First impression: Disappointed

[Dartaen]

I just played the tutorial levels and the Astral Academy and just stopped playing. Why? As a huge fan of both Trine and Trine 2 I am sorry to say: Because Trine 3 has been little fun for me so far.

These things bother me the most:

1. 3D controls

The most glaring problem of Trine 3 is how difficult it is to controll the movement of your characters in the 3D environment.

Trine 3 now being a 3D game, your characters can move into the "depth" of the screen (i.e. in and out). In many situations, it is hard to determine at which depth of the screen your character is currently located. This is especially problematic when your character is currently not standing on the ground (e.g. because of jumping, climbing, flying etc.) or when the camera is viewing him/her from the side.

These issues are especially noticable when jumping from one platform to another (as you will often miss the platform) or when collecting experience pyramids floating in mid-air. Since Trine 3 is a platform game, that is a pretty huge problem!

2. Graphics

My impression is that the graphics are less pleasant to look at than in Trine 2. I cannot remember seeing the colours brown and grey so often in Trine 2. This is especially noticable in the Pontius level.

The levels also seem to have less decorative objects like flowers or trees. What happened to the bright flowers and giant pumpkins we had in Trine 2?

Hate to say it, but I am disappointed.

[Ayy]

Yeah, I saw how the 3-D was working and was like ugh, that looks iffy with depth issues. I was watching gameplay and was like hmm how do people tell if they get hit by a swipe, or determine how "deep" into the background a swing was due to the 3-D and my guess was to simply wiggle your character around and guess. Looks to confusing to be the same 80s scale for score. It looks confusing and unless they remedy this problem somehow I suspect reviewers will bash the game for it while praising visuals somewhere in the 70s score range.

My own personal opinion is 3-D only works with third person or first person. Trying to implement it into what was a platformer is a bold move but it seems to be for the worst.

[Magical Boy Malabar]

Having the same problems as the TS. I won't be bothered by the lack of trees and flowers at this stage, but it looks like 3d made the game look worse. It's kinda early to say this, but it feels like the magic of trine is gone or wasn't properly awakened. -_-

[Andy C]

Yeah i'm not convinced at this stage. I know it's early access but it needs A LOT of polish. The characters just seem to float everywhere, they dont seem to be integrated with the rest of the levels, combat with the Knight is very basic and aiming with the archer is just irritating. The level graphics are nowhere near as polished as 1 and 2 and just seem 'bolted' onto the background.

Hopefully it gets the polish it needs as 1 and 2 are my favourite games of recent years!

[Nacery]

I'm really liking the new 3D stages, it actually feels as an natural evolution of the rotating stages that Goblin Menace introduced, but yeah I kinda understand OP point view as sometimes navigating some places gets really messy because of not having a proper deep perception of characters (underwater zones and mid-air plataforming zones where you can't rely on character shadows basically) still I think that it could be fixed by realocating the camera in a higher angle. Also floaty characters and some broken hitboxes in stages doesn't help a lot.

About the graphics I think they are great as they are now but yeah a little bit of colour and flora would be a welcome adittion, still I think it's still early to have a good impression as the game has been released a few hours ago.

Frozenbyte has done a great job so far not only with it's games but also with the PC community so I'm expecting great things from this game.

(What reaaally pisses me off is the flood of people complaining about the Early-Access thing. Some of them doesn't even own a damn Frozenbyte Game and are just relieving their anger over ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥/broken survival games they have bought in the past)

[Timeraider]

Cant say ive had either of those problems. The controls work very well at me (both tried keyboard/mouse as well as a PS4 controller (can also try it with an xbox360 one if you want XD)

Graphics are.. well.. the same in my opinion. Nice

[hqrmony]

I don't have ANY of those problems... They did make a good Early Access.

[Trash]

The whole point of early access is to collaborate with gamers who wish to beta-test a work-in-progress and to provide feedback.

It's a pretty good move. Product needs work, yes, but we can at least see that it's in the making.

[Dartaen]

Originally posted by OMGWTFBBQ:

My own personal opinion is 3-D only works with third person or first person. Trying to implement it into what was a platformer is a bold move but it seems to be for the worst.

Yeah, I agree. There are only very few good 3D platformers for exactly that reason. You have to see when and where you have to jump.

I still do not understand why Frozenbyte suddenly had to introduce 3D. I always feld 2.5D was working really well.

[Timeraider]

Originally posted by Dartaen:

Originally posted by OMGWTFBBQ:

My own personal opinion is 3-D only works with third person or first person. Trying to implement it into what was a platformer is a bold move but it seems to be for the worst.

Yeah, I agree. There are only very few good 3D platformers for exactly that reason. You have to see when and where you have to jump.

I still do not understand why Frozenbyte suddenly had to introduce 3D. I always feld 2.5D was working really well.

The best classic platformer-type games in my opinion were 3D... but guess im the banjo kazooie/donkey kong/super mario type of guy from the nintendo 64 :P

[Dartaen]

Originally posted by Timeraider:

The best classic platformer-type games in my opinion were 3D... but guess im the banjo kazooie/donkey kong/super mario type of guy from the nintendo 64 :P

I was only referring to PC games only, of course. ;-) And of course there were good ones on the PC too, just not many.

[EightRooks]

Just tried the first level with a gamepad and, yeah, not seeing the problem. Keyboard and mouse could use some work - it's kind of hard getting an exact direction when you need it - but the controls with the pad felt fine. The tutorial left me floundering a bit - I had to work out how to float boxes by trial and error - but I had no significant problems other than that. The movement was still floaty and loose, but for the moment I'm going to put that down to Trine being Trine, basically. The characters did what I wanted more or less exactly when I wanted them to, so... it could still do with some tuning, no argument there, but with a controller they seem very solid already.

[Wezilla]

3D give me more "thinking" but it can be confuse like fell to death...I feel experince same bit like Zack Zero but I like this good fun for puzzles