Triangle Strategy (Switch)

Triangle Strategy is the newest game from Square Enix’s Team Asano, the team behind games like Octopath Traveler and the Bravely Default series. Unlike the other games from the team, Triangle Strategy is a Strategy RPG, a genre that’s seen a resurgence in recent years with games like Fire Emblem Three Houses and Wargroove. The game was developed by Artdink and released March 4^th 2022 exclusively for the Nintendo Switch.

The games story takes place in the continent of Norzelia, a continent made up of three distinct regions: Glenbrook, Aesfrost and Hyzante. The game is set 30 years after a gruesome war between the nations that arose due to scarce natural resources such as salt and iron. The game opens in a time of relative peace between the nations but naturally it doesn’t stay that way for long. You play as Serenoa Wolffort, Heir to House Wolffort, close allies of the King of Glenbrook and a strong military house. The many characters in the story are fantastically written and don’t feel shallow in the slightest. The story itself is a slow burn but the world and events going on throughout it are very intriguing and make you want to play that extra chapter to see what happens next.

The visuals use the same “HD-2D” style we saw in Octopath Traveller and the game looks incredible in this style. The games pixel art looks fantastic and really helps the game have a classic SRPG feel without feeling dated. The game really feels like a love letter to older SRPGs in this respect with carefully crafted areas and character sprites. Each area in the games world looks fantastic, with fantastic sprites and lighting effects. I personally think it’s an improvement on Octopath Traveler and can’t wait to see what the team does with the engine next. Overall, I think the game is a great example of how to merge classic graphics with more modern style graphics.

 The games soundtrack is fantastic and really suits the games world and adds to the atmosphere of the game. I feel like each areas music represents the location well and the battle themes are fantastic and get the stakes of battles across well. It also amps up the tension in the games more serious moments.  The game also features essentially full voice acting for every line in the game with some great performances from the VAs.

The gameplay is split up into three different sections, Story, Battle and Exploration. The Story portion is where most of the games big events happen and where a lot of your time is spent, particularly early on. It plays out almost like a visual novel, with events playing out on screen while you can sit back and enjoy the story and make some choices. The games bigger choices are handled in a pretty unique way I haven’t seen before using the Scales of Conviction, a voting system where you can attempt to influence your party members choice with dialogue choices. This feels like a great system that adds a lot of weight to your dialogue choices. The choices in the game actually feel like they matter rather than them just changing dialogue here and there, they change the entire path of the story.

The Battle portion of the game is a grid based SRPG. Each of the games many character excels in different aspects of battle like magic or sword fighting. This makes for very deep gameplay that offers just the right amount of difficulty. The importance of positioning cannot be understated here, you can get additional damage opportunities depending on positioning. For example, if you attack from behind you score a critical hit for some extra damage. Or you could surround your opponent on both sides for a double attack. Special Skills are handled well through a resource bar that replenishes throughout the battle allows for some great strategy. These battles can take a fairly long amount of time depending on if your plan goes smoothly or not, but this is pretty standard for the genre. Overall, the games combat is fantastic and feels like a standout in the genre.

The third and final portion of the game is Exploration. This section tasks you with exploring the games areas and speaking to NPCs to learn more about the games world and lore. There are also items littered around these areas for some extra worldbuilding. Speaking to these NPCs can also yield some important information that unlocks dialogue choices later down the line that could influence characters in pivotal voting sections so they are definitely worth your time to speak to. These exploration sections are a nice change of pace from the story and battles.

Overall, Triangle Strategy is a fantastic SRPG with an intriguing story backed up by fantastic battles. The presentation of the game is also top notch with beautiful “HD-2D” visuals and a great soundtrack and voice acting which all makes for a great game that fans of the genre should love.