![]() Triangle Strategy speaks often about the necessity of following through on one’s convictions, and it’s a pleasure to see the game’s designs all feeding into that same surety. ![]() The fact that the same strategy rarely works across maps attests to the game’s belief that the uneven war depicted therein should keep players on their toes. This is all the more impressive given how many tactical variations there seem to be depending on the allies you’ve unlocked and the foes you’ve made. Triangle Strategy feels entirely intentional, structured to give you the maximum amount of struggle and conflict, and to never give you an easy way out. ![]() These optional, repeatable challenges are as unique as the characters that you can deploy, and serve to test how well you understand elemental effects on terrain (like reducing the accuracy of units on frozen tiles), properly setting up and defending against follow-up attacks, and efficiently splitting your party up to prevent foes from escaping. And deploying the merchant Lionel, who can infuriate (or buy off) foes, means that there might not be room for the blacksmith Jens and the handy escape routes that he can build with his portable ladders and blockading traps.ĭespite having all of those characters to train, and a limit of how many can fight at once, Triangle Strategy avoids being a grind-heavy game thanks to its Mental Mock Battles. For one, taking the acrobat Piccoletta, who can delay foes with her decoys, means that you might have to leave behind Corentin, who can conjure up icy barriers. Support classes are particularly useful, and hard to choose between. Some of the differences between characters, especially healers, are minor-one’s on horseback, one’s more of an item-based apothecary-but others bring a much-needed burst of variety and surprise to a pretty tried-and-true formula. In a departure from the job-based battle system of Final Fantasy Tactics and the fixed classes of your average Fire Emblem game, each of the 20-plus characters in Triangle Strategy plays a specific role on the battlefield. The complexity and difficulty of these choices spills over into the tactical battles as well. It’s not so easy to sway the honorable shield knight Erador or your kindhearted betrothed Frederica when the consequences-betraying your best friend, enslaving a people-become too inconvenient. Instead, it puts them to a vote of the hero’s closest advisors, and while you can try to influence them if your stats are high enough, they provide a level of accountability for your actions. ![]() The game also strikingly doesn’t leave the player entirely in control of these decisions. Triangle Strategy doesn’t tell you which choice corresponds with which Conviction until the New Game+, and even then each decision that you make has deadly consequences. It can be difficult in such moments to keep track of the greater good, but that’s by design. In many of the game’s roughly 20 chapters, players will have to make painful choices, less of the friendly “who to ally with” variety and more of the vicious “who to betray.” As Serenoa of Wolffort, you’ll constantly find your allegiance shifting between your liege in the verdant Kingdom of Glenbrook, the savvy technological invaders from the chilly Aesfrost, and the religious zealots of the eastern desert nation of Hyzante. From the HD-2D art style that practically pops off the screen-and bears more than a few shades of similarity to Octopath Traveler-to its nuanced plot, the game is the epitome of complex.Įven Triangle Strategy’s morality system doesn’t rely on an over-simplified binary of choices between, say, “good” and “bad,” preferring instead a tripartite of Convictions: Liberty, Morality, and Utility. Artdink’s Triangle Strategy is a deceptively named tactical role-playing game, because while it revolves around the machinations of three continental powers embroiled in a salt-based trade war, it’s nowhere near as flat as a two-dimensional triangle. ![]()
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