Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power

After the success of Trine 2, its developers moved on to create something very different, ultimately creating the black sheep of the series, which is quite unique and also unusually short in comparison. This is fairly known, but you really have to play it yourself to truly understand the extent of this experiment, which released back in 2015.

The main difference is that Trine 3 plays in 3D. Well, it's not completely 3D, since the camera is still fixed, but you are able to walk from and to the screen, unlike all the other Trine games. And this takes some getting used to at the beginning, especially with Amadeus the wizard, because you now can move his boxes on three axis instead of just two, which really made controlling things much more complicated.

Still, the start of the game actually is very impressive. The soundtrack by Ari Pulkkinen is simply beautiful, maybe even the best of the entire series, and the levels look equally beautiful, especially the wrecked ship at the beach, which is where you start as Amadeus. The 3D works mostly fine and gets used in a creative way to create new types of puzzles. It's a breath of fresh air, where at first it seems like this could be really the future of Trine, or maybe co-exist with traditional 2D games.

The story seems really promising as well, which goes back to the first Trine and finally wants to explore the origins of the eponymous artifact. This also includes the antagonist Sarek once more, who seemingly is to the Trine what Ganon is to the Triforce, even though it's slightly unclear how it still all fits together with the undead lord of the first title. Like in Trine 2, the game starts with the summoning the heroes, this time to stop a fierce monster from attacking the Astral Academy. But the Trine does so in very inconvenient moments for them all, like ripping Amadeus out of his vacation. And this makes the heroes want to finally get rid of it, which of course only makes things worse...

So far, so good. But once you start diving deeper into the adventure, you will quickly notice how it's simply not on par with the quality of its predecessors. This starts with how odd the heroes look this time and their lack of unlockable abilities. Collecting Experience in the environment or from defeated enemies to obtain new skills, like additonal objects for the wizard, was always fun and interesting. It was also useful, because these abilities helped with solving puzzles, overcoming obstacles, or fighting enemies in various ways.

That's all history in Trine 3. Except for the Kitesail Shield, which Pontius has from the start this time, so he can float through the air, all of the heroes simply get their default abilities. Single arrows for Zoya, only one box for Amadeus. No fire arrows, no planks, no hammer, or anything like that... And the only real new thing is that Zoya can use her ropes in different ways, like pulling or connecting objects, but at the same time she got also more restricted, where the ropes only work on given anchor points.

This change influences the level design quite tremendously, which feels a lot more one-sided despite going into the third dimension. A specialty of the Trine games has always been that there was a variety of solutions for the same problem. It partially even allowed to only play a single character for an entire level. But in Trine 3 there are many obstacles that can only be overcome by a specific character, which is why the multiplayer only supports the "free mode", where every player can play as any character without restrictions. So, you might have three knights running around at the same time, which can make things quite confusing, because you lose sight of who is who. At the same the puzzles and obstacles became much easier than in the previous games, since it all had to be simplified for the 3D gameplay and the basic abilities.

Since there are no new abilities to unlock, there is also no Experience to collect. Instead you'll find "Trineangles" (what a funny pun), which can be hidden anywhere in the levels and cleverly so, just like the Experience used to be. And this is where Trine 3 has actually improved something, because each level now gets divided into sections, where you can select the individual sections from the main map, which is also new. It shows you for each section how many Trineangles you're still missing if any, which makes collecting everything so much easier and enjoyable, because you can skip right to the part where you are missing something, instead of searching through the whole level again and again.

The Triangles don't really have much of a use, however. They unlock additional bonus levels on the map, often created for a single character, which can be small obstacle courses or trials with lots of enemies, where the latter are way too hard to beat in singleplayer. Should you die in multiplayer, one of your teammates can revive you by staying near your "ghost", which effectively gives you additional lives. This is even needed quite often to overcome the tougher (boss) battles, but simply not possible in singleplayer. There it's a Game Over right away, which may leave you demotivated and frustrated from the rather unbalanced fights.

Anyway, while these bonus levels are challenging, you will only earn even more Trineangles from them, potentially unlocking other bonus levels with no actual reward other than the busy work. And this doesn't seem like this was really thought through by the developers, where this is far from the only dissonance in this game..

Sometimes it's missing audio lines, where dialogues can be very weird. The fights can be quite unbalanced, as already mentioned. And then there are crazy bugs, like weird physics or going out of bounds to walk in a void. From a certain point on the game feels rather unfinished...

And that's because it is. After the first major boss battle the story seems to be at a third and there is even a cliffhanger, where the antagonist presents you with another ace up his sleeve. You're getting ready for a long and fierce adventure. But this is where the credits roll and the game suddenly ends. Just like that. In the middle of the story. Trine 3 is an unfinished game, which feels more like a long demo of a game that's still early in its beta version. And for the consumer this is simply shocking and very disappointing, especially after the high quality of the first two Trine games.

According to Frozenbyte, they underestimated the efforts of making this in 3D, where the development  ran out of budget and couldn't be salvaged without creating even more costs. So, they dumped what they had on the market. Originally, it was planned to finish the story via DLC, but naturally the title performed very poorly, so they had to move on and make fourth game that builds upon their strengths, where now the fans will have to forever live with the cliffhanger of the third part...

 

Conclusion

Cobbler, stick to your last! With Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power and its 3D gameplay the developers wanted to move the franchise into a new direction, but failed miserably under their own ambitions. The beginning of the game is actually quite excellent, leaving a good first impression with beautiful visuals, fantastic music, and a fresh approach by going into the depths of the game world. But the game quickly loses itself in an unfinished state, riddled with bugs, plagued by unfair battles, and lacking the proven Experience system, where the worst part is that Trine 3 simply ends in the middle of the story.