You need big brains to play Trine 3. Game requires 3D coordination from a sideways glance. An average player does not have enough brain power for that. A simple game which easily can be completed under 6 hours requires over 20 hours for a simpleton to finish. Do you have mastery over advanced mental faculties like depth perception to complete this game? Many had tried, only the most intelligent will succeed.
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Calicifer’s Reviews
Snarky Introduction
Games like these remind me why I started reviewing games myself. Public in this case completely failed to properly evaluate this game. Yes, it is sometime difficult to navigate in such games, however other games are highly regarded like Castle Crashers despite suffering same problems. The underlying issue I believe is that an average player is just not very smart. I had no issues in this game, it was trivial really. Though, judging from reviews here, a lot of people just do not have sufficient mental faculties required to beat this game. It really puts into perspective how much smarter individual can become over course of their lives.It is Trine in 3D
There isn’t much to it. It is standard Trine formula, but in 3D. It is questionable if it is a good decision, because such 2.5D games do not add anything to gameplay, but they do require a lot more developmental resources. It also significantly raise the IQ bar for your game as game will be beyond capability of most plebs. All of the Budget Went into Pretty Colours
- Trine was always a gorgeous game. This game is no exception. Unfortunately, you do start noticing low detail textures which is masked by a good art direction. 3D assets and games require a lot of developmental resources and as such, game is very limited at what it can show us. It is very linear, there is quite few in-game assets. While game is pretty, it suffers exactly because it went towards 3D. It lacks resources to create greater variety. Under closer inspection you can see that graphics are cheap, low polygon in-game assets. In the end, game does not really benefits from being 3D as it does not have better puzzles or gameplay due to that. Even environments we are visiting feel like they could be done better. First levels were quite nice as you move with a rogue. However, later on they all fail to show something beautiful and reverts back to showing arbitrary and gamey platforming. If you wanted to go 3D route, you had to maintain this level of quality through out all game, as it stands now, you only had to do a lot more work to render simple assets in an artificial and uninspired terrain which nobody would appreciate.
Cooperation - Trine was always a game where you had questioned if you completed puzzle as developers intended or you just cheesed your way through. It is the same here. However, when it comes to co-op, this formula falls apart. A wizard essentially can beat the whole game by itself. Rogue is occasionally useful. However, what knight is meant to do? To fight? Rogue and Wizard can do that just as well and game is not combat oriented. What we have here is a co-op game where 1 player is completely useless, another is semi-useful and one who controls the wizard is fundamental in completing the puzzles. It would be nice to see if Trine could improve the formula. Puzzles are too simplistic and classes are completely pointless. It is partly because game has to account for solo experience, but solo player has capability to switch between heroes at any time. Maybe it is time to give him a real reason to do so?
A Minimalistic Journey - This game is quite short. What you see is what you will get. You will get transported to board game like map and you like a miniature will be able to run and jump around this board as you unlock main and side missions. In those missions you will be able to gather triangles which are required for unlocking further missions. You do not need to do anything special to gather enough of them, but it provides something for completionists to do. It is nice and focused adventure which ends before it gets tiresome, but I kinda wished for something more. Either more complex puzzles which would not feel just like obstacles. Or I would like to see more pretty sights like at the start. A giant fisher, a giant skeleton trying to bring down the wall, rogue jumping with her rope through wide canyons. Stuff like this is interesting, but there is so little of it. All the puzzles in this game are trivial. Sights seen in screenshots are literally the best what this game has to offer. You will be staring most of the time at mario like levels. Platform there, rolling ball there, etc. It feels like overly fancy 2D platformer where you are being shown most ordinary and unnatural environments. Since those environments feels gamey, they never can blow you away as amazing. Developers do try to tell you a white lie with their screenshots and trailers.
A Surprisingly Similar Experience
Trine 3 despite being 3D plays exactly like Trine 1. The most surprising thing is maybe just how faithful Trine is to their roots. It is both good and a bad thing. I did enjoyed my time here and even finished this game on my own. It is game like all the others in the series and does not deserve such poor reception as it got. Though, it does require to be pretty smart in order to play Trine 3. Are you smart enough for this game?