If you have ever wanted to experience the thrill of facing off against a massive MMO boss without the tedium of grinding for gear and experience that is inherent to MMO’s, then Indie-Us games has you covered. TrinityS is a cooperative boss-rush that seeks to deliver the experience of taking on epic boss battles with your friends or with strangers online. Though its intentions are admirable (time isn’t unlimited and not many of us are able or willing to sink in the hours traditional MMOs ask of their players), TrinityS unfortunately falls short in offering enough depth, variety, or content to be a truly compelling experience.
The game will see players take on the roles of one of three characters: Grey, a knight; Emile, an edgy anime wizard; or Bell, a cute priest with a giant bell on their quest to slay monsters throughout the land for reasons wholly unknown because this game has no story. When you start a run, you and your party are whisked straight into the fray to battle monsters who don’t really seem to be doing anything, but you just know they’re evil because they have big purple storm clouds over their levels that dissipate once you kill them (which, as we all know, is a visual shorthand reserved only for the most vile creatures fiction has to offer). So, I can only assume our trinity of heroes is embarking on this monster-slaying quest purely for the good of their hearts, but I only wish that quest was more mechanically exciting.
As stated before, there are six bosses in the game, each one with unique designs and gimmicks. Their attack patterns are easy to intuit, meaning that it is entirely possible for you and your party to take them down with minimal, if any, communication and you’ll be just fine. This lack of difficulty ultimately hurts the experience, as strategy or intelligently building your characters don’t factor into the outcome of a fight as much as they should. Overall, the game’s bosses are mostly easy with no real difficulty progression as the game goes on. Many players could probably beat the main story in about an hour, with replay value being harmed by the fact that the order in which you fight bosses will not change from run to run. That isn’t to say there isn’t replay value to be had, as there is a hard mode that unlocks once you beat normal mode with different attack patterns for bosses.
As for actually fighting those bosses, I must confess that the combat system was the aspect of the game I found the least compelling. Each of the main trio fulfills a role in the traditional character class trifecta with the knight as the tank, the wizard as the damage-dealer, and the priest as the healer. Basic combat is as simple as it can possibly be by being fully automated. Just stand in proximity to the boss (or an ally in the case of the healer), and the character will deal damage on their own. The character will also have a passive ability that improves their effectiveness at their assigned role over time. Player input comes in the form of dodging attacks and three abilities that take mana to use and work on cooldown. My biggest problem with the game is the fact that your passive ability and energy only recharge when your character stands still. Every time you move, they both stop recharging and reset. This energy-recharge system, combined with the cooldowns on abilities, made the use of abilities themselves somewhat of a rarity. While I do understand that this is to make player positioning a key part in combat, I found this emphasis on standing still and the mostly automated combat to make the game feel dull and unengaging.
But, the game could have easily made up for the lackluster combat system by offering substantial progression and customization. Afterall, part of the appeal of a traditional MMO is creating a unique and combat viable character. Though TrinityS lacks the traditional leveling system of an MMO, it still tries to offer that same sense of customization through the unlocking of additional skills by defeating bosses. While some of these bosses are little more than slight upgrades of other skills, each character has a sizable chunk of unique skills that can apply status effects and help alter the tide of the fight. Unfortunately, the skills are the only unlockables that alter gameplay in a meaningful way. Weapons and armor are locked behind a set of challenges, and are purely cosmetic. While I won’t bemoan the presence of cosmetics in a game (everyone loves a good alternate costume), I do think that not giving equipment a more tangible effect on gameplay hinders the customization and, worse than that, left me feeling unmotivated to continue playing after a certain point.
In the end, TrinityS is a disappointing game. In seeking to deliver a streamlined version of the MMO boss fight, it strips down that experience to its barest possible bones and ends up missing a lot of what makes those kinds of fights fun in the first place. The bosses don’t take as much strategy as they should, the combat isn’t involved enough to keep player attention, and the lack of customization can make the progression feel somewhat hollow. Part of me feels bad for coming down this harshly on TrinityS because I do like the underlying idea here, but any idea can sound great on paper. It’s the execution that really matters, and the execution here earns a 5/10 from me.
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Related: Reviews by Josh Freeman
I love games and love talking about games. Some of my favorites include action games (both 2D and 3D), metroidvanias, roguelikes, shooters, and Indies.
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