I know Avlora is resilient because it took two of my best mages to keep her at bay. I know Avlora is cunning because she targeted my weakest units first. Triangle Strategy spends hours establishing these character traits in gorgeous cutscenes set in picturesque locales.Īnd not a single one of them was necessary. She is cunning, resilient, and, when necessary, ferocious. Once a soldier in the northern realm of Aesfrost, she quickly rose through the ranks to become one of Norzelia’s most prolific military minds. Take one of my favorite characters, General Avlora. Square Enix and Artdink so desperately want to control the narrative through exposition and dialogue that they constantly telegraph major combat twists and emergent possibilities. Other sequences actively undermine the momentum of the drama unfolding in the gameplay. About 50% of my time with Triangle Strategy was spent watching cutscenes they are beautiful, yes, but also frequently extraneous.
It doesn’t seem to think that I can fill in the blanks and build a story out of the pieces laid in front of me. For all of its promise as a tactical RPG - and there is a lot of promise in that regard - the game refuses to trust me.
It also introduces such a wide swath of characters, locations, feuds, and traditions that I began losing track of it all only a few chapters in, the predictability of it all notwithstanding.Įven so, my biggest problems with Triangle Strategy lie less in its plot, and more in its storytelling. With arranged marriages, insidious betrayals, and red-herring death scenes, Triangle Strategy’s script deploys a litany of JRPG and fantasy tropes. Throughout my 45-hour campaign, I largely inhabit the role of Serenoa, a member of Glenbrook’s royal family and the Atlas upon whose shoulders Norzelia begins to teeter. In keeping with the tradition of Final Fantasy Tactics, Suikoden 2, and the Fire Emblem games, I build an army and command myriad characters on 3D, grid-based battlefields. The story unfolds on the continent of Norzelia and the three countries it comprises: Aesfrost, which controls Norzelia’s’s iron mines Hyzante, the purveyor of its salt reserves and Glenbrook, a kingdom that acts as something of an intermediary between the two. Put another way: If Octopath Traveler was The Fellowship of the Ring, then Triangle Strategy is The Two Towers and Return of the King, combined. Instead of exploring the camaraderie among friends, it focuses on the relationships of their nations.
Despite its visual kinship with Octopath Traveler, and the stewardship of lead producer Tomoya Asano (who helped spearhead development on that 2018 JRPG), Triangle Strategy is less of a party-based adventure and more of a sweeping political drama. In others, it seems hopelessly oblivious.Ĭreated as a collaboration between Square Enix and Artdink, Triangle Strategy is a turn-based tactical RPG with the scope and ambition of a Tolkien novel. In some ways, Triangle Strategy embraces this idea. No stories are more powerful than the ones we tell ourselves.
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