When the fight begins, Triangle Strategy places you in direct command of your chosen group of combatants, placed onto an isometric grid-based combat area, tasked to outwit and outlast the opponent in pursuit of victory. Triangle's battle product is eminently approachable, but can be deceptively deep. The guidelines of the system are lots of but easy to understand. You will need to contend with attack directions, climate conditions, terrain effects and the like – complexity comes when all of these rules are mashed together in combat situations. While playing you will gradually find out about weaknesses in your strategy through momentary mistakes or sometimes full-on defeats, however i never felt that Triangle Strategy crossed the line into punishing territory.
There isn't any permanent death for characters for just one, they simply retreat from battle ready for the next. Even a total loss is a gain of sorts since any experience your characters earned within the battle remains for your forthcoming attempt. More often than not, between retrying battles with slightly stronger characters and adjusting my strategy based on my knowledge about the way it went last time I never found myself feeling at a loss for a challenge that felt insurmountable. It is a fantastic balance that leaves room for demanding tactical challenge, while making each attempt naturally easier than the last without having done anything as crude as suggesting you switch the difficulty down. It's a super smart balancing system that made triumph feel like it's own reward. That said, there are difficulty modes you can choose from at the beginning of the experience, and are liberated to change through the game without consequence if you want to tailor your starting place.
The cast of characters fighting alongside you and also existing on the planet who are around you should have note. Each feels fleshed out with their very own motives and personalities, their own deeply held convictions by what they want to do for themselves and the people that matter to them. They've each had their own experiences around the globe as well as their own pre-existing relationships. It feels like my character's story takes place in a fully realised world, alongside people with deeply felt justifications for his or her convictions.
The path Triangle's story takes is largely directed by decisions made by not only you, however your group as a whole. House Wolffort is staunchly democratic which leads to one of the most interesting aspects of Triangle Strategy – all major decisions made by your group are made by majority vote. You like a player cannot directly decide the direction your home will take, however when a significant decision must be made you're given a chance to gather information and engage with your companions to attempt to convince these to see things the way you do. You've got no guarantee that they will come around to your perspective, and it will entirely depend on whether you are making an argument that is convincing for them in particular. Everything cumulates inside a vote where your group's future will be decided.
I found this decision making process utterly captivating. The majority of the decisions you need to collectively make will be difficult – there are rarely easy answers here. You will have to wrangle with yours and your group's existing allegiances, consider risky proposals, and even your own personal convictions to arrive at a choice. At times characters even convinced me to alter my thoughts after I attempted to change theirs, presenting a new viewpoint I hadn't properly considered for now. The entire process of gathering information beforehand and making an argument feels almost like a lite version of an investigative visual novel, making a previously engaging story filled with unexpected twists and turns feel much more personal. This story can go off in wildly different directions according to your collective decisions. Needing to think carefully and battle to convince your group of your viewpoint made the voting process nerve racking and the outcome genuinely impactful.
This story of kingdoms in turmoil unfolds against an uplifting visual backdrop. Utilising exactly the same 2D-HD style as Octopath Traveler before it, Triangle Strategy is both an homage to past strategy RPGs along with a contemporary technical showpiece. Battle situations are easy to read instantly owing to the straightforward look while effects like lighting and depth of field result in the game look unmistakably modern. The only real drawback I found visually was what seemed like a particularly aggressive resolution scaling system, which during relatively static story scenes could provide the sharp edged characters and environment textures a strange scaling look which may be a little distracting if you see. Triangle's music is worth mentioning too. Like the visuals it toes a line between resembling music from RPGs of some other era while sounding beautifully contemporary with it's instrumentation.
