Trine 2 – Review
Wizard, Rogue, or Warrior. Why not play as all three?
Sequel to a successful 3D/2D predecessor available for PC and the Playstation Network called Trine – unsurprisingly – Trine 2 is based more or less on the same premise. Three characters, whose names are as unimportant as their back stories, are bound together by a mystical artefact called the Trine.
While the first game went so far as to have a context behind these three people sharing the same body (in that they all happened to discover the Trine by accident at the same time and they wanted to reverse the process), Trine 2 does little but wind things up and let them go. The kingdom is in trouble for some reason, we have to bind ourselves together again, let’s get on with the adventure.
The big sell for most of us will be the visuals. Trine 2 sparkles with hypnotic scenery and field depth behind the 2D platforming gameplay. Trees blow in the wind, rain batters the landscape, creatures hop about behind the foliage or hove into view as their size dictates, and water flows, drips, and crashes all over the place; nobody could accuse Trine 2 of not looking good.
Once you get over the sheer beauty of the ground you’re stomping, padding, or sneaking upon, you’re left with the gameplay, and boy are you in for a rude awakening to the fact that Trine 2 is actually pretty average.
While it succeeds on the visual front there’s nothing particularly compelling about the platforming or combat elements, which are two of the three big ones (handled mostly by the rogue and warrior characters) with puzzles being the third (where the wizard will come in handy).
Having the ability to flip between the three characters as and when you see fit, you’re expected to make your way from left to right across the landscape. Each character has their personal collection of tricks.
The mage can manipulate just about any physical object or mechanism, regardless of size, and conjure blocks and planks into existence. Our hefty warrior chap can smash his way through obstacles, enemies, and protect himself from hazards with his shield. The nubile rogue can leap and swing her way through the levels using her trusty grappling hook, and send a few arrows in a foe’s direction with her bow.
Everyone gets upgrades, naturally, so before too long your party of average adventurers are able to equip explosive weapons, utilise supernatural feats of strength, and magically pick up enemies and drop them into all kinds of trouble.
A pity, then, that the situations where you will be required to make the most of these skills aren’t actually that good.
Combat, when it occurs, is a game of run around and mash the buttons if you’re a warrior, or run and jump around and shoot awkwardly (with the right thumb stick, no less) if you’re the bow-wielding rogue, or run around and look for a checkpoint if the first two participants die and you’re left with the rather useless mage. Not even a single fireball will ever curl out from underneath this intellectual’s fingernails.
It’s not often that you’ll die from combat, of course, since most of the enemies are predictably simple creatures. Even the boss fights are repetitive events for the most part, luring a brutish giant into clubbing a wall where he’ll get his weapon stuck, then jumping over and slashing or firing away. Rinse and repeat. No, if you happen to die during combat it’ll usually be because of a forgotten liquid hazard, spike trap, or dead drop.
Not to worry, though, since every few steps there’s a checkpoint that can restore your heroes to full health in the blink of an eye.
So that leaves us with the platforming and the puzzling.
Platforming in Trine 2 is a true test of patience and one’s ability to understand where the ‘platform’ in question ends and where the character’s feet can find purchase on it. A positive aspect of Trine 2 is that it offers multiple methods through a platforming section, be it the run-and-jump principle, acrobatic swings using the rogue’s grappling hook, or using the wizard’s conjuring skill to build a path over things as you go.
It quickly becomes a cause of high blood pressure when a platform section is mixed in with a puzzle or combat section.
The puzzles in Trine 2 are all physics-based and some of them are clever enough to earn a gold star even if you sit there fuming over how to solve them. And they’re diverse. While the combat and platforming segments won’t stick out as some of your most memorable experiences in a videogame, some of the later puzzles will make you feel good about yourself when it all clicks into place.
What this boils down to is that you’re going to have more interest in the wizard’s sections of the game, as they’ve been refined the most. The warrior and rogue are rendered down into vehicles designed to get our mage character from A to B through dull sections that could have done with some hefty attention to gameplay detail.
There are a couple of other positives to be found, though.
For starters, in the half-platform half-puzzle areas there are usually multiple ways of going forwards. Sometimes you’ll find you scrape through a rapidly-closing door or onto a distant ledge through what seems like simple luck alone.
If you don’t care about collecting every experience potion, doubtless Trine 2 is a more straightforward affair than it could have been. Trying to snag every one of those potions will require some cunning use of the environment around you and your heroes’ collective bag of tricks. Some of them may even require a friend to jump in and lend you a hand.
Unlike the first Trine where valuable equipment was hidden throughout the levels, in this game it’s been switched to seemingly pointless art and poetry. It’s possible this was intended to enhance the fantasy story, which takes on a shade of Pratchett-esque mockery, but ultimately that too fails to evoke either the genuine immersion or the humour.
The multiplayer does little to add value and makes the adventure ridiculously easy by adding a partner. A few co-op challenges might have been nice.
Should you purchase Trine 2 for 1200 Microsoft Points, you’ll get around four hours’ worth of single player content to work with. You could always make that “altruism beats quantity” argument, leaning in favour of the game’s visual and sound presentation, but in the same year we had Bastion that won’t remain convincing for long.
A neat collection of gameplay ideas that simply aren’t refined enough, Trine 2’s content doesn’t match the price tag on Xbox Live. While far from being awful, it can’t live up to other recent Arcade releases.
Pick it up as a deal or download the first one for PC; either way you’ll have a better experience.
Successes:
- Looks lovely.
- Sounds lovely.
- Physics-based puzzles.
- Switching play styles on the fly.
- Variety of environments.
Failures:
- Platforming isn’t great.
- Combat isn’t great.
- Repetitive bosses.
- Story isn’t at all intriguing.
- Multiplayer is a near-pointless experience.
Score: 6/10
- Alex ‘Alaric’ Lemcovich
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