The final installment of the Adventures of +Ahmed Jadaa & Tamim in the world of Trine is here. This isn't to say this is the last Trine game that will be coming out, but it will be the last one and Ahmed and I waste our time playing.
Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power is the latest installment of the Trine series keeping many of the same elements from previous iterations. Its is a co-operative (You can play alone if you have no friends) action platformer, but its twist in relation to its predecessors is that addition of a three dimensional element to the world. The game is a PC exclusive that I played through Steam and was published and developed by Frozenbyte.
The story in Trine as an IP was never its strong suit and it isn't any better here, the world is shallow at best as are the characters. But it really pissed me off that the story ended on a cliffhanger, since it highly overestimated the level of fucks I gave about such weakly realized characters in a very mediocre gaming experience. The control mechanics for the game are equally uninspired with them being pretty much the same as those found in previous editions of the game. The warrior can attack things with his sword and shield, the theif can use her bow and grappling hook and the wizard can create and move objects around. This meant that anyone who had played previous Trine games won't really face a challenge when it comes to solving the puzzles as it will be really straight forward, but, due to the addition of three dimensions in the game some of the control as difficult to aim and perform.
Its all merely an excuse to string the various beautifully rendered level along. This is where Trine really shines as a whole, its a very beautiful game with some fantasticlly rendered and creatively designed level in a visual sense. The levels are quite distinct from one another and there is always something happening in the background which gives the game a sense of life. However, due to the inability to really explore the levels with invisible walls everywhere this illusion quickly comes crashing down around you.
Trine's biggest flaw in my opinion was that the developers wasted so much time adding the third dimension to the game that everything else suffered for it. According to Frozenbyte, the cost for the development of Trine 3 cost around fifteen million dollar, slightly over three times the cost of the production of Trine 2. Simply comparing the two games will show you that despite this massive cost Trine 3 has significantly less content than Trine 2. One example would be that the number of levels in Trine 2 is larger than that in Trine 3, a second would be that you can beat Trine 3 in around 2-4 hours, while beating Trine 2 will take nearly double that amount of time. Going three dimensional was clearly the wrong way to go and Frozenbyte needs to not do that again unless they can provide the players with the same amount of content. Because aside from the flaws mentioned above, the three dimensional world in Trine 3 isn't even that three dimensional, the levels are still very one dimensional with a very clear and specific way to progress and no room for exploration meaning that all the effort put in to develop this three dimensonal capability was a massive waste of time.
On top of this, the addition of the three dimensional world caused an substantial amount of glitches and bugs in the game. Two major ones that I experience were the fact that I was dropped through the overworld map back to the main menu without being able to select a level and just being stuck there. The second and more major example was the final boss fight, where the balls of fire that were supposed to fall onto the central platform from the sides of the levels just impotently fell before reaching the platform but within our sight so we could look at them in despair as they fell. It took us a while to realize this, and it was a lasting bug, as +Ahmed Jadaa spent around ten minutes running around the level while I mimumized the game to see if we were doing anything wrong. We ended up having to change hosts and restart the game multiple times before it finally works. This kind of experience really isn't worth it and shows that Frozenbyte really made a bad development choice as the addition of three dimensions in the game did near nothing for the players but add problems to their gaming experience.
I suggest skipping this game in the Trine franchise. Frozenbyte made the terrible choice of adding a three dimensional feature in the game at the cost of pretty much everything else in the game. There are less level, the game is overall shorter, glitches are abound in the game with clipping, falling through floors and object movement in the game just not happening. If you are really into giving something like this game a try, I suggest getting Trine 2, its the best in the series and will give you a much better gaming experience compared to this mismanged mess.
Its all merely an excuse to string the various beautifully rendered level along. This is where Trine really shines as a whole, its a very beautiful game with some fantasticlly rendered and creatively designed level in a visual sense. The levels are quite distinct from one another and there is always something happening in the background which gives the game a sense of life. However, due to the inability to really explore the levels with invisible walls everywhere this illusion quickly comes crashing down around you.
Trine's biggest flaw in my opinion was that the developers wasted so much time adding the third dimension to the game that everything else suffered for it. According to Frozenbyte, the cost for the development of Trine 3 cost around fifteen million dollar, slightly over three times the cost of the production of Trine 2. Simply comparing the two games will show you that despite this massive cost Trine 3 has significantly less content than Trine 2. One example would be that the number of levels in Trine 2 is larger than that in Trine 3, a second would be that you can beat Trine 3 in around 2-4 hours, while beating Trine 2 will take nearly double that amount of time. Going three dimensional was clearly the wrong way to go and Frozenbyte needs to not do that again unless they can provide the players with the same amount of content. Because aside from the flaws mentioned above, the three dimensional world in Trine 3 isn't even that three dimensional, the levels are still very one dimensional with a very clear and specific way to progress and no room for exploration meaning that all the effort put in to develop this three dimensonal capability was a massive waste of time.
On top of this, the addition of the three dimensional world caused an substantial amount of glitches and bugs in the game. Two major ones that I experience were the fact that I was dropped through the overworld map back to the main menu without being able to select a level and just being stuck there. The second and more major example was the final boss fight, where the balls of fire that were supposed to fall onto the central platform from the sides of the levels just impotently fell before reaching the platform but within our sight so we could look at them in despair as they fell. It took us a while to realize this, and it was a lasting bug, as +Ahmed Jadaa spent around ten minutes running around the level while I mimumized the game to see if we were doing anything wrong. We ended up having to change hosts and restart the game multiple times before it finally works. This kind of experience really isn't worth it and shows that Frozenbyte really made a bad development choice as the addition of three dimensions in the game did near nothing for the players but add problems to their gaming experience.
I suggest skipping this game in the Trine franchise. Frozenbyte made the terrible choice of adding a three dimensional feature in the game at the cost of pretty much everything else in the game. There are less level, the game is overall shorter, glitches are abound in the game with clipping, falling through floors and object movement in the game just not happening. If you are really into giving something like this game a try, I suggest getting Trine 2, its the best in the series and will give you a much better gaming experience compared to this mismanged mess.
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