Pages

Monday, October 18, 2010

Trinity Universe - When the World Drift



Since I've finished my final seminar last week, I decided to relieve some stress by playing a few games I purchased a few weeks ago. After awhile, I find myself hooked to Trinity Universe, and so far, the game gave me a pretty good impression.


Trinity Universe is a console role-playing game, co-developed by Nippon Ichi Software, Idea Factory and Gust Corporation exclusively for the PlayStation 3. The game features characters from the Atelier and Disgaea series from Gust Corporation and Nippon Ichi Software respectively, with fully 3D character models for the first time.
Developers: Nippon Ichi Software, Gust Corporation, Idea Factory
Platform: PlayStation 3 (PS3)

Genre: RPG

Release date: Oct 2009 (JP); June 2010 (ENG)


Briefly, the game took place somewhere called Netheruniverse, where a mass of floating land become the center of drifting object coming from all over the universe - and this object can be anything - UFO/Chocolate Donut/Fridge/Meteorite/Bonsai, and even a whole mini-Galaxy, circulating in their orbit around the Netheruniverse. As days gone by, the number of this drifting object increase, which eventually might endanger the people.

Sounds pretty ridiculous, but also funny at the same time. Upon starting a new game, we can choose to play in the male route, the Demon Dog King Kanata, or the female route, the Valkyrie Rizelea. To be honest I am very tempted to play as Rizelea first, but my principle is always saving the best for last, hence I went for Kanata's route on my first playthrough.

I'm only in chapter 4 at the moment, and tbh I don't know how different are the kanata/Rizelea route. But both of them did met each other early in the game. As Kanata who was supposed to be a Demon God King, a failed ritual turned him into a Demon "Dog" King, and his route took him into various adventures through the floating objects around the Netheruniverse (yes, some of those drifting objects have dungeons for you to explore).



Gameplay-wise, Trinity Universe employs the basic turn-based system where each character takes turn to attack by pressing X, Tringle and Square to execute combos. But there's more to that for the gameplay, like fury chain, super combo, Image Gauge and EX Skills which only makes sense if you played the game yourself.


Trinity Universe gameplay demonstration

The dungeons in general are pretty small, hence making exploration less tedious. While exploring, you can use special ability to detect hidden treasures or monster nest, and clearing those nests effectively eliminate the random encounter in the dungeon (which is a good thing). Other than that, you can also look for Object Gravity Core, which is the thing that stabilise the object from drifting away. Your objective is to destroy this core so that they drift away, hence less floating object around Netheruniverse. The world outside battle revolves around you exploring the drifting object, and you need to do it fast because unless unchored, the floating object can drift away from their orbit and you might not have the chance to explore them again. Some of the dungeon also allows you to recruit additional characters, which seems to be the requirement to get good ending.


The game also features characters from previous Gust and Nippon Ichi characters, in particular Etna, Prinny and Flonne from Disgaea series. Nicely drawn, and their personality was pretty interesting too. I kept on thinking about Nakano Azusa whenever Tsubaki speak, mainly because they share the same seiyuu, and somehow I thought she'd look like Azusa if she tied her hair lol. Music-wise, there's not much for me to comment, but I loooooooove Shimotsuki Haruka's Cosmolagoon song in the main universe window : D



Overall, I find the game pretty fun to play. The ridiculousness of this so-called Netheruniverse with all the drifting object and the comedies never failed to amuse me. There are some problems, like the static character gestures in cutscenes and the troublesome camera angles during dungeon, but other aspects of the game, from the beautiful character art, nice gameplay and humors kept me enjoyed.


0 comments: