Triangle Strategy – Review | Text-Heavy, but an Amazing SRPG

Triangle Strategy might sound like a placeholder name for a title, but it’s one that funnily enough encapsulates what it’s all about. It plunges you into the world of Norzelia, a continent divided into 3 kingdoms that are celebrating 30 years of peace after a horrific war tore through the lands. You’ll find yourself taking control of Serenoa Wolffort, heir to the house of Wolffort who are seemingly the right hand of King Glenbrook.

A Land Divided

The world was divided over precious resources such as Salt, Waterways, and Iron. 30 years before the game started, a giant war was waged and in its fallout, the 3 kingdoms managed to co-exist.

The game starts with Serenoa meeting his arranged fiancé in a bid to strengthen relations between Glenbrook and Aesfrost. Naturally, peace is not the most exciting concept, and it isn’t long until the sins of the past rear their ugly head once more. 

The story in Triangle Strategy is, in a word, deep. You’ll be wading through lore and dialogue for up to hours at a time as you meet various players in this high-stakes game of political intrigue. You may feel that the game moves at an almost glacial speed in the first 10 or so hours. 

There is frankly a mountain of scope with the story. many pieces exist on this chessboard and especially early on your head can be spinning trying to remember who’s who and what their allegiance is. This is only multiplied by the fact that you have a direct impact on what path this tale takes.

The characters are all brilliantly written. There are no issues with shallowness here either; you get plenty of time to know them and explore their characters through the massive amount of text and spoken dialogue. This just adds more to an already stacked drama that has provided one of the most intriguing and sleep stealing narratives I’ve witnessed in years.

The gameplay in Triangle Strategy is set up between different phases, I’ll go over the different phases, how they play and what they add to the overall experience of the game.

Visual Novel Phase

Early on in the game, you’ll be seeing a lot of this. The big, wordy, long-winded story sections – this is where you’ll get all the meat and potatoes for the narrative of Triangle Strategy.

Triangle Strategy employs the “Scales of Conviction”. In short, the majority of your actions tip these scales depending on who you speak to and how you answer. Many conversations throughout the game see you choosing from a selection of 3. These factor into every major decision you have in the game and as Serenoa is a man of the people, he opens the floor to his party at each juncture. These decisions alter the path your story will take and who joins your party.

Through reading, actions, and conversation you are given the ability to try and mold your party’s choices into how you feel. Ultimately though, the Scales of Conviction decide your fate. These will often take you on unexpected paths and provide results much further down the line than you would expect.

As I’ve mentioned already, in the first 10 hours or so there is a major focus on this section as the story starts to build. The writing is engaging and with the extended lore, you’ll be whisked away to this war-torn fictional world in hours.

Exploration Phase

At certain junctures in the game, you are given the ability to explore various areas relevant to the plot. This is where you’ll find items and plenty of NPCs to add even more world-building.

Another aspect of this mode is that certain people you speak to can offer you choices for your “Scales of Conviction”. This can include things such as alternative topics of conversation which can curry favor in a particular direction.

These sections allow you to explore more of the world and even get a glimpse at an upcoming arena. It’s always worth spinning the camera around and getting the lay of the land and more time with the graphics!

Combat

Here’s the second biggest piece of this gameplay triangle. What good would a war-based SRPG be without strategy combat? Fortunately, Square-Enix and developers ArtDink know what they are doing in this department.

Triangle Strategy is a traditional grid-based SRPG. It uses the usual formula of it being turn-based reliant on your character’s speed stats.

You’ll usually start a battle by picking out up to 10 units from your ragtag party. These are all made up of different archetypes such as Warrior, White Mage, Ranged, Black Mage – all fairly standard classes that I’m sure you’ve encountered before.

Positioning is key in battles. You can do critical damage should you attack from behind or in the vein of Obi-Wan himself, if you have the high ground. Furthermore, should you have a unit on the opposite side to surround your foe, you get a double attack. Positioning is everything.

Magic is handled ingeniously in this title as it can affect the weather. An example would be if you use fire in the snow it creates a puddle. This then deals extra damage and covers a larger area if you hit it with an Electric based attack.

As previously mentioned, each unit in your party has a different type. If you level them up by having them take part in battles until a certain level, then providing the necessary “promotion medals”, that character can learn an additional set of attacks and has further stat boosts and the like. 

A lot of the battles have the traditional requirement of dispatching the opposing force. Some do chuck the odd objective at you such as defending an area. Chances are if you have played any SRPG before you’ll know the script here – it’s nothing too unusual.

The story pacing is glacial and the combat is quite restricted until you have a few more units and a few wins under your belt. That said, the pacing and amount of story and time you spend before it kicks off helps you form a bond with the Wolffort bunch. This is especially the case as your additional party members are chosen by your morality that’s been displayed as you wade in the puddle known as the “morally grey area”.

Lights and Sound

Triangle Strategy is a tour de force in how to fuse beautifully drawn sprites with the more modern polygon and fancy stuff like lighting effects and smooth frame rates. Something the titles that Triangle Strategy emulates sometimes struggled with.

Featuring the familiar art direction of Tomoya Asano whose artistic vision bore such fruits as Bravely Default and Octopath Traveler, it just nails the feel of classic 16-Bit era Japanese Role Playing Games to perfection.

The music is brilliantly whimsical when it wants to be. It has no qualms about piling on the tension when things start getting a bit rough.

The game is fully voice-acted. These range from average performances to “good”. Nothing stands out as stellar in this department, but it was greatly appreciated in the longer narrative scenes where you could just close your eyes and soak up the ambiance to give your peepers a rest.

Verdict

Triangle Strategy is old school through and through, from its graphics down to the amount of investment it requires from the player.

In a world after Fire Emblem: The Three Houses, the investment required might be a little too much for some, but those that give it the initial time and attention it requires are in for a slow burn of an SRPG with an amazing finish. 

TRIANGLE STRATEGY IS RECOMMENDED

Want to see some Strategy titles? How about checking out Utawarerumono: Prelude To The Fallen, a highly recommended SRPG/Visual Novel.

Many thanks go to Nintendo for a Nintendo Switch review code for this title.