief uses a bow and arrow and has the ability to swing across platforms on a rope like device. The wizard on the other hand has no weapons but instead is used more as a tool to provide planks and boxes which can be drawn, as well as using telekinesis to move objects around the map. Thankfully, if you can find it, he can produce a magical spell based weapon, but you are going to have to find it. The wizard also gets access to another object creating device but, as stated I won’t be drawn into ruining the experience for you, so you’ll have to find out for yourself, but it’s pretty cool!

In terms of puzzle difficulty, there isn’t too much difficulty about it. Puzzle elements are mainly left to try and get hard to obtain experience potions and chests rather than progression through the level. The enemies start to spawn at a prolific pace from Level 8 onwards and slowly become a tiring distraction to deal with due to the lack of actual enemy types. There are only so many skeletons and bats you will kill before they become ridiculously annoying as they re-spawn consistently towards the back end of the game. This frustrated me as I had the impression that Frozenbyte used this constant re-spawn technique to long out the game and make it appear longer than it actually is. Other than that there are no other gripes with this game.

As I mentioned you can collect treasure in the game, which have unique properties for each individual and you can change whom wears these amulet’s and rings as you please. Perhaps the most useful you will find is the ability to swim under water without oxygen, your character will create gills in their neck so they can breathe underwater for however long they wish, a useful tool considering the game starts to focus around water based navigation when it goes underground. As for the environments themselves you’ll contend with water, fire, acid and much more and as stated about the graphics and level design, these all beautifully tie in with each other. In terms of puzzles, they aren’t mentally based, sometimes you’ll need the wizard to draw you a box or move a platform over so the thief can swing from it, or you’ll require your thief to use her fire arrow to create light in a few levels where light is sparse, a nice touch.

Such beautiful environments

Trine has plenty of trophies to be had also, some from the ridiculously difficult and others to just fun based trophies either way it’s the perfect game to be used once completed, to hunt out the other trophies on offer. For those 360 players that are feeling a little gutted right now, I can announce that Atlus are working on an XBLA version, but for now this game resides on the PC and PS3 only. Before I get to mention, the combat is pretty much faultless, the shield and sword based system that the knight uses is a master stroke of simplicity but even though the combat feels great, the enemies don’t and they are a tad cumbersome. In terms of sound the game creates an audible atmosphere which works well in with the environments. Some kudos also needs to go to Frozenbyte for the voice actors. They could easily pass for being in a big budget title like Fable. Overall then Trine is a super piece of entertainment however it needed more different enemies to come up against and perhaps the shift of balance to reside a little more on the puzzle side. Trust me come level 15 you will be totally pissed off with having to kill any bat or skeleton again and in hindsight battling through the last two levels is a chore. Don’t let that put you of though, despite its faults this game is just too beautiful to miss out on. It’s worth every penny.