I never did get a chance to play the first Trine, I heard it was a great side scrolling platformer, but that’s about all I heard. PC only crowds have since told me that it’s great; jumping on the sequel that was equally as good, so since the PS4 is getting a large amount of indie platforms recently, I figured why not test out the puzzling waters of Trine 2: The Complete Story on the PS4!
Starting out with our story, the heroes are taking a well deserved rest after the successful restoration of the kingdom in the first game, Amadeus the wizard is busy trying to master a spell when he is beckoned by a light that leads you into your first tutorial, which helps you get used to movement controls and using each of the characters. This happens for all three, with the Knight Pontius, the Stalwart knight hero & the slippery thief Zoya, a ninja stroke archer that boasts acrobatic skills to get around and seems to have stolen Link’s hookshot to get up to seemingly high unreachable areas!
The Trine, a glowing light guides these three heroes together, realising they might be the only ones who can get what needs getting, a lost sister of a witch named Rosabel. She herself is not a saint, she was a jealous child who did not like her sister because attention leaned more towards Isabel than herself, so she imprisoned her own sister and left her captive in a secret hiding place she set up during her birthday. The forests natural fairness apparently acts as “Karma” in this situation and robs the selfish little squirt of her magical powers. But this didn’t stop the enchanted forests becoming overgrown, twisted and loaded with goblins and beasts! Rosabel is unhappy with this and eventually wishes to steal the Trine from the heroes and use its power to restore the kingdom.
Our job, as the heroes, is to stop this from happening and save the good sister Isabel in an attempt to restore the land with her natural goodness bring home a happy ending! In terms of gameplay, battles are very rewarding with Pontius the Knight and with Zoya with her archery skills coming in handy at long range. Amadeus is useful, but not proficient with fighting; he is better suited to creating steps for characters to move around. Each character has a skill tree that can be used to enhance battle. Fighting with standard enemies and bosses in the game can be tough, but each one can be ground down well enough with character switching and timing.
They range pretty well from Giant Goblin kings to Dragons too, it’s actually very fun to play and it really does look beautiful on the Playstation 4. A beautiful colourful game of which there are scant few across many systems. With its beautiful backdrop, Trines 2’s only major flaws for me was the accuracy of its characters. With the PC version I imagine you can be more accurate with jumps and placement of the creatable blocks that Amadeus can form. The PS4 tries to use the touchpad for this, but its overly sensitive and very heavily unusable in my opinion. It’s not broken, just very unreliable.
The second issue I have is my most frustratingly deep one, puzzles and jumping! I don’t mind puzzles in games, but jumping puzzles in platformers require a high level of accuracy in this regard, it is however extremely frustrating in this game. The accuracy is so very off in some of the puzzles, especially those that require precise jumping, that it becomes near unplayable with everyone but Zoya, who if you are VERY lucky will be able to hookshot onto something stuck in the ceiling to get past it.
In all honesty my most frustrating puzzle was in only the third area, and I got stuck on it for so long that I nearly quit playing altogether, but through this frustration came my realisation that this game is intensely rewarding through its difficulties. The challenge of its puzzles is matched by its charming beauty and its generic, but still very likeable characters and story. Oh and did I mention there were Dragons in this game?! If you’re a fan of co-op puzzle platformers (which are few and far between on the PS4 at the moment), then Trine 2: The Complete Story could be for you.
