Triangle Strategy - A New Take on Player Choices & Impressions/Review
4I've been playing Triangle Strategy and you know what... I'm quite enjoying it. Square Enix have turned a little away from their Final Fantasy Tactics designs and borrowed a few things from Fire Emblem while simultaneously bringing in some new designs and ideas. One of these new ideas has really stuck out to me and that's a new spin on how player choices work....
00:00 - A Pleasant Surprise
00:21 - The Scales of Conviction
01:41 - Meaningful choices
02:53 - Convictions and Triangles
03:36 - My Impressions / Review
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The game is set in fantasy with warring nations and houses fighting over resources like Salt and Iron. This is turn based strategy but with a big focus on storytelling and characters.
Regularly throughout the story of Triangle Strategy very important decisions need to be made. They determine the fate of characters, what and where the next battles will take place, and the direction of the story. Thing is, the decisions aren't directly made by you, they're actually made through a democracy of votes across your 7 most trusted followers.
You're the leader of house Wolffort, and you'll give each of your 7 most trusted followers a special coin. These 7 followers will make up your war council, and these coins are used to vote on decisions through the scales of conviction which weigh up the votes. It gets interesting because you can listen to the opinions and views of these 7 followers before they make their vote and you can try to influence or change their votes, you can even use extra information you've uncovered to help influence people. You'll not always be successful in trying to change people's minds and you may have to go with the flow. That said, this new form of player choice does not strip away any of your agency when it comes to important decisions, the agency just takes a new form through trying to influencing your followers to make your preffered decision.
The whole concept of this democracy based decision making is a nice change of pace when it comes to player choices, and I wasn't expecting it to be so different to what I'm usually used to.
One of the reasons this system works so well is because the decisions are meaningful throughout the game, the fate of characters and factions are determined through long term decisions. There's consquences and risks to the team's decisions but before trying to influence everyone, you are given plenty of information and made aware of the potential risks with each choice to make a proper informed decision. You could make the decision to go against powerful houses really early in the game but it's risky and you'll have a really really difficult battle to fight.
You could argue that the choices add a replayability factor to Triangle Strategy, you might want to replay the game and make different decisions to see alternative stories, characters, or missions, or maybe you missed out on your perfect outcome in the long run and want to fix that. There's this one character I really like to bring along in combat - Corentin, he's completely missable based on what choices you take, but he's got really powerful ice magic and I really like using his Ice Wall spell to block enemies off. Pretty cool.
From gathering items in towns to even stealing items in battle, all of your actions increase the conviction of House Wolffort through Liberty, Morality, or Utility. It's the Liberty to freely to do what you please, the Morality to do what seems to be the right or good thing to do, and the Utility to take advantage of everything possible. The agency behind your convictions are rewarded, with high conviction you unlock new followers, character stories, and stronger influences in your decisions.
The game is all about acting under these three types of convictions and making decisions usually between three choices, and that's why the game is called Triangle Strategy. A really weird name for a game without context but It's about 3 sided perspectives or choices like a 3 sided triangle.
Overall I've definitely enjoyed my time with Triangle Strategy. It's a very story and character driven game to the point about 80% of the game is just cut-scenes and dialogue, so it's not going to be a game for everyone. I've enjoyed my version of the story, but you can tell it's very Game of Thrones inspired in it's writing, with elements like houses, plenty of betrayal and phrases like "bending the knee" to Lords.
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