When we previewed Triangle Strategy's opening hours just a few weeks ago we came away suitably impressed by its slick mix of choice-driven narrative, detailed world-building and satisfyingly strategic combat action. It's a setup that immediately engaged us, introducing a strong cast of characters, embroiling us in some fascinating Game of Thrones-style fantasy politics, and setting the stage for what we dearly hoped would be a grand tale full of drama, epic battles and tough decisions to come.
Thankfully, now that we've spent some 50 or so hours with the finished product, we can report that Square Enix has fully delivered on the promise of its prologue demo. Triangle Strategy is a fantastic tactical RPG that serves up an engrossing tale, top-notch battles, multiple routes through its excellent campaign and several wildly different endings that you'll absolutely want to dive back into the game in order to experience. This one barely puts a foot wrong.
Assuming the role of Serenoa Wolffort, players are thrust into the political landscape of Norzelia, where three kingdoms, Glenbrook, Hyzante and Aesfrost, are just about holding together an uneasy alliance that was formed in the aftermath of the great "Saltiron wars". Of course, by the time the prologue is done here, that alliance has been all but shattered and what follows is a twisting, turning delight of a campaign that somehow never loses its momentum, slowly building to a fantastic finale that sees you get to choose exactly how you wish to see your version of Serenoa's story end.
It may take its sweet time at points — we've already seen plenty of comments in the wake of the demo wondering if the game continues to feature so much in the way of lengthy conversations between battles (it absolutely does) — but the pay-off is so worth it. This a game that sinks its hooks into you, introduces a fantastic cast of characters that you'll grow to truly care about, thrusts you into impossible situations and affords you the opportunity to make genuinely meaningful choices that affect who lives or dies and who and what will be destroyed as you make the sacrifices necessary in order to prevail.
It's an impressively mature and complex campaign in many ways, too, one that manages to successfully mix its political and more fantastical elements, injecting plenty of real-world issues regarding religious manipulation of the masses, fabricated fear as a means of control, slavery and racism into its tale. Honestly, we're not going to detail a single moment of the story here as any spoilers would entirely ruin the impact of the thing, but Triangle Strategy just absolutely delivers on the narrative front.
Producer Tomaya Asano, who also worked on Bravely Default and Octopath Traveler, has spoken in the past of how he wanted to take this game in a slightly different direction, away from some of the more traditional aspects of JRPGs, and it's a decision that's worked wonders for how the action in Triangle Strategy flows. The narrative structure here is tight, and there's no unnecessary dilution of the core crisis by shifting the player's focus into the shoes of multiple protagonists; you're pretty much locked into the story from Serenoa's point of view and it makes proceedings all the more intense and memorable as a result.
Yes, you'll be given ample opportunity to hop around the world map between battles and watch how events are unfolding in other regions and with other factions through short cutscenes, but the main thrust is always kept on House Wollfort and the escalating dangers that you and your allies face as the story progresses. The core gameplay loop here consists of lengthy narrative elements, big beefy battles and short periods of exploration that allow you to wander around the game's beautiful little dioramas — and it's a loop that works really, really well in keeping the player invested at all times in what's going on across a lengthy campaign.
Much has been made of the "Scales of Conviction" choice-driven aspects of Triangle Strategy in the build-up to release and to this end the game also manages to fully deliver on its promise. In these instances you'll be given two or three different resolutions to a major plot point, the situation is carefully explained in detail, characters in your party voice their opinions, and then you'll have the opportunity to attempt to convince any who are wavering to stand with you before everyone casts their vote and a decision is made that branches the narrative out in a different direction, as neatly illustrated by a timeline map showing you how you've diverged from the main path. It's cracking stuff that both directly affects the story and works to give you enough agency that you're kept absolutely embroiled in what's going on, to the point we found it hard to put down, playing just one more hour here and there to see how the next big dramatic point would play out.
So, in terms of the story, beyond some hilariously OTT dialogue in places and a few rough edges to the English voice-acting, all is truly well and good. But what about the combat? Well, Triangle Strategy serves up a feast in this respect, too, with some excellent set-piece battles that introduce lots of well-designed systems that are underpinned by genuine tension thanks to the game's consistently excellent world-building. You aren't just fighting alongside a bunch of random NPCs here, oh no, you're going up against it with your dearest friends and comrades, characters that you actually care about. Thank goodness there's no perma-death or we may not have been able to take it.
The tactical RPG elements here play out in a fashion that Final Fantasy Tactics and Advance Wars fans will recognise immediately, with the game's turn-based battles taking place on a grid system that highlights where your currently selected party member can and can't move during a turn. Strategic layers are then piled on, with each member of your sizeable entourage wielding a suite of upgradeable powers and abilities that you'll need to make full use of in order to come out on top of encounters.
You'll want to plan in advance to make use of the game's clever follow-up attack system, whereby putting one unit on each side of a foe instigates a double assault — a move that's invaluable in taking troublesome enemy battlemages and healers down quickly — as well as taking advantage of the high ground wherever possible, as attacks from height deal extra damage. You'll also need to consider employing various well-timed elemental combos of magic to soften up packs of enemies, use a mage's powers to soak an area with water or melt an icy patch into a puddle, for example, then zap the place with electricity and frazzle a bunch of foes at once. There's opportunities aplenty for the strategically minded here and always another way to approach a problem when you take the time to really sit back and consider all of your options.
Triangle Strategy also does a wonderful job of feeding you lots of useful information in a user-friendly fashion, showing you which enemies can assault you from any given spot when you hover over a position, giving you a preview of the damage you'll dish out with any of your attacks and allowing you to simulate entire moves before committing to them fully, minimising your chances of making horrendous errors of judgment during battle. (NB: we still made many horrendous errors of judgment during battle.)
You'll be given the opportunity to sort your troops pre-fight, mulling over your options and choosing which combatants from your constantly evolving roster you wish you to take into action. The game continues to help out as much as it can here, even flagging up recommended party members and giving you ready access to your encampment area in order to buy supplies, rank up individual units, level up weapons and so on, before you progress to the battle screen proper. Here you can position characters where you want them — healers and support at the rear, tanks to the front and all that sort of thing — before surveying an overview of the battlefield, checking your specific objectives and then diving in.
Played on Normal difficulty, the opening few hours provide a good tutorial for the meatier fights that lie ahead, and you'll have plenty of opportunity to get used to moving your party around and to get a feel for each character's strengths and weaknesses. We quickly developed go-to units and rarely went into battle without Anna the backstabbing assassin who can hide in the shadows, Roland and his deadly lance attacks, Hughette's debilitating ranged arrow shots, and both Benedict and Geela providing constant healing and combat buffs from the rear of the pack.
As you progress through the campaign, and depending on the choices you make, you'll fill out your roster with a whole bunch of brilliant characters — we ended the game with some eighteen in our ranks — each of whom provides you with unique and useful tactical options. Heck, you can even flirt with enemy soldiers in order to distract them should you choose to roll with exotic dancer Milo in your crew, or simply confuse the life out of foes with the wordsmith, Lionel.
There's a good amount of variety introduced to the game's combat through stage-specific gimmicks, too, with some fights taking place on small platforms where you can be pushed and bashed onto spikes, an encounter that sees you given the ability to set fire to huge swathes of the battlefield, burning your enemies in large numbers as they approach, and confrontations that see your surrounded on all sides, charged with the task of fighting your way uphill in order to engage foes who have a huge tactical advantage. Without these flourishes the combat here would still be top-notch stuff, but the variety that's added as a result just elevates the whole thing that little bit more, making for prolonged engagements that we never minded having to replay when we failed, something we honestly can't often say about games in this particular genre.
In terms of difficulty options, things do get fairly tough in the second half of the game, with a pretty constant onslaught of fights to batter your way through, and we even dropped down from Normal to Easy mode on more than one occasion in order to make progress, something we highly recommend you do if you're frustrated as it takes nothing away from the thrill of battle. You'll still need to think several moves ahead, there's still a challenge to be had, but you'll be less likely to spend multiple hours banging your head against a brick wall. Easy mode is well-implemented and gets a big thumbs up from us.
Once you've seen the credits of the campaign for the first time you'll also gain access to NG+, so don't feel as though dropping to Easy first time out will see you missing anything, there's plenty of time through NG+ and repeat visits in order to see all of the game's endings for you to improve and then crank that difficulty dial up.
With regards to performance, this really is a beautiful game — with a sumptuous orchestral soundtrack to match — that shares the same trademarked "HD-2D" art style as Octopath Traveller and we didn't encounter a single frame rate stutter, glitch or bug in our entire extended time spent playing. Loading times are unobtrusive, conversation text is perfectly readable in handheld and busy battles are easy to parse, even on the Switch's portable screen. Square Enix has, in short, done a wonderful job on the technical side of things here.
Overall then, Triangle Strategy is a complete delight. This is a top-notch tactical RPG with slick and strategic combat, a brilliant story full of big choices to be made and a wonderful cast of characters to get to know as you fight for the future of Norzelia. It's the kind of special game that makes a proper impact, leaving you with lasting memories of people and places, great big battles and tiny victories snatched from the jaws of what seemed like certain defeat. Some folk may find the pace a little on the slow side at times and, as we've already mentioned, there's some seriously OTT dialogue and rough acting here and there, but these are infinitesimally small issues in the face of everything this one gets right. With multiple paths to take through its massive main campaign and several explosive finales to make return trips for, this is one great big meaty adventure that we highly recommend you get stuck into.
Conclusion
Triangle Strategy is an absolute triumph for Artdink and Square Enix, a fantastic mix of satisfyingly strategic battles, an excellent choice-driven campaign narrative and top-notch world-building, all of which come together to form one of the finest tactical RPGs we've played in a very long time. There's an absolute ton of content here, with a huge story featuring multiple paths to take depending on the choices you make and several properly impactful endings to enjoy on return visits. Serenoa Wollfort's epic journey is a joy from start to finish, a grand and ambitious adventure that stands proud as one of the very finest examples of its genre on Switch.
Comments (117)
Somewhat expected this score. March is looking stacked. Kind of reminds me of 3DS when it would get a lot of great games early in the year.
God, yes. I've been refreshing like crazy hoping for a good review, this does the job. Cannot wait for launch.
Been quite looking forward to this one. Hopefully my physical copy arrives tomorrow so I can get stuck into it straight away and work my way through it before the Switch release schedule gets too crazy.
Looks good, but I played so much of Fire Emblem 3 Houses, I think I’m burned out of the genre for the time being. Maybe I’ll pick this up in a year or so, but I expect that the next Fire Emblem will have been at least announced by then, which would take priority for me.
Still haven’t played Octopath either…
Finished the prologue and have the tactician's edition pre-ordered so I'm ready. Just wished the voiceover weren't so cheesy, but heck, didn't keep me from loving shenmue either.
Looks good, sounds good, Day 1!
Would you recommend playing FF Tactics before this?
I am so excited for this
Can’t help but I don’t like advance Wars.. so nope
I just don't understand why they didn't call this Final Fantasy Tactics: (something)....It's literally just like those games, which come from the same studio. I don't get it.
I wasn’t completely won over by the battle system from the demo, but I love Fire Emblem and was super into Octopath Traveller and Bravely Default. Would be daft not to pick this up.
I can't wait for ProJared's review of this game. He's easily the most excited for this game out of anyone i know online
After playing the demo I totally agree with the voice acting critique, the delivery of some of the lines feels way off. But I'm still happy we got voice acting for such a text heavy game. The demo took a little while for me to warm up to the game but I ended up really loving it, can't wait until I get my copy!
Can't wait to play this tomorrow! I have 2 Tactician's Editions arriving in the morning.
Still playing through the incredible Elden Ring, but will be switching back and forth between it and Triangle Strategy.
I play really slow so this is the perfect game to take me to March 25th (Kirby Day)
I am so excited to play this game tomorrow. You can just inject the "HD-2D" art style into my veins, please.
Man what a month to be broke... xD
@Evenmoresteven So you don't have all of your eggs in one singular basket. People get Final Fantasy fatigue. Like for a few decades now.
@IGN_Commenter
No, this game has nothing to do with FF:Tactics. If you are into Turn-Based Strategy, then FF:Tactics might be something for you, too, so a recommendation can be given - but there is no need to play it before Triangle Strategy
Despite all the February Direct games announced, this and Bayonetta 3 remain my most anticipated games of the year that I'm certain to buy. Although I can wait for the inevitable price reduction that Octopath and Bravely got quite quickly.
They should have put the horrible name is a con!
I was starting to wonder where the reviews of this were, and it honestly had me scared. But glad to see they are nailing it once again.
Still hate the name however.
I’ll give the entire review a read after work but from the conclusion and score it seems like one of the best RPGs on the Switch! I’ll definitely pick it up sometime when I clear out my backlog and lift my buying freeze!
@Evenmoresteve Final Fantasy Tactics was made my Matsuno and people from Quest who made Ogre Battle and Tactics Ogre.
Phew! Glad it reviewed well! Now I can actually buy it without having any regrets. Especially since I need something to tide me over until Kirby comes.
I wanna get this game but I'm afraid it'll be another disappointment like Octopath was. I'll hold off for now. But good to see it gets a good review regardless.
So happy to see it scoring so well! We can all breathe a sigh of relief now haha
I am so excited for this game and loved the demos, so it's good to see such a great score from people who have spent lots of time with the game!
10am tomorrow can't get here fast enough...
Hoping it's more Triangle Strategy than Square Novel
I mean, this is the closest well probably get to another tactics ogre game. It's criminal how the obvious inspiration from that game isn't more mentioned in this. Seriously if you're interested in triangle strategy, play tactics ogre let us cling together. It's the same deal but slightly smaller in scope. Similar battle system, same tone, same branching paths, though it looks like there's more choice in triangle strategy than TO. It's like octopath and saga. Same formula to the T, but removed enough by time that nobody really brings it up.
@malsan I get the feeling it's more a visual novel with some strategy battles breaking it up than something like fire emblem. I guess it depends on how many sub missions there are. I didn't hate the dialogue in the demo
The only con can be solved by playing the game with the FLAWLESS japanese dub, so I guess it's a 10 on my watch.
I’m going to get this next month, but I just have too much on my plate right now. I’m going to try my hardest to resist, but I don’t know if I can…
@Cynas And you can always switch to subs and Japanese voices!
I'm not usually into turn-based battle games, but Triangle Strategy is appealing to me somehow. It looks great and the story sounds interesting. I may end up buying it for FOMO reasons...
I was having a really hard time how much text/dialogue there was. Someone said they played for three hours and only had two battles! I appreciate story in a game but that seems like it might be too much for me. I'm old, I will fall asleep, lol.
Nice. Multiple routes/endings was the main thing I wanted to confirm. Given the narrative focus of this game and the huge emphasis placed on choice, I wanted to be sure it wasn't just window-dressing like it is in so many games.
I'll probably grab this near launch, since it's published by Nintendo. Like Octopath, it'll probably never drop in price, aside from the occasional freak sale.
This'll be a great complement to Elden Ring, which is almost entirely gameplay-focused.
GiveItToMe GiveItToMe GiveItToMe NOW!!!
@PJOReilly Yeah it's always nice to have that option for sure. I think I'll still stick with the English voices since I love to just sit back and listen. The voice acting was still mostly fine, there were just some lines that broke the immersion a bit, but I don't think it was enough to completely turn it off.
On another note one thing I really liked was being able to see character profiles during dialogue by pressing X. The game does a very good job at helping you remember the different characters and their roles/origin through the story alone (usually it takes me hours to digest a games world and its chatacters, but i caught on by chapter 2 in this game), but it's still a really nice feature to have to help solidify the information to memory.
@Cynas Agreed! That's a lovely little touch. The game is just excellent overall with how it handles information, there's tons of content in your war chronicles that covers everything you need to know, and in battles they've done everything they can to make situations easy to read. It's so good!
@RGB87 The prologue is the slowest part in this regard. Once the heat gets cranked up there's lots of action, the final 3rd has a load of great big fights to enjoy.
@jump Better names will be available as DLC.
Nice I'm finishing up the demo this weekend so I'll be ready after chapter 3 once my full game arrive.
From the short time I spent on the first demo, the first thing I will do is turn off the voice acting, because it just destroys immersion, but I am otherwise completely ready for this.
Based on the demos we all played, this score is way too generous. Very typical of NL to overrate a Switch exclusive.
Would you say that easy mode is low difficulty enough to get through if you can get through a Three Houses campaign on Normal? I'd rather not buy a game if I can't make it to the end hah!
Great review!
@scoobdoo It has 83 on Metacritic with 41 reviews, with about 36 of those reviews being 80 or higher.
It takes so little effort to debunk these constant complaints of bias I'm surprised you keep trying. It's like a religion for you.
Glad this got a good review, we can always use more tactical games. Going to probably wait on this one though with so many games coming out right now.
@PJOReilly How long would you say a single playthrough is? I see you spent about 50 hour with it. Was that a single playthrough? Really looking forward to this one and can’t wait to jump back in. I’m contemplating whether or not to back burner Horizon.
Sounds amazing, but they picked like the worst release spot imangineable for this. It'll be a good long time before folks - myself included - will be done with Elden Ring ...
There is just no way I am going to put that one a side anytime soon. No matter what else comes along 😎
Still, Triangle Strategy might be right up next on my agenda. I hope it does good business for Square, despite the inane naming they stubbornly stuck with and the aforementioned horrific choice of release window.
@MostHandsieBoy I guess so.....Triangle Strategy is just such a terrible name lol Surely they could have thought of something better...
I can't wait for the sequel, Circle Tactics!
@somnambulance I spent 50 with it because I was being extremely thorough for review, but I think you could definitely get through the campaign in about 40. The there are different endings to go back for!
@IGN_Commenter
FF Tactics A2 is amazing. Can’t recommend enough.
@scoobdoo We actually dubbed them NINEtendo Life at one point
Might get this though - is it any different/better than the demo?
3/10
"Too many triangles."
@PJOReilly I blindly preordered simply because I'm a fan of Final Fantasy Tactics. I'm glad reception of Triangle Strategy has been positive. Now we just need S-E to acknowledge the existence of a FFT remaster for current consoles. Which was hinted at, along with Chrono Cross Remastered, with the Nvidia Geforce leak last year.
https://www.reddit.com/r/GamingLeaksAndRumours/comments/pndwey/definitive_compilation_of_leaked_geforce_now/
It’s a love Triangle.
(Sorry. Not sorry)
@PJOReilly A few questions about accessibility:
Thanks
Wow, amazing review! I was actually going to hold off on the game barring a great review, and sure enough! Thanks PJ, guess I need to drop some of the ol cash on this now 🙂.
Went straight to the score and I’m stoked to see it reviewing well. Avoided commercials, demos, articles, any info regarding this title since it was announced. Want to go in as blind as possible and I can’t wait to dive into this game this weekend.
I'm glad to see the story is being well received. Octopath's art direction and gameplay were great, but the narrative structure completely turned me off from it.
@Munchlax same! I haven’t played Octopath Traveler either. Not that I’m burned out from that genre but there’s just so many games and not enough time with being a dad and working full time.
Great review. Definitely getting this, it'll look really nice on the Switch OLED.
@tgt There are text speed settings, a fast forward function and auto-scroll that moves the text along without you needing to press anything. None of the other options you've mentioned, unfortunately.
Oh neat the embargo is over, and the score is high too.
I'll check out other reviews and gameplay footage to see if I want to buy this game for sure.
This game with sharp graphics would be a wet dream. This way it's my eye specialists dream.
@PJOReilly Typically how long are the cutscenes until you get some player agency again?
Looking forward to trying this, though the patches of rough dialogue critique is both unsurprising and disappointing. Feels like for a while now Square has been nailing art, music, battle design, etc, but struggling to deliver on compelling writing. Bravely Default and Octopath were two major examples of this.
@PJOReilly
I’m glad to hear the prologue was the slowest part. I haven’t really played this genre but am interested in this game. I found in the demo that the time between the second and third battles was okay. If I pick this up, I’d like to be able to play it in ~1 hour sessions and ideally have a battle each session or maybe every other session sometimes. Does that seem reasonable to expect?
I think my play time in the demo was 6 hours which seems longer than what others have said, but I think I tend to over think each turn in games like this.
@Evenmoresteven Agreed - It is truly one of the worst names of any product in the history of consumerism.
Playing the Prologue with Japanese voices, I will say the OTT dialogue (while completely subjective) is at least to a decent extent a localization thing. Nearly every line I could understand the Japanese of, it was like the translators took it and thought "hmm, how can we take this simple statement and make it sound overwrought?" Sometimes the effect adds something fun to the dialogue, often it gives me a sense of watching actors in a Shakespeare-inspired play. Which may have been the point, but I would've preferred a more natural translation direction. Not a deal breaker for me though.
Am I the only one who heavily dislikes this visual style?
Now that it's out I am a bit more on the fence aabout it. The lengthy cutscenes in the demo left a bad impression on me. And now I read the entire game is like this. Sorry, but frontloading a game with either inconsequential or pretentious narrative is a big turn off for me. The game must grab my attention first.
@Alienfreaks04 There is a certain disconnect between the characters and the scenery which seems iffy. And epic, deep storylines always seem a bit diminished by chibi characters.
Bah! Why did this have to release right after Elden Ring!? I want to play this game, but I'm way too invested in Elden Ring right now to touch anything else for awhile.
Great review! Excited to play this, but man the number of huge games coming out now is a bit much. It’ll likely sit on my shelf for a while, cuz Elden Ring baby 🔥
I can't wait to get this game! So excited!
I was gonna get this game eventually but after seeing some reviews I caved. It’s preloaded on my switch currently.
I pre-ordered this Final Fantasy Tactic was the first turn based strategy game I ever played. Excited to dive into this hopefully we get more bangers from Square Enix.
I loved the demo so much - glad to see that the entire game is just as good. While I imagine that there are many who won't really enjoy the lengthy segments of dialogue, I found them to be surprisingly well written and - with all of the fleshed out characters and depth of political intrigue - the story was likewise highly engrossing. (In that respect, it kinda reminded me of the intensely political and criminally underrated Ogre Battle 64).
And that's not even touching upon the battles, which - if you're a fan of tactical RPGs such as Ogre Battle, FFTactics, Fire Emblem and the like - is a treat.
My only major gripe (from the demo, anyway) was just finicky the camera and the drunken map controls were. Through practice, both of these problems can be mitigated to some extent (e.g. pressing the d pad will automatically jump to a location, and moving the analogy gently for the camera can mitigate some of these issues, but it's still annoying. I also had, at times, a bit of trouble figuring out which direction an enemy was facing, as many characters stand in a sideways stance that, because of the nature of sprites, can be ambiguous.
Other than those issues, the demo was amazing and I can't wait to dive in to the rest of the game.
Pro-Tip: Play the game with Japanese VA and a sub.
Though I'm hardly one those purist snobs who hates every single dub, in this particular case, I found the VA (at least the English one) in this game is so abysmal, I almost had no other choice but to play it with Japanese VA.
I’ve been really looking forward to this one. I love this style and I love strategy games. I can’t believe they kept that name, but oh well.
I did not like this game. Too many story driven. I don´t like the "story side" of a game. In a strategy game i don´t like to waste my time with the story. I like the gameplay itself. Only. That´s because i have 643 hours in Xcom 2 (Steam version). Because i don´t read the story and it doesn´t matter. That´s because i love, love and love Advance Wars. 90% gameplay, 10% story. Triangle Strategy (demo...) it is 95% story and 5% gameplay.
This feature took me away from this game definitely.
Sounds like my kind of game. My copy's on its way, can't wait. I could use something meaty to play.
Unless I can pick this game up for like $15, I gotta pass. There's just too many good games this year, I'm still playing Pokemon Legends Arceus and I'll be going right into Kirby ATFL next.
@PJOReilly Awesome! Thank you for the feedback! Really appreciate it!
Picking this up tomorrow and can't wait but let's also talk about that killer Kirby demo. Holy crap does that game feel like a long lost Nintendo 64 game which is a welcome feeling.
Similar to Diagaea, which is better?
Always take a point or 2 from this sites score.
Great story focus strategy rpg game
@czdjax It's not similar to disgaea. To be honest triangle strategy os so story focused it's basically a visual novel that you play sometimes where disgaea is definitely more gameplay focused. It's also not really that similar in how it plays either. Looks similar, isn't.
@tameshiyaku Do I what I used to do with every game from the late 90's and early 20's - turn the Japanese voice acting on. It might be super cheesy too, but heck if I can tell
What's the biggest number of troops you can ever bring into one battle?
@Xansies nice explanation, thanks
Sounds amazing, but there are just not enough hours in the day. I'll probably buy it a few months down the road. At this point I'm praying for a lull in the Switch release schedule so I can at least catch up a little.
Will probably get this next week, when I get a week of break. Spent a lot of time with FF:T in the past.
How different is this from Fire Emblem? I can't get the triangle vs "3 houses" out of my head.
I completely forgot this was coming out with my brain absolutely rammed full of Elden Ring right now. Glad to hear that it came out well!
@Munchlax
Octopath was nothing like Three Houses. Different genres.
@Aneira But this game is like Fire Emblem. The comment about Octopath was separate.
First two hours of play and I’ve had ONE battle… this game is SLOW and the story well trodden… I WANT to love it but I’m bored rigid waiting for the auto play of cutscenes to end.
There is something very iffy about all these critic reviews and the fact you can’t leave a user review on metacritic. Its increasingly likely money has changed hands.
Personally I’m finding this so dull I may stop playing.
Dang. I was kind of hoping for a bad review because I'm currently playing Shining Force for the million billionth time, and after reading this review I'm convinced that I MUST buy this game. Mr. Backlogman will not be happy.
@PoundShopOrwell different strokes. Fata morgana is well reviewed and it has no gameplay. It's not even bad, it's just not a game. Same thing here. The main mechanic is the politics of the world. The actually gameplay is secondary. If you don't care about the story, that's literally two thirds of the game. If you do care, it's quite a good story of political intrigue and the choices are some of the most impactful I've seen in a game. Like the choices that matter really matter in ways I couldn't see cominylg. Even in the demo. You know giving Roland up isn't great, but did you really expect it to go that bad that fast? And all the choices so far are that. It's really interesting it's just that's the whole game. The strategy sections are breaks from the choice based visual novel stuff. theres like one battle a chapter more or less like fire emblem but like 30 hours of dialogue. It's a visual novel more than anything. Having strategy in the title is almost misleading
Check out the fake reviews on metacritic folks.
Ask yourself why that’s necessary if this is such an “excellent” game.
That's a weird score.
A very good German YouTube gaming show, said a lot else about this game.
They said, the battles are the only really good thing about Triangle Strategy. And even those are sometimes too long.
The story is supposed to be really weak and disappointing.
This game has enraptured me. I haven't felt this invested in characters in a very long time. So many hard choices, doing the right thing might get you killed or hurt others. ... This game has knocked it out of the park.
@TDRsuperstar2 The struggle is real! I'm in the same sinking ship.
@Nintendo4Sonic A score from any video game site, can also simply be called an opinion, and may differ from yours or others!
@Alienfreaks04 one of them.
@Xansies I'm sure a Let Us Cling Together port isn't too far off. I will buy it on Day 1. Absolutely sensational game.
This is the first really glowing review I've seen for this game. Most people I've heard from chalk it up as being decent but not great. I'm on the fence myself on this one. I got bitten by Octopath before. That game got some glowing reviews upon release, but it turned out to be a pretty mediocre game. It had a good battle system, but everything surrounding it was pretty bad. Triangle Strategy looks like it'll be in the same ballpark: decent battles with everything surrounding it being throwaway. We'll see. I'm still knee-deep into Elden Ring after 100 hours anyway.
There is only one battle in the first 2 hours of the game. That is too heavy on cinematics, even for me. Kind of tired already and barely started.
@TheGameSquid Octopath had an incredible battle system, and incredible music, and incredible art. First of its kind. Padding and story let it down, that's all.
On my 2nd play through and that's saying something for a person who almost never finishes a game.
@Xansies
No doubt I am about 3 hours into Triangle and actually come here to this review to read if it was indeed a remake of sorts of Ogre Battle 64!!
Amazing more of us are not stating the obvious similarity!!
I’m late to the party on this, but I finally got this game and I love it! I’m a huge fire emblem fan and this game is really scratching this itch. I’m 5-6 hours in and really addicted. The combat is solid and I find the story to be pretty engaging. The explore segments are fun as well, I enjoy discovering new bits of lore for the “notes” section more than I would’ve thought. And the “voting” mechanic is really unique as well.
If anyone out there stumbles on this and is curious, I’d say go for it, especially if you’re a fan of FF Tactics or Fire Emblem.
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