Trillion: God of Destruction is one of those games that looked great in screenshots and videos, but when you finally get your hands on the finished product, it sadly fails to live up expectations. Trillion: God of Destruction tells the story of a God on a rampage to destroy and consume the Underworld, prompting Zeabolos, the Great Overlord of the Underworld, to step up to the task of stopping the destruction of his world only to fall in battle.
Severely weakened and unable to fight Zeabolos, sells his soul to a young girl name Faust for a second chance at life. Although he was brought back from the dead Zeabolos was unable to fight anymore and he makes the decision to train his Demon Lords to defeat Trillion; named so for his trillion hit points.
Zeabolos is Overlord to six Demon Lords. Each of the Demon Lords represents the six of the deadly sins: Pride, Envy, Greed, Sloth, Gluttony, and Lust. Each Lord takes the appearance of a young girl, and thanks to Idea Factory’s great character designs, each one possesses a distinct look and personality. What’s even better each one plays their role perfectly. Levia (Envy) is constantly jealous of everyone around her, and Ashmedia (Lust) enjoys flaunting her sex appeal to everyone she sees.
Trillion: God of Destruction represents yet another innovative risk from Idea Factory. Trillion plays like a strategy/tactical role-playing game with a dating sim build in as well. After falling to Trillion you are tasked to select one of three available Demon Lords to train for the upcoming battle with him. After selecting my first Demon Lord I was prepared for the heavy grind that comes with most strategy role-playing games; what I got on the other hand were a bunch of menus and stat options. Indeed, unlike other role-playing games where you would go out and actually do combat to increase your stats, Trillion takes different approach.
My time was mostly spent on selecting one of six type of training programs I wanted to train in and watched static screens tell me how successful my training was in that particular training exercise. The more successful I was the more points I would receive. Points are distributed into six different categories, which are then spent to distribute points again into increasing your stats like your hit points and attack damage. However, these training points are also used to unlock new skills for your character and new magic abilities. Learning where to distribute your points is vital to your success against Trillion.
Admittedly I would prefer that the game didn’t have to make you micromanage everything; too many times I increased my stats without realizing that I needed to upgrade my skills. Still, even though there is a lot of micromanagement, I got used to it and appreciated the ability to pick and choose what I wanted to upgrade and what stats were important to the character I was using— even though it mostly led to my death. A little hand holding is always appreciated.
After completing a training session you receive a medal. When you acquire five medals you’re able to enter the Valley of Swords. The Valley of Swords allows you to explore the actual combat system of the game. Even though the game has plenty of tutorials to explain how the combat works, it took me hours just to figure out how to do anything in it. It doesn’t help that you can only attempt the Valley of Swords every once in awhile. This takes the form of a training dungeon where you receive about one hundred and twenty moves to explore, kill, and collect any treasure you find and make it to the end before you run out of turns. If the clock runs out, you lose all the items you acquired but at least get to keep the points you earned for killing enemies.
The Valley of Swords would be a great area to learn the mechanics of the game but its turn limit hinders you as much as it possibly can. Everything I did cost me a turn. Every step I take cost me a point, and every time I attacked anyone it cost me a turn. Everything besides rotating the camera (which took me hours to figure out how to do) cost me points. It’s also important to note that whenever you do anything the enemy does something as well. Enemies move every time you take an action. This is important to note because if you move right up to an enemy they will attack you right as you move up. This forced me to attack thin air which cost me a turn just so the enemy could move up to me and allow me to attack it.
None of this actually looks that great either. Instead of focusing on their sumptuous art designs, Idea Factory went with chibi-style 3D character models with the simplest of animations possible. Outside of a select few abilities there is nothing great to look at when it comes to combat.
Remember when I said the game makes you micromanage everything? Well, this doesn’t just apply when it comes to the training. See, you have about seven weeks or cycles as they call them to train before Trillion wakes up from his slumber to attack. Training or going to the Valley of Swords cost you a day, and the more you train you will earn fatigue which will make it harder to be successful during training. Resting will remove parts of the fatigue but will again cost you a day. After each cycle ends you will be able to fight Mokujin, who takes the form of Trillion to allow you to practice your tactics and skills against him. The good news he doesn’t have a trillion hit points so he can be defeated for massive points. The bad news? Trillion is a hundred times harder.
One of the most frustrating aspects are the dating segments. That’s not to say they’re bad; they are actually some of the most comical parts of the writing. They are frustrating because of their timing. At random times, the game throws you into scenarios with Zeabolos where he checks in on the training. During these scenarios you will have to make choices that will either grant you affinity with the Demon Lord you are training or loose affinity with them. These scenarios also take up days in the cycle whether you want to take part in them or not. Outside of these scenarios you can also give gifts to your Demon Lord to earn affinity points but make sure you are giving the right gifts. Depending on the personality of the character you will lose a lot of affinity with them if you give them a gift they don’t like.
Like everything else you manage in the game, affinity not only opens up a personal relationship with Zeabolos but also acts like a shield during combat; the higher your affinity the more powerful the shield. This shield is incredibly important as it acts as a second health bar to protect you from the powerful attacks of Trillion. Once this shield is destroyed you will begin to take actual HP damage and with Trillion that pretty much means death in three or four hits.
When facing Trillion you will notice just how much a trillion hit points are. The battle with this enemy is a long and grueling one, one that you may not win on your first, second, or even third attempt. In addition, as if killing you in three or four hits just isn’t enough,Trillion also summons minions to his side as well as various traps. Due to his size, Trillion’s attacks are huge and cover a wide range making it very difficult to get in close to attack him. To exacerbate things, attempting to kill you isn’t the only threat; Trillion will also move on the battlefield and if he reaches his destination you will lose the encounter—but at least you get to survive to fight another day.
The game gives you plenty of time to avoid Trillion’s attacks by displaying the area he is about to strike. The area will appear with white squares and will turn color every turn until it reaches red and he attacks. It’s important to pay attention to the attacks because he will schedule multiple moves one after another, so knowing where to move and when to move to a certain location to avoid an attack is as important as going on the offensive. Still, in my experience you will mostly be running and killing minions simply because Trillion will unleash a barrage of attacks. And, while this opponent may prove difficult to vanquish, I did start to enjoy the strategy that went into the battle especially when you start to understand the mechanics of the combat system.
The thing that I felt the most cheated on was the fact that if the Demon Lord dies during the battle with Trillion they are gone for good. It left me gutted seeing them fail after all the hard work I had put into training them. On the plus side, if you do fall to Trillion they will activate a final attack which you can chose to use. Depending on what you do you can destroy one of your enemy’s body parts, which prevents him from using it to attack you in the next fight. Other options include keeping all the items you have acquired and others which I won’t spoil here.
Trillion: God of Destruction looked like a promising game but ended up disappointing on many levels. Its great writing, character development, and art work made me wish I was playing a visual novel instead of a Strategy-RPG. Even with all of the games tutorials it takes forever to learn the mechanics simply because you don’t get enough time to actually test them out. Although I got used to ubiquity of the micromanagement system, it became a drag having to constantly do it over and over again until the action dropped an hour later. It’s hard to imagine that the game sports ten different endings when I feel I should get a Platinum Trophy for getting through it once.