When I bought the Trine: Ultimate Collection, I was aware that the third game, The Artifacts of Power, was infamous for being the worst of the series.  The main thing I knew was that Frozenbyte had attempted to move away from 2D side-scrolling in favor of making the game 3D.  I tried the game anyway, and what I discovered told a slightly different story.  Was it still not a very good game?  Well, yeah…  But was it for the reason mentioned?  Not entirely.

To give a little background, the Trine games are fantasy platformers with physics-based puzzles.  You can swap effortlessly between three characters, Amadeus the wizard, who can levitate objects and conjure blocks, Pontius the knight, who is best for combat and defense with his sword and shield, and Zoya the thief, who is more nimble with her grappling hook and bow.  Normally, you also gain a plethora of new abilities by accumulating experience, but this game lacks that feature, so what you start with is all you get.  Instead of collecting experience, you collect Trineangles, which are required to unlock levels, but you won’t have any trouble getting enough.  I feel like they simply exist to give you something to collect.

The transition to 3D was not as bad as I was expecting.  Pontius was the least affected and plays exactly the same.  Zoya isn’t much different, either, except it’s harder to aim your arrows.  Fortunately, you can hold a trigger button to auto-target enemies and objects.  Amadeus suffered the most, as it’s far more difficult to precisely place a block in a 3D space with a fixed camera.  I feel like the right trigger sometimes allowed me to move the block towards and away from the camera (while moving the block normally allows you to move it up, down, right, and left), but this was not always sufficient to get the block where I wanted.

The gameplay is perfectly fine.  The game was pretty fun, even if it was very easy and the puzzles didn’t require much thought.  One problem is the fact that nearly all obstacles can be effortlessly crossed by simply placing a block where you want to go and having Zoya grapple to it.  You couldn’t grapple to Amadeus’ conjured objects in the second game, but you could in the fourth.  I don’t remember if the fourth was designed in a way where it wasn’t as easy to essentially “cheat” your way through everything or if I just didn’t utilize this method very much during my playthrough.

The worst part of the game is that it’s unfinished.  It’s not that it merely feels unfinished.  It is unfinished.  Frozenbyte themselves admitted as much.  I actually read that they didn’t anticipate how expensive it was going to be to make a 3D game compared to a 2D one.  That would explain why they didn’t add unlockable abilities.  And why the game is not nearly as beautiful as other Trine titles.  It would also explain why it’s so short.

When I first started the game and saw the map you walk around on to select levels, I thought, “Surely this can’t be it.  Maybe more will be revealed once I progress further into the game.”  But no.  That was it.  There are fewer than 10 main levels, alongside a bunch of short mini-levels that focus on a single character.  Pontius got a bunch of boring ones where you mainly focus on fighting, which is not nearly as fun as it was in the second game.  (In Trine 2, you could use Zoya’s elemental arrows or have Amadeus lift enemies and drop them into spikes.)  Amadeus got a handful of levels, which were fine, but any combat they contained was annoying, as he’s really not suited for it when all he can do is toss blocks at people.  And I only remember one level with Zoya, which is rather disappointing when she is the most fun character to play with.

It’s a shame because I was really interested in the story, which has to do with the titular Artifacts of Power and this sorcerer named Sarek, but…it never goes anywhere.  That’s right, this game’s biggest sin is…it’s unfinished.  There is a decently fun boss fight, and then…the game just ends on a cliffhanger.  That is never addressed in Trine 4.  I played one other game with a major cliffhanger called Jenny LeClue: Detectivu, but that game was at least of sufficient length for the price and actually solved the main mystery, which made me feel far more forgiving.  Some unsolved mysteries are not necessarily a bad thing, but the way Trine 3 was handled was unacceptable.

With that said…there’s no need to tear Fronzenbyte apart over this.  They literally admitted “we failed our fans”.  And I can appreciate any developer that will actually admit to their mistakes.  I still feel like they should have finished the story in Trine 4.  And not charged $21.99 for an incomplete game (slightly more than the far lengthier, and actually finished, Trine 2).  While what we got with Trine 3 isn’t horrible, I cannot recommend an unfinished game.  But the other Trine games (I’ve also played 2 and 4 so far) are good fun, so I would recommend getting the first four games as part of the Trine: Ultimate Collection (available on all major consoles and PC), which is normally $49.99, but I got it on sale for $12.49.  Then, and only then, might you want to check out Trine 3.  After all, there are worse ways to spend 5 hours.

All screenshots downloaded from official Trine 3 press kit