Triangle Strategy

One of my favorite video game series of all time is Octopath Traveler, but that shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who is a close friend of mine or keeps up with my video game opinions. It’s not a perfect franchise. I acknowledge Octopath Traveler contains design choices and flaws folks won’t like, but even despite that it’s a series that’s provided me with good memories of the years. Hopeful stories about people finding their way through life alongside some of the best turn based combat I’ve experienced in gaming. That’s why whenever discussion of JRPGs or games of the like are brought up I attempt to bring up Octopath Traveler too. In the hopes I expose individuals to a JRPG made by people who love JRPGs. They even made a new one last year! That being a prequel to the first game, Octopath Traveler 0, but I haven’t played it yet. Partially because I’m not sure if I like the design decisions they went with this one. Partially also because I purchased some of the development team’s previous games. One of which is today’s subject matter and has kept me hooked for the last three weeks. Triangle Strategy, released all the way back in 2022 and was the team’s attempt to tackle the tactics genre. This game’s very existence is interesting to me. So let's start from the very beginning. Back to where it all began.....

Announced back in 2021 during a Nintendo Direct, this game was attempting to be the spiritual follow-up to Octopath Traveler the first. The original Octopath despite being well received did not sell very well, but Square Enix saw potential in producer Tomoya Asano and the people who made this game. Asano wanted Triangle Strategy to be a deeper, more mature title than before. The tactics genre is commonly known for its warfare setting and simulation, so why not make a game that explores this setting? The cruelty and politics that surround warfare, and people who are forced to endure it? That is not to say tactical games haven’t done this before. Just three years prior to Triangle Strategy we got Fire Emblem: Three Houses, which is one of the most political and highly argued about entries in its respective franchise. Despite that, this game was their next step forward and attempt to build upon what they learned from Octopath Traveler. I’m not lying when I say this was one of my most anticipated games of 2022 aside from Elden Ring. I was glad to see Asano were still kicking and willing to go in different directions. I planned to buy this the week it came out. Everything was set into motion, but the strange thing is that I didn’t do that. I skipped out on Triangle Strategy, because the game chose to release during a bad time.

Elden Ring, one of the biggest games of the 2020s came out just a few days prior! If not that then Horizon Forbidden West, which was another one of my most anticipated games of 2022. Square yet again chose to advertise this game poorly, and it led to another one of Team Asano’s works selling pretty poorly. That is not to say Triangle Strategy was a bad game, because it reviewed really well among critics. As well if not better than Octopath Traveler, but unlike Octopath this one was forgotten more easily. So that’s one weird thing about Triangle Strategy. Another aspect I find weird is how Triangle Strategy was originally aimed to be the successor to Octopath, but then a few months later Octopath Traveler 2 gets announced. (My beloved) That game then gets released one year later, becomes Asano’s best game, and is considered a golden standard for how to make a JRPG. Last year we received Octopath Traveler 0, so it seems like this is the direction Asano will travel for now on. No pun intended. This then begs the question, “What was the point of Triangle Strategy if its job as a successor was easily overtaken?” This question lingered in my mind over the years. One that took a long ass time to answer as numerous games have come out over the years and I’ve been driven more to cover them rather than what interests me.

Eventually I came around to playing Triangle Strategy. Last year I visited a used media shop to see if I could find any good games on condition. Somebody had sold a copy of this game in good condition, and it was discounted for forty US dollars. It was the deepest cut I’ve seen the game at and I decided to purchase it. Played for two hours, got distracted by other games, and came back just a few weeks ago. Triangle Strategy…… is really f*cking good. Again, not a big surprise to a lot of you if you recognize my love for Octopath and the lads working for Team Asano. This is one of the best tactical strategy RPGs that I’ve ever played, but much like Team Asano’s works of the past it is not perfect. There are flaws with this game more so than anything I experienced with both mainline Octopath Traveler games and Live A Live. The Steam score right now is 7/10, but I can see why it’s a mixed rating. Triangle Strategy is Asano’s most experimental title, but in being greater in ambition they also threw in some stuff that’ll divide players. Triangle Strategy is a flawed masterpiece, and today we’ll be discussing why I still find it to be magical.

Story

Long ago there existed three great nations. Three countries who went to war over trade for the 2 most valuable resources, iron and salt. Those nations being Glenbrook led by the well known and honorable King Regna. A place where success is determined by status & loyalty. The holy nation Hyzante who lead their people using faith while holding the largest salt gathering pit in the land. Finally there’s Aefrost, led by a grand duchy who rules over all with strict control. These three nations clashed for years in what is referred to as the Saltiron War. Eventually this war came to an end. A peace treaty was signed declaring fair trade, but not every problem was solved. Glenbrook still had issues with social status, Aefrost housed corrupt slowly boiling within, and Hyzante gathered salt through the enslavement and overworking of a race known as the Roselle. Peace is kept, but not much progress is made in terms of peace and stability. Recently though a salt mine was discovered between the borders of Aefrost and Glenbrook, and the two try to make an agreement. Share the mine and profits made between both nations. There’s also another thing they try to do. Wed off one of the high family members of the Duchy to one of the heirs of the acclaimed House Wolfort. A small fortified town whose leader was known for his heroic deeds during his time serving in the war. You are this acclaimed hero’s son, Serenoa Wolfort, and you are to be wed to Frederica Aefrost. A mix-race woman of the Aefrosti and Roselle.

Serenoa, accompanied by his father’s right hand man, Benedict, meets Roselle at a riverport. The group are attacked by bandits, but manage to fend them off and bring Frederica back to safety. A trip to Glenbrook castle is scheduled for the next day where Serenoa meets up with his best pal Roland. What makes Roland special is that he’s one of three children to King Regna, and have been friends with Serenoa since childhood. The two are close and always plan to support each other no matter what, but right now a grand celebration. An annual celebration for the treaty 30 years ago, tourney to showcase each kingdom’s greatest fighters, and short tour of each region. All is going well until Glenbrook is attacked. Gustadolph, current duchy of Aefrost and cousin of Frederica, attacks the kingdom. Serenoa and company attempt to stop him, but fail to stop Regna from being killed alongside Roland’s brother. Gustadolph and the Aefrost army claim Glenbrook, destroying the treaty made between the three nations. War is slowly approaching over the hills, and all Serenoa can do is prepare. All the while his father slowly dies of old age, his friends grow disjointed over current matters, and the three weapons amass their armies to tear apart the land. Responsibility weighs heavily on your shoulders.

All you can do is calculate and decide. 

Gameplay

Aside from the story and occasional choices you have to make, the main focus of Triangle is the combat loop. Every chapter contains a battle, and you need to win each one to progress further. Missions come in a variety of flavors. Sometimes you have to kill all the enemies, reach a point in the map, or kill the leader of an army. The rules are constantly changing whether it be in the mission restrictions or terrain for which you fight on.You must abide by the rules if you want to slay every enemy in your wake and make it to the end. Before a battle begins you get a choice of what units you want to bring and what starting spots to place them. Serenoa, Frederica, Roland, Benedict, and every character you pick up throughout your journey. Some acquired by making it through the story, and others from acquiring certain feats. Each character has their own class and set of abilities. You cannot change classes or build characters in unique ways, but the game does make up for this by having numerous characters. No unit is the same as another, which gives the players a wide variety of choices to work with. Some units synergize with others such as support characters like Benedict and Geela. A couple specialize in elemental magic and covering fields with it like Frederica, Corentin, and Narve. You got ranged characters like Hughette, tanks such as Erador, and good old DPS characters like Serenoa and his friend Roland. 

Each turn you can move your units around and attack enemies. Blue spaces mean characters will not be attacked if moved there. Purple spaces mean they will, and before you place a unit down you are shown what enemies specifically can attack. Giving you an idea of what to be prepared for. Maybe you decide it’s not wise to send the character over, because they can’t tank it. That or send other units to either defend or slay the enemies around them. Once by an enemy unit you can then attack. There’s the basic attack and special attacks that deal more damage. These special attacks cost TP. They function similarly to boost points in Octopath Traveler where one is built up each turn. It means at some point you’ll run low, so you have to decide what to spend your TP on. Maybe a support spell, buff, or attack an enemy is specifically weak to. A unique feature I like to point out is how important positioning is. No, not just whether a character is placed at a spot that puts them at an advantage. I mean what direction one faces. If an enemy strikes you in the back they deal more damage. If an enemy attacks you while another enemy is behind you it’ll act as if both attacked you at once. Made even worse if they strike behind, and there’s a dude in front. However, this same rule also applies to your units. With careful placement you can strike down foes more easily. Let a weaker ally slap an enemy into a stronger one to deal more hurt. You may even place other units behind your characters in hope of preventing back stabs. Back to back as you fend off the enemies approaching in.

Leveling up in Triangle Strategy is a lot more different than most RPGs. Rather than be given experience points based on what units survive a battle you’ll instead gain them from the more a unit does. Everytime a character successfully strikes an enemy, casts a buff, spell, or heals they’ll get some experience. Leveling up during active combat, and sometimes new skills are earned. It allows your units to steadily progress instead of having to waste time grinding or be underlevel. Once you win you gain spoils such as money and resources. These can be spent to buy items or even more resources. These resources are spent upgrading character stats, weapon rank, and even promoting character classes. Further boosting their class, amount of TP they can have, and skills they can bust out. This is done within an encampment, and here you can talk to side characters and even attempt optional missions. Those being unique ones outside the main story and even reattempt mainline battles you completed. Again, they want your units to not be so low leveled as you progress. New ones are always being unlocked, so they want to give the player a chance to level up quickly so move forward they’re more ready to face the oncoming challenges.

Now your journey is not as linear as you think. Yes it does play out in a linear cinematic fashion, but occasionally you are offered choices. Whether it be where to head next, or how you tackle an ongoing problem. These choices are decided using a tool Serenoa’s father gifted him that being the Scales of Conviction. Your seven main allies will vote on what choice to be made, and you are given the option to persuade them to change their vote. Increasing the chance of going to a destination you specifically want. What you say here matters and sometimes information you get from past conversation and world observation can further increase the chance of them turning. Different paths lead to different story outcomes, recruited characters, and much more. That’s just about everything I wanted to say about Triangle Strategy. It wants to be a combat focused game with deep mechanics and clever decision making. All while having a choice driven story, and for the most part they succeed! Let’s just hope you make the right calls in this dreaded game of war.

Thoughts (This is Gonna Be Long)

I have a lot to say about Triangle Strategy. There are so many things I love about this game, but for everything it does really well there’s a weird-ass design flaw or choice to go along with it. The way I picture it is like this. Imagine you’re given your favorite chocolate bar. It tastes like magic and it’s been awhile since you’ve had it. You’re craving to bite into another bar yet again, and a friend or coworker gives you a large size. It’s a very kind gift and you unwrap it excitedly to eat, but then you notice parts of the bar are melty. Today was a cold day and your friend cranked up their car heat on the way to your position. You don’t want to throw away the chocolate, because you want it and your friend did an ultra kind thing. So you eat at the bar, and still enjoy it despite a few parts of it being a melted mess. This is the feeling I got while playing Triangle Strategy. It is a game I was driven to keep playing for multiple reasons, but there are problems with it that a majority of people would deem terrible. The core combat is one of the game’s biggest focuses. At first I thought it was weird that there’s one major battle for almost every chapter. There’s only twenty chapters in this game, twenty one if you follow the path for the true ending. One chapter has three battles, so really you get twenty three main story battles. There’s also optional missions if you want to toy around with characters or grind their levels up for future missions.

23 required battles is not a lot when you compare that to games like Fire Emblem or XCOM. It makes paying full price for Triangle Strategy tricky, because most gamers want games that are heavy in content specifically on the gameplay side. However, I think it’s the smaller number of battles in Triangle Strategy that led to me appreciating the combat more. Similar to how having less combat in Alan Wake 2 allowed Remedy to create more thrilling moments rather than how quickly repetition kicked in for the first. Triangle Strategy offering good enough downtime and not too many battles is a benefit, because it allows the anticipation of a battle to be more fierce if you catch what I’m saying. Sometimes the game gives you the ability to explore an area before the battle scene. Familiarize yourself with the terrain, pick up items that could help, and slowly plan in your head what strategies could you make here. What is an advantage, disadvantage, or place to hurl everyone together? Every battlefield in Triangle Strategy feels like it was carefully put together. A set piece where multiple things can occur in one singular play session. Maybe you have to fight among ruined houses, and both you and the enemy can place archers around to snipe each other. A town that contains smaller streets and rooftops, but in the middle there’s a road you must battle down. A mine filled with carts you can use to ride around quickly.

The game is constantly finding new ways to test the player or utilize the characters they have. In most games you can build your units in whatever way you want, but here you don’t. Instead you have one class per character, but the game is built around it very well. No one shares the same loadout, and they all function differently. Everyone levels up from performing actions per turn rather than whether they survive the battle or not. In fact, this design choice is one of the best this game could’ve made. It encouraged me to use skills I otherwise wouldn’t utilize in other RPGs such as support skills. It cuts down the amount of grinding you have to do, which is a criticism Asano faced heavily when they made Octopath Traveler. Resources are earned from winning a battle, but sometimes they need to be looted when enemies drop them. You also can’t bring back the resources found unless you win, so it creates these scenarios of who to send to pick them up and how to hold off till then. This is not to say every character in Triangle Strategy is amazing. Some are more useful than others and the most a battle will ask for is to have twelve out in the field. My recommendation is to choose 15 and stick to them especially when trying to upgrade weapons and perks among multiple of them. Even so upgrading your characters feels great as you have to make a conscious decision on who you want to invest into the most.

I like how positioning matters so much during combat. How elements can be mixed together to create harmful surfaces. Such as covering the ground in ice, melting it with fire, and then using lighting to stun an enemy standing in it. Very much reminds me of Divinity: Original Sin 2, and another thing they do is letting ranged characters deal bonus damage when placed on high cliffs. The way TP is a replacement for mana, and leads to careful resource management on what skills to use and at what time. That when a character is low of TP you need to have them scurry away or be by units that can protect them. You can tell by now the combat is great. I love not just the mechanics but also the characters and battlefields were carefully thought of. My main criticism is that the difficulty tends to be all over the place. There are various branching paths in this game, and with how many choices there are, some aren’t as balanced as others. One battle could be a hard hold out for survival on rough terrain, and the next can be simple due to enemy placement or the battlefield becoming really simple. In fact, my least favorite battlefields were the ones in which you fight in a field. It’s not mechanically interesting. It’s just walking up to a foe so you can hurt them. It’s why Fire Emblem, despite having all these different characters and builds, just isn’t interesting enough for me to want to replay their 50 hour game.

There needs to be something interesting, and Triangle Strategy has that. It’s complex without all being too complex. Mechanics are explained well without having to constantly stop and show the player a tutorial. Whenever a new unit is given the game just says, “Right, test it out yourself,” and understanding their skills isn’t too hard. Despite difficulty spikes I was still having a very fun time with the game’s combat. I would go far to say this is a great game to start off with if you want to get into tactical strategy games. Another part as to why it’s a great starting point is due to the story, and that story is something to truly marvel at. I realized halfway while writing this that Triangle Strategy is really hard to talk about without spoilers. It’s heavy on narrative and much of this story works from every plot revelation and insight gained for each three nations. This is a game I strongly recommend, so if you don’t want spoilers especially for the true ending I suggest playing the game first. Come back when you’re ready or if you simply don’t care…… Okay, I assume you're ready to read on.

The story is about maintaining the struggles and needs between three incredibly flawed nations. All of whom are corrupt in some way and are driven to war due to need for wealth & resource control. Every decision you make is a feisty one, because no matter what you do it’ll either lead to you pissing someone off or getting cut off from info that can help in your endeavors. It’s great how instead of being the leader of a nation you’re just in the middle of it all. The son of a noble warrior who is best friends with a prince and is marrying a woman from Aefrost. A lady whose people have a troubled history with the holy state. Your friends are constantly looking to you for help and guidance. Roland who must take over his now dead father, and Frederica who wishes to expose the holy land for their lies and free her people. Frederica and the Roselle are probably my favorite part of the story, because it exposes how religion is often weaponized to harm others. That it either blinds people from a horrible truth, or is used as an excuse to inflict horrible acts on people. Such as the Roselle imprisoned and enslaved where Hyzante collects their salt. They then forged a lie saying past Roselle committed a sin and the new Roselle must repent for the sin their ancestors committed. That they were born like this, and they should never deserve freedom. Any thought of freedom, equality, or logic is met with death. It’s disgusting.

There are choices you have to make using the Scales of Conviction, and this is another one of my favorite aspects of this game. Seeing how what you say matters, because you can try to convince someone to do a specific thing you want and may fail. Careful thought has to be put, so when the choice you want does win the majority vote it feels amazing. The choices are also interesting too. Now the first thing you vote on isn’t great, but what comes afterward is. Roland has become a wanted man by Gustadolph after he killed Regna, and the Aefrost army is marching to your own domain as you speak. The group has to decide whether they hand Roland to the enemy, or try to protect him. The prince of a fallen king is a highly valuable figure. Both in status and politics. If they were to hand Roland over they would ensure their safety, but Roland could be manipulated or punished by Gustadolph and his allies. Protecting Roland is morally correct, but again you endanger everyone. Even Roland himself says he would rather hand himself over than to get all at House Wolfort killed. This is just one of many choices you make. What’s great is that there’s no right or wrong answer. You decide based on what you think, and that’s great.

What’s not great is when I realized what determines speech checks. Turns out it’s not determined by what you say. Rather invisible speech stats you boost based on previous dialogue choices you have made or actions taken. Stats you cannot see until you have hit a new game plus. This ruined a lot of the voting moment’s magic for me, because now I no longer had to consider the specific words I chose. The way you also boost these stats is annoying. One of them, Utility, is increased by gathering dropped resources, selling, and purchasing. Leading to a point where I grinded for four hours straight just to boost a stat I couldn’t tell the level of so I could convince one character that a bad idea was a good one. This combined with numerous other actions boosted the all three speech stats making future speech checks easy. So in reality what you say matters as long as an artificial barrier is broken. The other thing I really dislike about Triangle Strategy are the four endings. It’s not that the writing is bad. I love the writing, how openly political it is, the moral questioning, and how every character develops. My biggest fear was how as the cast grew, the screentime and development of characters would get worse. Turns out I was wrong as there’s a plentiful amount of side scenes showing the relationships and past between everyone. What I’m critical about is how one ending is the most optimal amongst the three.

Late into the game you are offered plans on how to stop the war. Roland, Benedict, and Frederica offer these plans and choosing one will upset one of the three as well as lead to the destruction of a country. Thousands of people were killed or left in ruins for the greater good. There is no right choice and you have to decide where your beliefs align. All endings have their pros and cons, but there is a fourth ending. One where you please all three, save all three nations, and stop the war. Which leads to the discussion of true endings in video games. Why bother offering a player a moral choice or interesting questions when one ending eliminates any thought process you  have to make!? This even ruins some of the choices you make throughout the game, because instead of freely deciding you have to pick certain ones. That way you gain the information needed to then obtain the most narratively satisfying choice. I expect a lot of people will not get the true ending on a first playthrough. They’ll do it on a new game plus or having seen all the other three endings first. Triangle Strategy has high replay value thanks to multiple branching paths and I love it, but part of me wonders how people got the true ending without looking up a guide? As sometimes the choices you need don’t make sense. Yeah, don’t surrender Roland and choose to protect Roselle. Smuggle salt though? That made little sense until we reached a town that shows why that had to happen. Was there no other way to write this?

I sound harsh for criticizing Triangle Strategy for having a true ending. It hurts, because the true ending is written very well and explains what this game’s main message was. Choice and how to reach a peaceful future one must carefully evaluate what they know. Whatever they choose will have consequences. There will always be consequences! Just a few months ago I played the cult classic Spec Ops: The Line for the first time, and it explores how people don’t realize less painful options don’t exist until they exact what they thought was the only one available. (There’s more layers to it but that’s a story for another day) The true ending despite my criticisms is great as it sees Serenoa accounting for everyone. Despite differences in belief, culture, and status. He wants to help anyone in whatever way he can. It reminds me of Metaphor ReFantazio and the message it tries to explore. It’s a fantastic ending to close out a game about conflict in differences. 

Triangle Strategy to me is a flawed masterpiece. For every bad choice it commits there’s something it does to redeem itself. The core pillars here stand tall, and create a game that is enjoyable both to play and experience. Team Asano has always made magical experiences. Games taking risks and finding payoff. The Octopath Traveler games are still my most favorite titles from them, but these honestly might be their most well rounded games. They’re well paced, combat doesn’t get too repetitive especially by the end, and the story is enriching while not being too convoluted. I love this game man. In the end I give Triangle Strategy a 9.5/10 for being superb. Thanks to all who have read thus far.

9.5/10, Superb