Triangle Strategy

Triangle Strategy is the second in what could possibly be a long running series of HD2D games. The HD2D is interesting because it's pretty much a brand name for an art style. The core idea is to look like a pixel art game but more modern. Many teams have tried high-res sprites or 3d elements and it never really turns out quite right. But I really think HD2D succeeds where all others have failed giving a look that is gorgeous and gives appropriate homage to it's pixel art predecessors. The trick as far as I can tell is to have the texels in the environment textures be roughly the same display size as the pixel art pixels. The models are also kept in proportion so they have an integer number of texels. From here normal mapping and light sources can be applied to make something that feels cohesive with pixel art but with modern effects.

The first such title was Octopath Traveler, which can be thought of as somewhat similar to Final Fantasy 6 but takes inspiration from SaGa as well. Triangle Strategy forms the same sort of bond with Square Enix games of the past, this time it shares a lineage with Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre. Like these games Triangle Strategy has an isometric look and battles take place on grids that are essentially floating in space. Things like terrain height and the direction you face become paramount as back hits do more damage and have less of a chance to be dodged. This system feels reminiscent of Final Fantasy Tactics, but unlike Final Fantasy Tactics, instead of building custom classes and ability combinations, you are given units with a fixed progression path. That is, it matters who you take into battle and you need to weigh their skills versus the task at hand. The end result is a very well-balanced strategy game. I found myself just eeking through several battles, and a few others too multiple tries. It can occasionally have difficulty spikes but it's never brutally hard like Final Fantasy Tactics, nor do characters become completely broken like Final Fantasy Tactics. Each unit feels like it has a job that it really excels at but can be vulnerable if in the wrong situation. To that end it perhaps bears some similarities to Shining Force or Fire Emblem. Luck is rarely a concern either, solid strategy will always win.

Interestingly the game takes multiple branching paths with each path giving you slightly different scenarios and sometimes even units. While the paths do eventually fold back into each other, sometimes in some rather contrived ways, you will get a fairly different chunk of story for each playthrough. Sometimes the game doesn't really take that into account and characters that might be familiar in some paths show up in others without any real context. Still, the progression feels a bit exciting especially on the first playthrough because it's going to be fairly unique based on your choices. Even then, you won't always get what you want. Your "convictions", 3 attributes that determine who you align with, play a very big role in the outcome of major decisions as well as attract new characters. At each decision point, your party members will vote for an option. You can try to convince them of the one you desire the effect of which is governed by both your convictions as well as how you answer certain questions. These questions are highly ambiguous, it's not obvious which conviction they play to and they all sound like reasonable responses so it's a bit of guesswork but you can still do better than random chance. Between battles sometime you'll have an exploration segment where you walk around the stage you'll be fighting on. You can pick up a a few hidden items, answer some questions that strengthen your convictions, and also get information from talking to people. This information can create new responses during the decision points. Since you don't have total control over the outcome sometimes you'll be a bit surprised at where you end up. As one might expect the game has several ending based on who you align with at the final decision process. This in particular felt a bit abrupt as the character's motivations for feeling as strong as they do just aren't there, at least not without some context from other paths. The game is also nice enough to supply a New Game+ mode which not only carries over stats, items and characters but will scale the enemy levels up as well to make the 2nd playthrough challenging. It also unlocks the ability to physically see which convictions you are aligning with and which paths you've taken so you can better guide your progress.

There is a particular "golden route" which gets the best ending. You're probably unlikely to stumble upon it without some sort of guide and taking that route pretty much requires new game plus as you would otherwise not have enough characters (or upgrades) to challenge the end fights. Throughout the game upgrades and items are always a bit of a struggle as you constantly feel poor so you have to decide who you want to upgrade and who you don't. You can grind but the game does a good job of deterring you from doing so both because upgrade items are finite (similar to Fire Emblem), and because you don't need to be at top stats if you strategize well. In fact level-ups are based on the map's required level. If you are way under it, any action will essentially cause a level up, if you are close to the level then every few and if you are over it you gain hardly any experience at all so you're always about where you need to be for most characters. Furthermore, they made an excellent choice to let you keep both your experience and reset your items usages even if you lose a battle. This makes it feel like even a defeat is forward progress and incentivizes you to spend items. The final battle mechanic is the Quietus. These are actions you can use once per battle for a quietus point and you can upgrade how many points you have. These can be quite powerful but I never ended up using them, it was just not something I thought about.

Finally the story is a very dry fantasy tale. I was quite surprised how much restraint they had. There are no skeletons, dragons or ancient sealed Gods to be found. In fact 100% of the characters are humans and you'll meet all of them in the first couple chapters. This is a very political story about trade and relations between countries. As such it can get a bit drawn out. There's a lot of talking. Luckily most of the voice work is good but there are some occasional side characters that sound like the dev team trying to record lines, it's pretty jarring. In the end I felt the story was compelling enough though it perhaps lacks a bit of excitement and world ending peril that typical JRPGs are known for.

Overall, Triangle Strategy really scratches that itch for a new Final Fantasy Tactics, the game I've been wanting since playing Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and discovering it was a complete shell of it's former self. There's just not enough of these types of games so I was very happy to see such a return to form and I hope team Asano keeps up the great work.