Gamespot score:7.0 (good)
My score:7.2
(+)Pros:-Funny cast of characters, -it feels great to play as characters from other games,-battle system is somewhat enjoyable once you make full use of it,-overall comical story,-able to choose from 2 different characters to play as,-you are able to strenghten your character to insane standards.
(-)Cons:-Battle can be boring if without making use of its true potential,-bland and boring dungeon crawling,- many repeated monster designs.
Gameplay time:40 hours+
The story in trinity universe is as wacky as you can ever imagine. The game takes place in the nether universe, a planet surrounded with tons of drifting objects, which include cars, bowling bowls and other stuff that you can think of which falls under the category of "ridiculous". You play the game as one of the 2 beginning characters. Kanata is the demon dog king, and his destiny is to be turned into a crystal to prevent the drifting objects from ever colliding into the castle. He of course, objects, refusing to follow the path of his father, shuuten. He escapes the ritual with the help of his subject tsubaki, and he decides to tackle the drifting objects with his own way, which is by manually entering them and smashing thier gravity cores. Rizelea on the other hand, is a valkyrie with her own ship. She seeks kanata to turn into a gem, to preserve peace, but of course, kanata doesn't want to. She flies around in her ship to find and seek kanata, hoping to get him to turn into the gem. Meanwhile, she also investigates the weird drifting object to find out why thier drifting...and such. When you play both characters, expect some differences in storyline and characters recruited, so don't be expecting the same stuff for both characters.
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| Characters such as etna and flonne make their appearance in trinity universe. |
Trinity universe is a dungeon crawling RPG, with a lot of menu navigation when you're not dungeon crawling. When you're out of dungeons, you spend time with menus, navigating through shops, the inn, when crafting upgrades for your characters, or when scrolling down a list to choose which monsters to beat in the monster colosseum. You also get to scroll down a list of event cutscenes and choose which one to see, provided you have any. The trinity universe expereince is very simple, you spend the most time in dugeons, but your time out of the dungeons are easily more enjoyable. You get to interact with funny characters at stores or other places, and if you have an available cutscene to view, its best you do it, cause its most likely funny. Especially during parts where certain characters star in thier own plays, genius. Not only that, most of the only ways to proceed through the story are through the cutscenes anyway, so..yeah.
As for the upgrades section, you will spend alot of time there. Why? You can strenghten your characters to become a bunch of godly faggots, so why not? Much time is spent scrolling down a list of selectable upgrades and checking what you still need in order to make it. Same for the monster colosseum, you spend time using materials gathered in dungoens to create mnsters to kill, and when you do kill them, they drop sweet items that boost your character's stats. Believe me, you have no idea how great I felt when my prinny became the highest healthed member on the team.
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| Yep, you want those numbers? Start upgrading! |
Anyway, we get a variety of dungeons to exlpore, ranging from libraries, to space ships, to haunted schools, pirate ships and more. While the dungeons you visit may sound ridiculous and lame, its not so bad. To make things even better, you explore the dungeons with a stellar character cast! Its humurous when you are walking through a dungeon, and your characters just start mumbling words, such as tsubaki saying "floating tea cups on the ground" or etna telling her prinnies to "go search, NOW!". Some may not be that funny, but most of these lines will manage to get at least a giggle out of you. The battles in the game are pretty alright. When you fully master the battle system, you can have your characters dishing out scary combos and do big big numbers worth of damage.
The battle system goes like this, each character has his/her own amount of AP before his/her turn. When the turn comes, you mash one of three buttons, square, triangle and X. Square attacks do little damage but hit many times, X attacks hit once but are usually painful, triangle attacks are magic attacks that hit the while enemy team. You can only mash 1 button all the way, or do a combination of the 3. Doing the latter may result in some special attacks or combos, but some require a hell lot of AP to perform, so you probably wont see them in normal battles. Of course, many other factors play a huge part in battles, such as mana graphics or meteorites. Mana graphics strengthen your weapons and meteorites give you special priorities. Meteorites are probably the only thing besides items that heal your characters, or allow you to escape battle. All of these play a part in battle.
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| The flashy lights don't help, the dungeons are bland and boring. |
Now onto the flaws. The dungeons may have variety, but they are boring. Trust me, all they have are different layouts, plus the textures and environement look pretty bland. Theres nothing going on in the dungeon, and going through them just to locate the treasures or gravity core can be painfully boring. If you're one to hunt ridiculous amount of loot for upgrading your characters, prepare to suffer boredom. The battle system too, if you dont master it well, its just a matter of button mashing.
Especially at the start, where everyone has crap AP, and the true shine on the battle mechanics havent been shown in tutorials, you just button mash everything. Lastly, we have monster design. This isnt a big issue, but I like to see variety in enemies. FF 13 had its share of repeats, but the monsters were redone in great detail, most of the repeated monsters looked vastly different in one way or another. Trinity universe fails in that aspect, all repeated monsters are just given a pallete swap. Now thats lazy, especially since theres quite a fair amount of repeats in this game.
Theres fun to be had in trinity universe, and it has some strong points to it, but dungeon crawling is not one of them. The hilarious character cast is obviously a plus, and the fact that there are 2 playable characters plus a true ending route make the game a lenghty one. Each character's story lasts at least 20 hours, add them together and you get a journey of at least 40 hours. If you take advantage of trinity universe's diverse upgrade system and fully master the battle system, these 40 hours can provide at least a good level of enjoyment.
Happy gaming.
