Game:

Phantom Trigger (2017)

Category:

Review

Duration: 2:56

134 views

5

When it comes to being obtuse, Phantom Trigger falls into that category and it's an unfortunate thing. While playing it, there are a lot of things the game does right, but the developers just missed the mark when making the game fun to play.

Phantom Trigger is an action, hack n slash game, with the same isometric viewpoint as a Diablo, or Transistor. Without spoiling too much, this game has a pretty interesting story, and that's where it excels the most. It deals with mental illness in an engaging way, a topic not covered in the medium often.

Throughout the story, the player is given a glimpse of what is happening in the real world, which breaks up the monotony of the doom and gloom fantasy world in which the action takes place. The usage of flashbacks help the narrative move along in an intriguing way. The art and sounds work to the game's advantage, too. Each of the three weapons have a unique sound and rhythm associated to make this almost feel like a music game at times. And with a beautiful retro art style like this, it's easy to want to try to keep playing, at least at first.

But, great sound design and visuals can only get a game so far. The combat tries to be deep, but it doesn't work a lot of times. Enemies have weird hit-boxes, where I'd try to strike and miss when I definitely shouldn't have. In order to ensure a hit would land, I would have to get right up next to an enemy, which would just result in me taking damage. The whip also causes problems: the player is able to whip enemies closer, but unfortunately, the enemies just end up slamming into the player, dealing damage. The entire foundation of the gameplay is the combat and it just doesn't work.

Aside from combat, the player is tasked with exploring the areas and solving light puzzles to unlock doors and progress through the level. This is not bad, but trying to traverse the level with no map is an outdated feature, or lack thereof. There is little distinction within each level, so it's easy to get lost and lose track of what to do.

In typical video game format, each level ends with a boss battle. Like the exploration, these bosses feel flat and obtuse. It seems like the developers were struggling to add difficulty to the game, but instead just made the bosses weird and confusing. It's common to find games that don't explain much, but when the gameplay isn't fun, it makes it difficult to want to progress.

Phantom Trigger tries to do many things that modern games just do better in every way. The obtuse level design, boss battles, and combat make this game not enjoyable to play, even if the art style and story are it's only saving grace. This is a game I wanted to like, but could not help being baffled at some of the design decisions.

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