Trinity Trigger Review: A Worthwhile Throwback

The JRPG genre is perhaps my favorite, though, despite this, it’s also probably the genre I spend the least time with overall. These days, I don’t often find myself with the time needed to sink upwards of 100-200 hours into something like Xenoblade Chronicles 3 as much as I’d love to, meaning I’m always on the lookout for something a little more breezy and concise within the JRPG space.

Trinity Trigger, developed by FuRyu and published by  XSEED, is a stripped-back JRPG experience that looks to scratch that very itch. Harkening back to a simpler time, it strips progression and its combat back to simple yet effective loops that are engaging yet easy to wrap your head around, while also leaning on a difficulty curve that doesn’t require mindless grinding in order to take on the game’s toughest challenges. While it may lack the depth that many JRPG die-hards love and suffers from somewhat monotonous overworld and dungeon design, it provides a charming adventure that’s well worth experiencing, as long as you make a moderate effort at keeping your expectations in check.

A JRPG Supergroup

Going into Trinity Trigger, I expected a lot from its world, characters, and narrative. With a host of veteran JRPG developers on board, each having worked on a host of beloved titles such as Trials of Mana, Xenoblade, and Octopath Traveller, Trinity Trigger doesn’t disappoint.

Set within the world of Trinitia, Trinity Trigger presents a land full of intriguing lore and history. A world that worships Gods of Order and Chaos, who once engaged in deadly wars in the heavens above, Trinitia is a land that was once heavily divided. When we pick up with the main protagonist, Cyan, the war, it seems, is largely a thing of the past. The Gods no longer fight, and the world seems relatively peaceful. All seems well until a mysterious woman named Elise enters Cyan’s life and tells him that a strange symbol that one of his eyes contains indicates that he has been chosen as a Warrior of Chaos and that he’s expected to engage in a deadly battle against a Warrior of Order. The reason for this? The Gods haven’t stopped warring at all, with each of them instead choosing to fight a proxy war on the soil of Trinitia, periodically choosing someone to bear their symbol and do their bidding. Adding further to the turmoil is a mysterious group of shadowy agents who want nothing more than to see the unrest continue, their sole purpose being to eliminate the Warriors of Chaos and Order in an attempt to keep Trinitia locked into an endless cycle of war. Elise sees only one way out of this; Cyan must find the Warrior of Order and attempt to bring about an end to the fighting via mutual agreement.

Accessible Action

Cyan won’t be alone in his quest to bring peace to Trinitia, as Elise, and soon another party member (who I won’t spoil) join his cause. The vast majority of your travels will boil down to exploring the various regions of Trinity Trigger’s overworld, engaging in combat, hoovering up secrets, and delving into dungeons.

While FuRyu clearly aims to evoke a sense of nostalgia, leaning on the player’s love for old-school JRPGs, its combat is anything but classic in that it unexpectedly opts for fast-paced real-time combat rather than a more traditional turn-based system. In terms of how it plays, it’s fast, snappy, and never overwhelming. Leaning into a system that will feel familiar to anyone who has played a recent Rune Factory title, combat essentially boils down to using the attack button to pull off simple combos, with stamina being the only limit on how often you can attack. Each party member also has access to a special attack that you can unleash once you’ve filled a meter through standard attacks. Though, honestly, given how simple taking on general trash mobs is, I rarely found myself using these abilities outside of boss battles, or on the rare occasion the game threw enough enemies at me in the overworld that I felt overwhelmed.

That’s not to say it’s a combat system that is entirely absent of any depth. One of the main reasons Cyan and his party are traveling the world is to find alters that can help bestow additional weapon forms upon their Triggers. Triggers are essentially Pokemon-type creatures that can convert into weapon forms when wielded by someone who bears the mark of a God. Upon unlocking these weapon forms, you’ll then be able to switch between them by bringing up a radial menu mid-battle, something you’ll have to get comfortable with if you want to take advantage of enemy-specific weapon weaknesses, and each party member’s specific weapon proficiency that sees them dealing out additional damage when using their preferred Trigger form. Further depth comes through the combo system. Each weapon has a three-hit combo, but the moves within that combo are entirely customizable. For example, you might want Cyan’s sword to lean into heavy single-target burst damage at first, but as you get into later areas where enemy density is greater, it might make more sense to switch out his combo steps for variants that focus more on AoE damage. Each of the eight weapons can be augmented in this way, and what you’re effectively left with is the ability to swap between 8 different loadouts on the fly. It’s a system that strikes a wonderful balance between accessibility and depth; those who just want to focus on the narrative and button mash their way through the game should be able to do so with relative ease, while those who want a bit more control over their party and want to push for peak damage output in battles will find a lot to dig into should they so choose.

Progression is similarly streamlined, with battles dishing out character experience, which results in leveling up the wider party. Alongside this, weapons will gradually get more powerful at defined intervals within the story. As they grow in level, weapon experience, also gained through battle, can be spent on purchasing new moves for your combos, as well as upgrading existing options.

It’s also worth noting that everything I’ve described can be experienced in co-op. Online co-op is coming at a later stage, but Trinity Trigger is launching with a fully functional local co-op option for up to three players. While I wasn’t fortunate enough to get to test this out during the review period, I can already tell the accessible action provided by Trinity Trigger will be a great fit for anyone that wants to bring a friend or significant other along on Cyan’s journey to save Trinitia. Not enough JRPGs provide this type of functionality, so hats off to FuRyu for going the extra mile here.

One Dimensional Presentation

While I loved the breezy nature of Trinity Trigger, I can’t deny that exploration in the back half of the game becomes a bit of a chore. Towns and overworlds, clearly designed on a budget, all begin to roll into one, with most of the differences between biomes largely boiling down to palette changes and some minor changes to the architecture and world geometry in each region. The world is absolutely serviceable, and in all honesty, there’s a charm to this stripped-back look that evokes warm memories of the simplistic town design that propped up some of the genre greats. However, when contrasted against the wonderfully varied and detailed character design, the one-note art direction of the overworld is disappointing, especially when you also have to contend with incredibly muddy and flat textures throughout. It ends up giving Trinitia a very artificial feel in parts, sometimes killing the immersion that can be integral to investing in a great JRPG.

The lack of variety also extends to the dungeons, the vast majority of them largely looking the same, consisting of simple corridors, a staircase here and there, and the odd light puzzle that must be overcome before reaching the boss of each one. However, the bosses and enemies are, for the most part, at least, suitably varied. Bosses, in particular, are a highlight as they often tower above Cyan and his party, each with unique designs and attack patterns not found elsewhere in Trinitia.

The sound is similarly mixed bag, with the soundtrack ranging from okay to great. The real sin here, however, is how unbearable the sound effects and character quips during battle become. Each character only has a handful of short phrases that they’ll utter in battle in response to certain scenarios, and within a few hours of playing, I was already at my wit’s end. The issue is the frequency with which these phrases are screamed; literally every few seconds at most. By the midway point, I frequently muted Trinity Trigger when I knew I was about to engage in a long stretch of combat due to how grating the constant chit-chat became.

Conclusion

Despite my gripes, Trinity Trigger is a charming little JRPG that successfully provides a role-playing fix for anyone who may want something a little less intense from the genre. For me, the success of a JRPG is largely based on two factors – the strength of the narrative and how engaging the combat is. On both these fronts, Trinity Trigger is a resounding success, and the fact that it’s playable from start to finish in local co-op, with online soon to follow, is a fantastic touch that should elevate the experience further. With fast-paced combat that manages to stay interesting if you’re willing to dig into the customizable nature of each weapon and a narrative that does a great job of establishing a universe with a complex and storied past, Trinity Trigger is proof that there is absolutely space for these more scaled back experiences, and I hope this is just the beginning of FuRyu tailoring to this particular niche in the market.

Final Verdict: 4/5

Available On: PS5 (reviewed), PS4, Switch, PC; Publisher: XSEED Games; Developer: FuRyu; Released: 25 April, 2023; Players: 1-3; ESRB: E for Everyone 10+; MSRP: $59.99

Full Disclosure: A code was provided by the Publisher for the purposes of this review.