Trine 3: The Artifacts of Power

Positive: It's one of the prettiest games you will ever see. Negative: The prettiness lasts for 4 hours and not a minute more, even if you don't rush it.

Warning to potential buyers - this is quite bad and unfinished game, not really in the same league as its two predecessors. First of all, the true 3D movement does not really help, but hurts the gameplay, partly due to the horrendous camera that obscures paths, does not let you accurately measure distances, etc. More often than not, you will die to missed jumps, due to clipping through scenery that looks like solid objects, etc. Moving conjured objects in 3D is awkward and imprecise, and using them to accurately slam the enemies nigh impossible. In contrast to the beautiful, lush graphics of the past iterations, this one features an ugly violet/bright red color scheme that really hurts the eyes. The reason for this is absolutely unknown to me. Moreover, the local coop is totally broken, there is no safeguard against situations where one player falls somewhere where he is totally invisible, some puzzles meant for one person does not work or are trivial for two players, and sometimes the players are separated by a gate without means of rejoining. The game is also fairly buggy in its current state, and is very short.

The game looks awesome, however the 3rd dimension they added feels a bit awkward vs the fine-tunned control scheme of the previous Trines. Skill progression is non existent. It might be because the game is incredibly short compared to Trines (especially the 2nd) Still, that wouldn't justify a one-star rating. Quality/lenght/gameplay would get it 3-stars from me compared to other games I played. The reason I chose one-star is the following: From my point of view the developer misused their good reputation and dared to release unfinished product (story/lenght/gameplay aspects). If it was a standalone game, it would be criticized for being too short for the genre and price. Based on that, it would sell too good, but probably no disaster either. But it is not a standalone game, it is Trine, part of trilogy and that's the problem. It compares to previous games and falls way too short. I, for one, would never pre-order if it wasn't Trine. I only preordered 2 games, this and Witcher 3, as I always rely on my past experience with the developer. And I feel I made a mistake with Trine 3. The worst thing for me - my 6-years old, with whom I played both previous games in local coop, was really looking forward to this. Now he will have to accept we are done in few short playing sessions. We will most likely replay Trine 1 and 2...

This game is a huge disappointment. The move to 3D proves to be a severe mistake crippling the whole game. Controls are imprecise, much too often you die to missed jumps or being stuck at objects you thought were far enough behind your character to pass. Never really knowing where your character is on the depth axis of the level adds a random element to every action, which is obviously bad news in a platformer. The fact that placement of conjured objects is a chore does not improve anything. The controls are bad, the camera is worse. It may very well be the worst camera I ever encountered in any video game, and I've been playing those for several decades now. You rarely see what you want to see, sometimes you have to jump into areas you can't see, possibly dying there, important objects are obscured by stuff in the foreground, the camera angle is awkward, forcing you to guess which directions may be suitable for jumps ... the list is endless, and suffering from camera problems is not the exception, but the rule, turning parts of the game into a chore. There is still one strength the game preserves, and that is the fairy tale style. It is visually stunning, certainly one of the most beautiful games currently available, and narrator and soundtrack are on the same excellent level they had in the preceding games. Without those qualities, the game would be a candidate for one star. Other players mention that the game is short, something like four or five hours. I can't tell, because I quit the game after about three hours ( which felt like twice as much ), with feelings of frustration and dissapointment. I loved both predecessors, bought and played everything in the franchise, and that is why my disappointment is so deep.