Developer Angry Mob Games’ Trinity Fusion is a half baked roguelite experience. The execution of its gameplay mechanics isn’t anything exceptional which results in a game that seems to have some great potential but will never leave you awestruck with its suite of ideas. The game has been out of early access on PC for quite some time now, and it has now been ported over to current-gen consoles.
Trinity Fusion takes place in a multiverse composed of 3 different parallel universes, where the population is completely unaware of the presence of their parallel selves. But as corruption starts to spread across the multiverse and dangerous robots and creatures start to threaten the existence of citizens, the protagonist must rise to the occasion and cleanse the corruption from all over the multiverse. It’s a simple story that operates on a very generic framework of the player being at the epicenter of the conflict that drives the narrative, so it’s nothing that we haven’t seen before.
Players will take control of Altaria and her different versions across the multiverse. The different universes presents itself with a simple backstory and why they fell down, but that backdrop doesn’t really end up being all that engaging. And that’s largely because the writing itself is also pretty inconsistent, as certain characters will speak in an exaggerated serious tone all the while your character will be mocking them in a childish manner. Having such a confident and talkative character at the center may not be uncommon, but the issue here is that those punches don’t really land which makes the writing and occasional dialogue sections feel pretty awkward.
“The different universes presents itself with a simple backstory and why they fell down, but that backdrop doesn’t really end up being all that engaging.”
Coming over to the gameplay side of things, Trinity Fusion is a roguelite at its core which essentially means that you will be making your way through procedurally generated worlds as you try to save the multiverse from collapsing. Permadeath is very much a thing here, and one too many mistakes will lead you back to the starting line all over again. But that’s not to say that Trinity Fusion doesn’t have permanent progression. You can use your accrued special points during a run to purchase upgrades or augments that will permanently boost your stats and give you a slight edge in the subsequent runs.
Everything except your starting weapons and spells will be reset before a run, and you must once again fight and upgrade your way through different biomes. The combat here is pretty simple, with the player having a single light attack that can be executed through a press of the square button. Landing successful hits on the enemy will charge an energy meter, which is used to dish out special attacks. Your offensive options are quite limited, which makes combat start to feel a bit repetitive after a while.
You can also jump and slide through levels, and the general combat encounters revolve around sliding and dashing into an enemy, hitting them before they turn your way, and doing that all again. There’s nothing wrong with having a simple combat loop, but the issue here is that the combat doesn’t really have the oomph that many of its peers like Returnal possess It’s not flashy in a visual sense; the attacks don’t seem to have much weight and controls aren’t the most responsive especially when you try to deal with aerial enemies.
“The combat here is pretty simple, with the player having a single light attack that can be executed through a press of the square button. “
The player starts out in the outskirts, a desolate place that probably belongs to a lower strata of the society and you make your way to the wastes which is a frigid biome with fierce creatures ready to maul you at every turn. Teleport stations are placed all across the map, which can easily take you from one corner to another so you don’t have to make your way back through dozens of rooms if you end up going really deep exploring. The procedurally generated maps strike a good balance of being complex enough to be interesting to navigate through and not being too overly complex where you are constantly getting stuck in places with no way out whatsoever. However, I did notice some instances where map layouts were essentially identical during multiple runs. And in one instance, I got a map layout where I literally had no way forward given my current set of abilities even after thorough exploration of the environment. Of course, your mileage might vary but the map design generation wasn’t really up to the mark during my time with the game.
Trinity Fusion places a lot of focus on exploration, and players are advised to explore each map in a thorough fashion before proceeding on to the next biome. Each biome has multiple optional rooms that contain anything from a precious health resource to better weapons or an upgrade station where you can choose a temporary stat upgrade that will last you for the run.
These upgrade stations give you a total of 3 upgrades to choose from, and it’s vital that you chain the effects of these upgrades to maximize the damage output of your character. For instance, if you have an upgrade that increases your critical chance, you should choose another upgrade that would increase your damage with each critical hit and so on and so forth. Carefully engaging with these mechanics can significantly increase your chances of success, and it makes the moment to moment combat feel a bit more engaging as well. There are also cursed chests that you can find in rooms which offer a powerful weapon in exchange for a curse that will last with you until you make it out of that biome. It’s a classic risk versus reward mechanic which adds a neat twist to the gameplay proceedings as well.
“Carefully engaging with these mechanics can significantly increase your chances of success, and it makes the moment to moment combat feel a bit more engaging as well.”
Unfortunately, Trinity Fusion doesn’t really have a good art direction. Sure, it takes place in a fantasy world filled with different kinds of beasts but the art direction feels extremely generic and bland with little in the name of distinctiveness. This combined with the previously mentioned simplistic combat makes the moment-to-moment gameplay feel somewhat uninteresting. I also felt that Trinity Fusion suffers from balancing issues since I couldn’t even make it past the first couple of stages without a good amount of permanent upgrades. The initial levels felt a bit uninviting to me since I didn’t really stand a chance against enemies without those permanent upgrades which can feel a bit cheap and unfair. Even when I got hold of a couple under my belt, they felt like very marginal upgrades to my character which didn’t really help me ease into the experience. As such, the first few hours playing Trinity Fusion revolved around grinding for upgrades before I was able to comfortably cross levels and start making some real progress.
For everything that Trinity Fusion does right, it fumbles in something that is equally crucial to nailing the experience of a great roguelite. As such, it was pretty hard for me to be impressed by this game. It’s not a bad game by any means, and it does have some cool concepts in its mechanics but the execution isn’t impressive which makes it a mediocre experience.
This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 5.
