(also on PS3 and Xbox 360)
From small indie developer Frozenbyte, Trine 2 is a fairy tale themed side scrolling action platformer which focuses mainly on physics based puzzles. It’s been out and well praised for quite some time, but I’ve finally had a chance to play it when a friend unexpectedly gifted it to me on Steam. As it turns out, Trine 2 is one of the most fantastic puzzle platforming experiences I’ve ever had.
PROS
- Rich, beautifully detailed environments
- Many hidden/optional side areas/puzzles to explore/solve
- Distinctive, diverse levels
- Light hearted soundtrack emphasizes the fairy tale theme
- Solid voice acting that brings out the personality of the characters
- Many different viable solutions for each puzzle
- Classic mode multiplayer’s character lock shuts out solutions that require quick character switching, but opens up new ones that require teamwork
- PC version is well optimized and easy to run
- PC controls are simple and intuitive
CONS
- Combat is very simplistic and suffers a lack of enemy variety
- Extremely easy until the last 3 levels
- Character progression is limited and imbalanced
- In multiplayer, character progression is dictated entirely by the host
- Predictable plot
Trine 2 is most definitely not a hardcore gamer’s game. It’s not about difficulty, or challenge, or mastering the mechanics. Rather, it’s more a casual leisurely stroll through wondrous environments while overcoming mostly low danger obstacles, an experience fitting of its fairy tale motif.
The look on the octopus’s face says it all.
VISUAL: 9.5/10
While not sporting the most advanced graphics technology by a longshot, Trine 2 is easily in the upper echelon when it comes to artistic beauty. The vibrant colors and extensive detail all around go a long way in bringing its fairy tale world to life. More impressive still is that even with so many different colors and shapes on screen at all times, it never seems to clutter up the player’s vision. It’s also why I went pretty screenshot crazy for this review.
One of the prettiest games you’ll ever see.
The areas explored also enjoy a good bit of diversity, though forests and caves tend to take up a bit more screen time than other areas, causing them to lose a bit of distinctiveness. The other areas, however, are unmistakable from one another. From beautiful beaches to icy goblin settlements, from cobwebbed libraries to lava filled forges, you can be assured you’ll never grow tired of the scenery.
Or the Cthulhu shrines.
Granted, however, there are times when that indie level technology shows itself. Liquid particles are massive, which still looks great in motion, but bunch up in a mess if left stationary on a flat surface, such as when you’re trying to carry some on a plank. A few character animations are also rather stiff, such as Zoya’s grapple swing. Ultimately, they aren’t severe or prominent enough for the game to be considered anything less than gorgeous.
All the other details make up for a few visual tech limitations.
AUDIO: 9/10
Although not particularly catchy or memorable, the music is still quite pleasant. More importantly, it reinforces and furthers the adventurous fairy tale atmosphere, much like what the Shadows of the Colossus soundtrack does for the drama and massive scale of that game. The calm, plodding pace dashed with a bit of awe and foreboding dread coincides with the gameplay and visual elements perfectly, making every track sound just right as you’re playing.
Amadeus, the whipped cowardly wizard sounds rightfully mousy.
Likewise, the voice acting isn’t quite triple A quality. But the cartoony voices reflect, and thus help bring out, the cartoony personalities of the characters they belong to. And as all fairy tales should, the narrator sounds properly like a generic grandpa telling bed time stories to children.
GAMEPLAY: 8.5/10
In single player, you freely switch between 3 characters and use their unique traits to advance in the game. Amadeus generally takes all the puzzles with his ability to conjure boxes and planks and move objects around the screen via telekinesis. Zoya is able to shoot far objects with her bow and reach high places with her grapple. Pontius excels in combat and smashes things.
Zoya, the practical greedy “entrepreneur”, and nigh omnipotent by end game.
Their uniqueness wanes as the game progresses, however. Zoya becomes highly competent in combat in addition to being able to smash things once she picks up the explosive arrows skill. Amadeus also becomes a decent fighter once he increases the amounts of boxes he can conjure, which kills anything short of a boss in a single hit. He also has no problems reaching high places once he maxes out his conjuration count.
Pontius, the oogabooga. He draws the short straw on character progression and team contribution.
Pontius, however, never gets any abilities that improve his mobility besides a running charge that can go into a long jump, which unfortunately never goes quite long enough. Rather, he gets abilities to slightly improve his combat effectiveness instead. Considering how little combat there actually is, that’s disheartening already. To make things worse, once all characters are maxed out, he isn’t even significantly better in combat than his colleagues. With Amadeus being able to rain down one hit kill boxes and Zoya getting the choice of long range high aoe damage explosive arrows or long charge time one hit kill freeze arrows, Pontius is left with no other combat advantages besides his ability to block his shield, a tool that’ll be often underused, since Amadeus and Zoya will either kill them long before they get to attack or keep them in hitstun with explosions. Thus, he ends up underplayed and often forgotten.
He saved the pumpkins at least.
He does see a bit more use in multiplayer though, where he can shield other players from hazards like falling acid or spike balls. It’s still hard not to feel like you’re dragging the team down, since he still has no way of getting through most puzzle platforming rooms and basically has to just wait for Amadeus to build a path for him.
Exploring to admire the pretty sights may be rewarding enough for a few, but finding hidden exp vials is also the main way of leveling up.
The actual game revolves heavily around platforming and exploration. Most of it is extremely forgiving, emphasizing more on smart conjuration placement or finding grapple points. Likewise, environmental hazards can often be avoided entirely in the same manner. You will want to explore every branching path and optional puzzles though, as they generally contain exp vials which are used to buy new abilities, many of which will be required in later levels of the game. There are a few extreme difficulty spikes near the end of the game that require strict timing and some luck, which could get frustrating if you’re going for the hardcore mode achievements.
Although some endgame platforming sections are technically possible without making use of upgraded abilities, it’d be unreasonably difficult to pull off.
The puzzles generally offer a great deal of freedom, with a variety of mostly physics based mechanics, such as jamming cogs, redirecting air/liquid flow, or redirecting objects with portals. Oftentimes, they could either be solved elaborately, creating an ACME style contraption with whatever’s lying around to form a makeshift pipe system, or in an incredibly primitive fashion such as just splashing the liquid towards the target by jumping into it with Pontius’s shield. This is both good and bad. While it may be fun to figure out all the possibilities, you’ll find that often times, the least clever solution is the most effective, so they generally won’t give as much satisfaction for completing as something like Portal 2’s puzzles. It does, however, eliminate any risk of frustration.
Many puzzle rooms can be entirely skipped by doing something as simple as creating a grapple point and just swinging past it.
Finally, there’s the combat, which is highly disappointing. The abundance of health restoring checkpoints and zero consequence for death makes enemies more of a nuisance than anything. Furthermore, there’s only a few enemies types in the game, all of which is dealt with more or less the same way, and only a handful are even a threat at all even on hardcore mode. There are your regular fodders, be they lizards or archers or shield carriers, all fall quickly to any basic attack. Later in the game, you start fighting flaming goblin minibosses, which become the only regular encounter that requires any kind of thinking…and only until you realize they still fall victim to Amadeus’s OHKO falling boxes. Outside of 2 major boss battles, every other boss behaves exactly the same, and are dealt with in the same way with only minor differences in the combat terrain. Although not a major focus of the game, there are still many combat sections, and that its depth has been so overlooked does hurt the overall experience quite a bit.
The giant goblin bosses become so generic by the end of the game, I can’t even remember how many of them there were.
CONTENT: 7.5/10
The game sports 11 fairly large and diverse levels, excluding the tutorial and final boss levels. Finding every exp pick up and secret in this game takes around 10 hours, but considering there’s not much of a reason to upgrade Pontius and the secrets don’t actually do anything, a regular run of the game could take a bit less than that. The secret chests in the game don’t have much practical value either, providing only some concept art and poems that shed slightly more light into the rather simplistic and predictable plot. Still, considering the game is only $15 without any Steam sale going on, that’s decent value.
The actual loot you get from secret chests is a lot less exciting than it looks.
If you’re an achievement hunter, you could get maybe another 10 hours trying to beat the game on hard difficulty hardcore mode, where you die in 1-2 hits, restore points can only be used once, and you cannot save or respawn at checkpoints during the level. However, with the level design being mostly long and easy, this becomes more frustrating than accomplishing, since nearly all your gameovers will come from a dumb mistake costing you a crucial character in an upcoming section, forcing you the restart all the way from the beginning of the level.
This room being the worst perpetrator of all, coming late into the level, and is the most difficult platforming section in the game. It’s followed immediately by a goblin ambush on both sides, ensuring many hardcore mode gameovers.
MULTIPLAYER: 6.5/10
Honestly, I don’t even know what’s considered a good community in today’s standard anymore. I get instantly kicked from over half the games I try to join because they either wanted to duo with a friend or because they don’t wanna get character locked. But since this is clearly a user error, I’m gonna be pessimistic and just say the Trine 2 community isn’t the most intelligent, seeing as they neither know how to set up a private game nor turn off character lock in the game options, even though they’re both on the first screen you see after selecting “host a multiplayer game”. Then when you finally do join a game? There’s a decent chance they’re cheating to death with player levitation and is just flying Zoya around the entire map at a rate of 1 screen per hour to pick up all the exp vials.
Once you do finally manage to find a proper game with 2 other intelligent life forms however, the experience is amazing. Many of the puzzle solutions change, as you no longer have the abilities of all 3 characters acting on 1 body. While it may be simple in single player to simply grapple up a high ledge with Zoya, then switch to Pontius to smash something, in multiplayer, you would have to take advantage of having multiple bodies and having Amadeus hold a box in midair for Pontius to jump up the ledge. This makes some puzzles much more difficult thanks to Pontius’s lack of mobility, but others much simpler, such as simply having Pontius shield the group through a waterfall of lava instead of building pipeworks to redirect the lava. It’s an incredibly well thought out feature that’s unfortunately very difficult to experience in public games. I can only imagine that if I actually had friends that enjoyed coop puzzle games, it would’ve been a blast.
Forever alone =(
Visual: 9.5
Audio: 9
Gameplay: 8.5
Content: 7.5
Multiplayer: 6.5
OVERALL: 9 (not an average)
While not without imperfections, Trine 2 is a game in which it’s individual elements sync up so well with each other that it truly ends up being more than the sum of its parts. Its greatest shortcoming of all is probably the relatively niche appeal of its subject matter. If you’re not completely allergic to fairy tales and can stave off your need for a game to inflate your ego though, this game is definitely an experience I’d recommend. It may not be the most exciting or challenging, but it’s easily the most delightful platformer I’ve played since LittleBigPlanet.
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