Publisher: 3DClouds
Developer: 3DClouds
Medium: Digital
Players: 1
Online: No
ESRB: Not Rated
I kind of hate Trident’s Tale.
That’s not an ironic statement, or one that’s coming with a twist – I’m not going to follow that up with, “I hate it because I’m addicted to it!”, or some nonsense like that. I just genuinely dislike the game, and I want to make that clear right off the bat.
A big part of that hate is Trident’s Tale’s atrociously bad writing and voice acting. Pretty much every line sounds clunky, and every line is delivered as if it’s being spoken by an ultra-obnoxious kid’s movie character. It’s endlessly grating, and even though all the cutscenes are skippable, you can’t help but hear and see some of them, and even that little bit is enough to get on your nerves. It also doesn’t help that the visuals look like they belong in a bargain basement cartoon geared towards children.
Consequently, you might think that Trident’s Tale is a kid’s game, and that it should be treated as such. This is a bad explanation for two reasons. First, just because a game is geared towards children, that’s no excuse for it to suck. Even if there are plenty of examples of lazy, lowest-common denominator garbage that use “kid’s entertainment” to deflect any and all criticisms, that doesn’t mean they should be allowed to get away with it.
More importantly, I’m not sure that Trident’s Tale is a kid’s game. It may look like one, but the gameplay doesn’t match up with the vibe. The combat is annoying and unbalanced. Your character’s attack animations take forever to play out, so even though you have a strong attack, it’s practically useless because it takes so long your enemies can easily dodge out of the way. Those enemies are also hyper-aggressive, and instead of giving you the option of blocking enemy attacks, all you can do is try to dodge them – which, on account of the slow-moving animations, seldom works, and is pointless any time you’re up against multiple enemies.
There’s also naval combat, but it’s hardly any better. Your ship is slow and cumbersome to move, which makes it easy for enemy ships to take out huge chunks of your health. If you want to mend your ship, you also need to use up health potions, which is an odd use of resources.
Even when you’re not engaged in combat, Trident’s Tale isn’t particularly interesting. It’s mainly fetch quests, exploration, and gathering supplies, and nothing about its world is remotely engaging enough to keep your interest.
And that’s why I only kind of hate Trident’s Tale. It’s not a good game – and again, the voice acting and cutscenes and script are abysmal – but on the whole it’s not interesting enough to generate really strong feelings. It’s a bad game that’s also incredibly boring, which is just about the worst combination imaginable.
3DClouds provided us with a Trident’s Tale PC code for review purposes.
