Trinity Trigger Review (PS5)

Trinity Tigger is one of those classic JRPGs that keeps players entertained without reinventing the wheel. Despite benefiting from talent responsible for masterpieces like Octopath Traveler, Xenoblade and Trials of Mana, Trinity Trigger fails to achieve the same status. Developer FURYU focused more on making a JRPG with a simple combat system that remains enjoyable from beginning to end rather than taking risks and coming up with something innovative.

In Trinity Trigger, you take on the role of Cyan, a young scavenger who finds himself at the center of a nefarious plot of cosmic proportions. The game starts in a small town where Cyan was raised by his adoptive parents, but the feel and look of the location is definitory for what you’ll encounter throughout an entire playthrough.

But every good JRPG must have a good story, otherwise the, sometimes, several dozen hours you’ll have to spend to reach its end will simply not happen. Thankfully, Trinity Tigger does feature a compelling story that’s both intriguing and interesting at the same time. Its only fault is that it starts to pick up pretty late into the game, so I strongly suggest sticking with the game for at least a dozen hours even if you’re just mildly interested about what’s going to happen.

Now, the premise of Trinity Trigger is even more appealing. The game is set in on the continent of Trinitia, also known as the world of humans. All events happen after an epic war between the Gods of Order and Gods of Chaos, which supposedly ended in a draw.

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However, you’ll soon discover that the war has never ended, it just moved to the mortal realm. Even though Trinitia wasn’t part of the war, it was devasted by many of the weapons that dropped by the fallen gods. These weapons drastically changed the ecosystem where they landed, which is why you’ll visit so many different biomes throughout your adventure.

Instead of continuing the war in heavers, each faction now chooses a “Warrior of the Gods” to fight in their name. Cyan has been chosen to represent the God of Chaos’ side, but things aren’t as simple as it might seem at first glance.

There’s a mysterious third faction who wants to keep the war from ever ending. The faction’s motives remain a mystery until later on, but one thing is certain: you have to survive and discover not just who’s behind the third faction, but also what’s your real purpose in the mortal realm.

The second major pillar of a good JRPG is the combat system and/or character progression. When it comes to combat, Trinity Trigger keeps it very simple. You only have one button to smash to attack the enemy and one button to dodge. A third button is used for the “ultimate” ability that I only used during boss fights since normal enemies die very quickly.

What makes the combat interesting is the so-called “triggers,” which are actually cute little monsters that can turn into various weapons. Throughout his adventures, Cyan will discover special altars where these triggers can be improved by adding new weapon forms to their abilities. Triggers are different and can only turn into certain weapons, but out of the three characters that you’ll be able to control, you basically cover all sorts of weapons like ranged, melee, multi-target, single-target and so on.

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It goes even deeper than that, as each trigger can be customized with a trio of attacks. Basically, you have to click three times in quick succession on the attack button to complete a full combo and use all three special attacks tied to a trigger. There’s a wide range of attacks you can add in the three slots available for each trigger, which makes it very easy to prepare for any type of boss or enemy. Moreover, you switch between weapons on the fly by using the ring wheel during fights if the weapon you have equipped isn’t suitable for a fight.

Some enemies are susceptible or resistant to a certain type of weapon, which is shown in the color of the damage you’re doing (or not). On top of that, you have Manatites that you can etch into your weapons to various effects. Some provide you with a damage boost, while others offer you extra defense, protection against certain statuses, or specific bonuses. As long as you know the recipe, you can craft Manatites yourself and add more materials to obtain better results.

Although combat is terribly easy, every other adjacent system is pretty complex and requires some experimentation for better results. If you’re the kind of person who doesn’t really like min-maxing their characters, then you’re in luck because Trinity Trigger isn’t really a challenging game, so you can do without that.

Cyan will be accompanied on his travel by two other characters with which he will fight side by side. Switching between characters can be done during fights whenever you want to use another character’s ultimate abilities or revive the one you control. Unfortunately, the AI is pretty bad, so when they’re left alone, characters that you don’t control usually don’t avoid enemy attacks unless they use ranged weapons. This only applies to bosses since every fight with regular enemies ends very fast.

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The Good

The Bad

Conclusion