Hidden Gem Triangle Strategy: A throwback to Square Enix's golden age

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Remember when Square Enix used to make JRPGs? Me neither. Nowadays, they are mostly a cinematic action game factory, remake assembler, MMO profit extractor and purveyor of the worst mobile gacha available. But occasionally one of their employees who didn't get the memo comes up with a project that harkens to their glory days. The employee who forgot he was living in the 2020's is Square Enix producer Tomoya Asano, creator of the Bravely Default and Octopath Traveller series. He has a predilection for the charming, sprite based JRPGs of yesteryear that the corporate machine doesn't care that much for anymore. Unfortunately, he had the herculean task of producing a strategy JRPG masterpiece while getting limited development time and budget support. Was he able to succeed? Well, I am happy to announce that he did, for the most part. However, there are some significant flaws that may turn off players from fully appreciating this title. Let's delve into the details.

A unique yet familiar take on grid based combat​

The tactical combat in this game will be very familiar to veterans of the genre while also throwing in some new twists. The basic setup is very reminiscent of games such as Tactics Ogre or Divinity: Original Sin, where careful management of turns is required to succeed and abilities can affect the environment in interesting ways. Each character represents a specific ability suite and combat role (a specific class if you will). The first layer of strategy is selecting a party with the right skills for a certain battle. This is mostly accomplished through experience and/or trial and error, but the game provides you some hints of which characters are recommended.

Character selection screen. Usually a party of up to 12 characters can be deployed in a map. The game gives some helpful suggestions to players on their roster.​

The second level of strategy is managing tactics points. These points are the currency that is spent to activate each character's special abilities; the magic points of this game. Without them a character can only move or attack with their weapon. A character usually starts a battle with 2 TP and regains one each round. Judicious usage of abilities is an important element that often is the difference between victory and defeat.

Special abilities require a specific amount of Tactics Points (indicated by the yellow diamonds next to each ability) to be activated. ​

The third aspect of strategy is the most important: positioning. Positioning yourself to avoid enemy attacks while setting up powerful turns is an key element of the game's strategy. This can be the most intimidating to novices, but there's also a lot of quality of life features to help them out. The UI is very communicative of options when it comes to choosing moves in combat. Whenever a tile can be reached by an attack from an opposing enemy a pink x displays on the tile and a red line that indicates which enemy can attack there. This type of communication is intuitive and helpful for the player to make quick tactical decisions.

Positioning matters. The game indicates which tiles are vulnerable to enemy attacks with a X. Red lines identify the potential attackers.

The black and white sword icon indicates an enemy is being flanked and a double attack will be triggered. But enemies can also flank you.

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There are many other customizations to adapt the game to players skill level. There are 3 levels of difficulty that accommodate different levels of tactical expertise. The game has no permanent character deaths, which is a welcome design choice for less adept players. Furthermore, the game also allows the player to retry each map quickly after a defeat while conserving all the experience gained. While this seems exploitable at first hand, the experience gains scale off dramatically in each subsequent try. All in all, this is one of the most beginner friendly tactics games I've played that also provides enough of a challenge on higher difficulties to keep veterans interested.

Choose Your Own Adventure makes a comeback​

The other major gameplay aspect happens during the interactive exploration scenes. There is a semi-hidden attribute attached to the main character that is a sort of philosophical alignment with three schools of thought (or convictions). The three convictions are: Morality, Liberty and Utility. When engaging in conversation, a NPC may pose a question to the player. Depending on the answer, this will increase the player's belief in one of the convictions. There are also other actions that can trigger increases in conviction, such as collecting items, defeating enemies, spending money, and others.

A NPC poses a question to the player. The player then chooses an answer that increases the player's conviction.

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Once every couple of chapters or so, there are turning points in the story that can be affected by player choice. These turning points bring out the Scales of Conviction, a relic used by the main character's house to aid in decision making. Each household member of standing gets a voice in the decision making process. This is where the alignment with each conviction type comes into play. The main character makes their choice in a particular election. The other characters have their own convictions and inclinations. The amount of conviction the player has in each type determines his ability to influence other party members down a certain path, if he chooses to do so. If he is unable to influence them, he is left at the mercy of the majority rule.

This is a scales of conviction scene. The player can vote for one of 3 choices and also can influence the way the other party members vote.

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This feature, while interesting, is designed in a manner that is quite frustrating at times. Since the player hasn't had enough opportunities to develop their conviction, they are extremely limited in their ability to influence the story at the beginning of the game. This is where the replayability factor of the game kicks in. One of the incentives for trying multiple replays is to experience all of the possible story branches that develop from these inflection points. But once you replay the game multiple times and develop maximum conviction points in all 3 types the system is completely trivialized. Perhaps it would've been better if the player could influence in any direction they wanted to without having to worry about conviction points. Hard to say.

This is what it looks like when the main character tries to influence a party member. A player might succeed in changing the party member's mind. Or not.
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Retro visuals with some modern flair​

The visuals are what you'd expect from a HD-2D Square Enix title. The character sprite based artwork is well realized, on par with the best sprite based games from Squaresoft's catalog. The character portraits look like they were made with traditional mediums, which gives them a unique visual style. The environments and battle scenes are constructed in 3D and can be fully rotated while in combat. They also take advantage of the capabilities of the Unreal Engine. For example, spells use particle effects and dynamic lighting and water surfaces use reflective sparkles and effects. Spells can also affect the environment dynamically, for example a fire spell can cause certain surfaces to light up and create tiles with fire effects. It's nothing you haven't seen before from other HD-2D JRPGs, but it is competently implemented.

Spells have dramatic lighting and particle effects. And they create surfaces with visual effects like smoke or mist as seen below​

The glistening of the water and the shadows from the clouds are dynamic; it changes depending on the angle of the camera.

Attractive hand drawn anime style portraits fill the stat screens of this game.
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Grand political intrigue delivered like a PBS report​

The narrator goes on and on about things the player already knows. Perfect feature for amnesiacs or insomniacs.

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The game story depicts a multi generational conflict between the 3 rivaling powers of Norzelia: Glenbrook, Aesfrost and Hyzanthe. The main character, Serenoa is the son of a vassal to the Kingdom of Glenbrook and becomes involved in an incident that reignites the existing animosity between the 3 powers. As is usual in this genre, there are many story moments to experience and all are well written in a faux medieval style, with intriguing characters in every scene. The main complaint that usually comes up when talking about the story is that there's far too much of it. Way too often the player will be presented with a story scene, followed by a couple more sequenced directly after another. The intro sequence to the game is notorious for this. Of course, most story scenes are skippable but its not recommended if you want to understand the complex plot. On top of that, the narrator at the start of every chapter regurgitates every little detail that happened a few scenes ago. It feels like cheap padding at times, like they felt that the game was too short and compensated by adding more narration and story scenes. I have to assume that these choices were made because the game was made on a budget. This is extremely lame given how wealthy Square Enix is as a corporation. If my hypothesis is correct, is Square Enix really living up to their reputation as a quality gaming studio when they limit their developers financially like this?

With various forced and optional story scenes happening one after the other, and character stories to unlock, the game often feels like a slog for completionists.

Story time. Happens far too often in this game.​

Outstanding soundtrack hits the right notes​

The soundtrack of this game compares favorably to the best amongst the JRPG genre. It features an eclectic mix of big brass band, Spanish flavor and beautiful pseudo medieval courtly songs. They are composed by Akira Senju, who has worked on various Japanese anime and TV shows, including Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood. He quickly became a favorite of mine after hearing his work on this game.

A sampling of some of the notable tracks in the game:

Sound effects are also well executed and not annoying or distracting. The only aural issue I could complain about is the quality of the English voice acting. The cast is solid for the most part, but the actor who plays Serenoa and one who plays Benedict deliver subpar performances at times. Serenoa is passable, but often has awkward or flat delivery. Benedict's actor chose a robotic delivery style for his character that really stands out in a bad way when compared to the rest of the cast. Since both of these characters are integral to the plot, they unfortunately cause an impression that overwhelms the other solid performances. There's also the issue of actors delivery in dialogue scenes sounding disconnected from each other. Maybe these issues could've been prevented if the voice director asked for multiple takes with slightly different deliveries and chose the best one that fits the scene.

Final Thoughts​

Despite the many flaws, there is a lot of love and passion thrown behind project Triangle Strategy. Most of the blame for the flaws can be put at the feet of the Square Enix corporate suits, who continue to chase trends, NFTs and mobile gacha over artistry. While they do that, masters of the craft such as Team Asano languish with limited budgets and short timelines to complete their visions. I have no doubt that if Square Enix put more of their budget behind games like Triangle Strategy, they would be creating modern classics instead of flawed gems. Hopefully by creating awareness of games such as this one, I can do my part to reverse the negative trends influencing modern day gaming studios and point them towards artistry.

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Available on PC and Switch

 

[BinaryMessiah]

Honesly, the game being shorter is a plus. There's too many 100 hour RPGs out there that feel impossible to finish. I also don't mind the story having a lot of cut scenes since the story is good.

 

[Strategist]

Honesly, the game being shorter is a plus. There's too many 100 hour RPGs out there that feel impossible to finish. I also don't mind the story having a lot of cut scenes since the story is good.

Completely agree, but some may want a longer game. The game left me wanting for more, which may be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your perspective. Definitively preferable to the opposite of slogging through a repetitive grind.

I also don't mind the extensive use of cutscenes. I've enjoyed many visual novels in my time. It was more about the usage of them and this criticism would apply to any game, including a VN game. The unnecessary narration scenes plus those that restate what the player already knows were a waste of the player's time. I strongly believe in the storytelling practice of having each scene serve a unique purpose and this game fails at it.

 

[ATenderLad]

Hey this was great, and the game is so much better than the bland placeholder title implies.

I think it definitely left me wanting more as well, but I think that stems from how linear it is. The character building is a bit too minimal for experimenting over different new games, and the experience doesn't mechanically change much despite branching paths in the story. There's a PSX SRPG called Vanguard Bandits that had a similar story of clashing kingdoms and empires, with different routes through the game. It's not amazing, but the variety in your character roster and the mechs available (it was a feudal mecha game, isn't that crazy?) between different playthroughs went a long way to keeping things fresh.