The Trine games are a side-scrolling fantasy series that follows three playable characters, Amadeus the wizard, Pontius the knight, and Zoya the thief, each of which have unique abilities.  Amadeus can levitate and conjure items, making him good for traversing the environment.  Pointius is better for fighting, with his sword, hammer, and shield.  And Zoya is more balanced, with the ability to grapple and swing from objects and fight with her elemental arrows.  While there is combat, the main gameplay revolves around physics-based puzzles.

Though it’s been a while since I played Trine 4 (the review of which you can find here), this review is going to revolve around recounting the differences between the two games, as they both share so many similarities.  To start, both games are beautiful, with detailed and vibrant environments.  Honestly, they really are some of the prettiest games I’ve ever seen.  The levels can be quite long in either game (30-45 minutes) and sometimes feel like they overstay their welcome, though they do save your progress if you leave in the middle.  Trine 4 has animated cut scenes, while Trine 2 tends to have flat images with minimal animation (I recall better animation in the Goblin Menace DLC, though they seemed reluctant to show human faces too closely…).  I also felt like the story in the second game was absent from the start, and it takes a decent number of levels before you actually understand what your quest is even for.  On the other hand, Trine 4 makes the story clear right from the beginning, and I felt more personally involved with Prince Selius’ story than I did the story in Trine 2 (which is initially only told through some brief poems and letters).

Now let’s get into gameplay.  Regardless of which game you’re playing, you can swap between characters effortlessly with the click of a button.  In Trine 4, when a character dies, they will regenerate their health slowly before they can be used again.  To get a game over, all three characters must die in quick succession.  In Trine 2, characters don’t regenerate health when they die, and you must reach a checkpoint to respawn them.  You’d think this would make the game harder, but in actuality, the game is pretty easy, as these checkpoints can often be found near enemies, making you practically invincible during battles (the exception was the final boss of the DLC, as it was rather difficult to reach the checkpoint).  Nevertheless, I found the battles in Trine 2 to be more fun, while those in Trine 4 felt rather tedious.  In the fourth game, I remember battles dragging on longer and enemies being harder to kill, plus every battle had you stuck in this small area until everyone is defeated.  In Trine 2, however, you have more freedom to run from enemies.  Not that you’d want to, though, because they don’t take too long to defeat and provide experience, speaking of which….

In both games, you can gain experience for unlocking new abilities, but Trine 4 is more controlling about it.  In that game, you can collect experience throughout the levels for optional abilities, but for certain required abilities, you must defeat enemies for the necessary experience, hence barring these abilities from you until the proper time.  In Trine 2, you can unlock the abilities at any time, provided you collected the necessary experience.  So for example, although the Kitesail Shield ability that allows Pontius to glide is unlocked much later in Trine 4, you can unlock it very early on in Trine 2, if you choose.  This allows every playthrough to be unique because you can unlock the abilities you think will aid you best.

While Trine 2 has more fun combat, I actually enjoyed the fourth game more because Trine 2, unfortunately, lacks in the puzzle department.  Now, I love a game that has open-ended solutions to puzzles.  But most of the time, I literally had no idea in the slightest what the developers even wanted me to do.  I progressed through the game just fine, don’t get me wrong, but most of the time, I see what’s clearly intended to be a puzzle, poke around for a bit, before ultimately deciding that the best solution is to simply stack a pile of boxes and glide over the obstacle.  I did that for most of the game.  One might argue that this is all my fault for choosing to play the game in such a repetitive way.  Maybe I’m just a dork for finding no other solution when there clearly must be.  But perhaps it does say something about Trine 2’s puzzles when I didn’t have this problem in the fourth game.

I felt like so much of Trine 2 is pulling levers that affect something for several seconds, and it got to the point that I actually started joking about it.  (Oh, look, another useless lever that I’ll inevitably bypass.  What fun!)  Rather than devise a solution where I pull the lever and navigate the available platform for the 2 seconds it’s available to me, why not just make another pile of blocks?  Or you’re supposed to pull down one ledge to cause the other end to lift up?  But Amadeus can’t walk while levitating objects like he could in Trine 4, so holding the thing down and running across the partial bridge I created is not an option.  And weighing it down with a block doesn’t work because said block falls off as soon as the ledge tilts downward.  Instead of aggravating myself with convoluted ways of making the thing stay down of its own volition, why don’t I just…make another pile of blocks…and glide across?  Now that I think about it, these puzzles seemed much more suited for co-op, which is indeed an option.  But what about us single players, huh?  Just because we’re sad and lonely and friendless, are you saying that we don’t matter, Frozenbyte!

What was I talking about again?  Oh yeah…

But if I had to describe the single most aggravating thing about the game, it’s probably the placement of the collectibles.  So many of these things are put so dang high up in the air and reaching them feels like a chore.  There are many tools at your disposal for reaching said items, and even then, many of them still remain beyond my grasp.  And even if I did manage to reach them, they required far more effort than seemed worth my time.  This is why I loved the Fairy Rope in Trine 4.  You could attach it to an object, including Amadeus’ boxes, and basically create a balloon out of anything.  And then Zoya could grapple to it (she can’t grapple to objects Amadeus has conjured in Trine 2) and reach any height.  Sure, it felt kind of like cheating, but considering this ability is unlocked late in the game, returning to previous levels and employing this method to reach all remaining collectibles felt like an earned reward for progressing so far into the game.

Trine 2 is not a bad game.  If I had played it first, then I probably would have enjoyed it much more.  The problem stems from the fact that both games feel very similar, and I played what feels like the superior game first, making Trine 2 feel inferior in comparison.  (It was the same issue with Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.  The latter would have felt much less repetitive had I not played BotW beforehand.)  Trine 4 is just a much better experience, as it includes many improvements that make the game more fun to play.  Such as the aforementioned convenience of being able to walk around while Amadeus is levitating objects instead of being glued to the ground, which resulted in Trine 2 feeling like a downgrade.

With that said, I played Trine 2: The Complete Story, which adds the Goblin Menace DLC, which includes a few additional levels to the main game, including a bonus level if you find all of the DLC’s treasure chests.  These levels were more difficult, sometimes frustratingly so, though they did feature some interesting new scenery.  The game should take roughly 8-12 hours to complete, while the DLC can add a few more hours.  Keep in mind that the game can take drastically longer (between 23-35 hours) if you want to get 100%.  If you’re interested, I got the first four games on sale in the Trine: Ultimate Collection, which was on sale for a very fair $12.49 (normally $49.99) and is available on all major consoles and PC.  Considering Trine 2: The Complete Story is $19.99 on its own ($3.99 on sale), I think that bundle was a fair deal when on sale.