Triangle Strategy is almost great — but it doesn’t trust the player

polygon.com:

No stories are more powerful than the ones we tell ourselves. In some ways, Triangle Strategy embraces this idea. In others, it seems hopelessly oblivious.

Created as a collaboration between Square Enix and Artdink, Triangle Strategy is a turn-based tactical RPG with the scope and ambition of a Tolkien novel. Despite its visual kinship with Octopath Traveler, and the stewardship of lead producer Tomoya Asano (who helped spearhead development on that 2018 JRPG), Triangle Strategy is less of a party-based adventure and more of a sweeping political drama. Instead of exploring the camaraderie among friends, it focuses on the relationships of their nations. Put another way: If Octopath Traveler was The Fellowship of the Ring, then Triangle Strategy is The Two Towers and Return of the King, combined.

The story unfolds on the continent of Norzelia and the three countries it comprises: Aesfrost, which controls Norzelia’s’s iron mines; Hyzante, the purveyor of its salt reserves; and Glenbrook, a kingdom that acts as something of an intermediary between the two. In keeping with the tradition of Final Fantasy Tactics, Suikoden 2, and the Fire Emblem games, I build an army and command myriad characters on 3D, grid-based battlefields. Throughout my 45-hour campaign, I largely inhabit the role of Serenoa, a member of Glenbrook’s royal family and the Atlas upon whose shoulders Norzelia begins to teeter.

With arranged marriages, insidious betrayals, and red-herring death scenes, Triangle Strategy’s script deploys a litany of JRPG and fantasy tropes. It also introduces such a wide swath of characters, locations, feuds, and traditions that I began losing track of it all only a few chapters in, the predictability of it all notwithstanding.