Triangle Strategy Review - stupid name for a sometimes stupid game

I KNOW why it's called Triangle Strategy. I know. But it's just not a good name. I'm convinced no one talks about this game because the name is so bad. Look at that freak, he's playing Triangle Strategy! Get 'em boys!

Should have called it Scales of Conviction. I'll die on this hill.

Triangle Strategy is the second game in the HD-2D style produced by Tomoya Asano, the first being Octopath Traveler (which I have not played). Rather than being a turn-based JRPG, TS is an SRPG, and this is the sole reason I was interested in this game when it was first announced. I love SRPGS! I was so hype, I bought TS when it launched while visiting Nintendo NYC... And then I proceeded to let it collect dust on my desk for a few months. Only in July did I decide to finally take a crack at it.

I know what you're thinking of asking. Is it good, Lone? You've tweeted some weird things about it over the course of the last month, some of it so hyperbolic I (a follower) have no idea if it actually happens ingame or not.

My answer to that is... I think it is a fine game.

No spoilers below, tldr at the end. If you're interested in trying TS out, I hope I can shed some light on some aspects of it below.

The Stuff I Liked

The gameplay is pretty fun! I'm no god of a gamer but I thought playing on normal difficulty provided a good challenge while still being a fun game to play. There were characters with really fun gimmicks that I ended up using a lot. I also didn't feel like I had to keep using the same characters, since they all had their advantages and disadvantages.

There isn't much customization to be found— for example, in an FE game you could potentially change character classes entirely, but TS has its characters remain what they are the entire time. Frederica is a pyromancer, and she will remain a pyromancer the entire game. Any leveling up or customization you can possibly do will be toward this specific skillset. It's a bit simple, but I didn't have any issues with it, and there are still ways to keep the gameplay fun through leveling up and learning new moves. I enjoyed not having to stress over which class would be the best to promote into.

(For a moment I was going to compare this lack of customization to the SRPG sections of Utawarerumono before remembering no one has played Uta.)

The branching path choices were fun and a pretty good idea. TS uses a central timeline with branching choices that go separate ways, but eventually reconvene. So if you play the game three times to see as much as possible like I did, you're going to see a mix of new things and old things throughout each playthrough. There are four endings you can get which split off toward the end of the game, with one ending being a hidden ending you can only achieve by making certain choices. I found that I enjoyed two of these endings, was neutral about one of them, and absolutely hated the remaining one. The good news is a lot of people hated the same ending I did so I'm not insane.

The HD-2D style is very appealing, the environments looked great and overall there wasn't much slowdown in large maps while playing in handheld mode. I do hope they continue making games in this style, maybe injecting a bit more character art here and there where they can. With the exception of the ending screens, the only other time you can see character portraits is in battle on the roster screen or by pressing "X" when a character speaks in a cutscene. I'd like to see more character art just because I think the artstyle used for it is very nice.

(An example of character art)

Frederica, Serenoa's wife and resident pink hair and pronouns girl, is probably one of the best characters of not only TS, but of all the games I've played in 2022 thus far. You get to see her grow as a person and in some endings she really just stole all the spotlight from Serenoa. It genuinely surprised me how much I was able to enjoy her, as coming into this game I expected as much writing from her as I did a wet paper bag. I love women!!!

Despite the fact that I did not play Octopath Traveler, I do know that one of the (many) complaints regarding that game was that characters didn't really interact with each other. I think the team noticed this complaint and tried really hard to make sure that didn't happen again by creating a ton of side stories you can experience with all characters, both permanent fixtures of the cast and optional recruits. 

I do have slight complaints with this despite how much I appreciated this being added in. I wish that instead of having a bunch of very short side stories for each character, they instead had only one or two per character and made it at minimum a few minutes long— rarely do you get to see the characters be normal people in the main plot where there's 4000 things going on, so to harp on these moments would have been nice.

This, and optional recruits have side stories that only feature members of the fixed cast. For example, you can recruit Corentin, a cryomancer who is obsessed with his research. You also can also recruit Giovanna, a geologist who is obsessed with her research. Seeing them interact would have been really fun! But sadly, they never do— optional recruits can never interact with other optional recruits. And there are a LOT of optional recruits! It just feels like a missed opportunity.

The Stuff I Didn't Like

I'm not the first person to say this, but the English voice acting is legit Not Good. Whenever a game comes with English dub as the default, I will always play with the English dub, but TS is the first time I've ever switched the languages soon after starting and kept it that way for the rest of my time ingame. The direction of the English voice actors is simply... not good. And I believe this ties into my next point...

TS's is written in old English, the kind that goes beyond an FE game putting an obscure vocabulary word in a scene every now and then. With the exception of a few side characters, everyone in the main cast and most of the antagonists share the same kind of "high up old English noble" speaking voice. Combine this with very long cutscenes, narration that is very slow and most of the time unneeded, and not really a lot of time to see the main cast as characters outside of the plot (as in, they don't have a enough casual laid back moments where you're endeared to them) and I found it hard to really get care a lot about TS's main plot.

The way it's being told just felt so... flat. Boring. Standard. I never popped off or felt emotional over any huge moments (other than being exasperated which doesn't count), and it's pretty easy to make me do either of those things! It's a weird thing to measure a game by, but if I didn't cry once while playing a game, it is not peak fiction. TS is probably not trying to be this in the first place, but it was still disappointing to feel utterly "Eh... Alright" over most story elements.

Regarding the way TS is written in English, I believe this writing played a part in how voice actors were directed— that because the writing is often pretty stiff, they were directed to read in a very noble-ish way. Imagine a high school Shakespeare play, basically, a play that thinks it can't inject too much emotion into the lines since it's an "old play" when Shakespeare was all about emotion in his lines!

In the same vein, I think this game suffers by having the majority of the main cast be of noble or royal lineage. Not only because they all speak the same, but because having people of lower status, who act like regular people, talk like regular people, and have the same struggles regular people do makes it easier for the average player, or at least myself, to get interested in what's going on. In the words of that one Chainsaw Man pic, "He's just like me fr".

I will not delve into spoilers in this paragraph, but I found a couple plot beats to be written in non-appealing ways. I think the handling of fantasy racism in TS was a bit questionable at times and one or two plot beats felt ridiculous enough for me to go "Bruh" aloud. Some characters were often discarded despite the feeling they should be far more relevant.

My spoiler thoughts on SOME of what I didn't like specifically:

I wasn't a fan of how Cordelia was quickly abandoned once Roland takes back the throne.
I didn't like that Maxwell came back, I thought his death was important for Roland's growth, and I especially don't like how Maxwell and Roland never speak following his recruitment, not even in a side story (if they did have one it's insane I didn't unlock it after 60+ hours).
Roland's ending could work as a bad ending, but they never draw a clear line in the sand that it was the wrong choice to make and when dealing with people being sent to concentration camps I think they Should Draw That Line. This whole thing was a mess.
Idore transforming into a giant JRPG monster was corny af.
Serenoa being neutral on racism is hilarious but pretty fucked and made it hard not only for me to root for him but to take him seriously when he called the Rosellans "his people" as if he wasn't about to deport all of them if the coin he flipped landed on heads.

TS is very much a political drama in the same way FE4 is, and you can interpret that as you will. Given the option between playing the two, I think I'd rather play FE4 again.

Overall Thoughts

I think that all of the above points combined with everything I did enjoy makes Triangle Strategy feel like a pretty okay game. It's not bad at all, but it doesn't ever rise above something truly amazing, something that really impacted me like I was hoping it to. Frederica is probably the one thing that will stick with me for months to come, when I've slowly forgotten everything and only the idea of her is in my mind.

If you want to play an SRPG with a lot of complexity and customization on par with something like FFT or FE14, I don't think this game is for you.

If you want to play an SRPG with gameplay that's more streamlined for regular folk and still pretty fun, then try Triangle Strategy out!

If you want to play an SRPG with a good story and a lot of depth and pretty decent handling of fantasy racism, play FE9. I know I mentioned FE4 earlier but FE4 sucks (<- said by the biggest FE4 fan).

Final score:

Triangle Strategy: 3/5. Not bad, not great, just a fine game.

Comments

  1. I’m glad you enjoyed the game enough to see most of what it has to offer.

    As a minor note, if you choose to surrender the Roselle in Ch.11 Serenoa tries to “”“peacefully””” convince the Roselle to leave with the promise that he will rescue them later and the “my people” scene plays out pretty much same.

    (Which makes the Roland ending EVEN WORSE when the game makes you think he is suddenly ok with this, like seriously WTF)

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    1. Oh my god that's insane. Yeah I played the game three whole times and didn't surrender the Roselle once because I just felt so bad. Even doing Roland's ending I felt awful especially because Serenoa tells Frederica "don't worry I'll save them EVENTUALLY" but he never does.

      Again I do think that ending could be good if it was very clear how it was a bad ending, but the ending CG and some of the writing for the characters paints it as a good decision... If they had even a single moment toward the very end (for example, Roland sees the kids running around and is happy, but in the background you see like, a soldier dragging someone away from their family because they denounce the goddess, and Roland sees this but keeps insisting it's a happy ending), it would have been great.

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