Trinity Fusion Review (PS5) – If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: A good game is good regardless of genre. Rogue-lites never usually catch my eye unless they do something unique, like what Housemarque did with Returnal.
Angry Mob Games takes a shot at the genre with its own ideas in Trinity Fusion. In particular, they take a more universal approach to the gameplay. Apart from a few hiccups, the game succeeds at what it wants to do.
Trinity Fusion Review (PS5) – A Fun, Approachable Rogue-lite For All Experience Levels
You take control of three different characters, each from their own universe. The multiverse is dying, and each universe is vying to survive. Your team finds a way to stabilize all three universes, but other factions wish to destroy the other two so their universe stands alone.
Trinity Fusion delivers the story incrementally between your different runs. As you progress farther and farther, more of the scenario starts to play out.
The story lacks much pizzazz, but it does a good job of making feel like you keep progressing.
The true focal point to Trinity Fusion is the combat. Combat itself is tight and responsive, letting you do everything you need to do the moment you want to do it.
Trinity Fusion carries the hallmarks of a classic Metroidvania, rouge-lite title. As situations grow more hectic, you need full command of your weapons, abilities, and items.
To aid with that, the game allows you to change which buttons use abilities, special weapons, and items. Just hold L2, then highlight the icon you want to adjust and then press the button you want bound to it.
On-Site Procurement
You cannot make these kinds of on-the-fly changes with all of your input commands. However, from the settings menu, the game allows you to change the button layout for the entire game to your liking.
If you wanted, you could even swap the joysticks to do their opposite function. Quite a welcome touch. Personally, I love the settings as they are, but the freedom to adjust puts more control in the players’ hands.
Throughout your time in Trinity Fusion, you use weapons, abilities, and items to get you to the end of your rogue-lite runs. As you progress, new weapons, abilities, and items drop along the way, giving you random options to adjust your arsenal.
As with most rogue-lites, the gear and items you pick up in a run do not stay with you when you die.
Weapon variety is decent enough, but they don’t require you to spend extra time figuring out their nuances. Sure, guns shoot at different rates, and some shoot full auto, but they don’t ask You to do anything more than know what you can shoot.
Trinity Fusion leans into simplicity in this way, allowing you to focus more on fighting enemies and less time figuring out weapons.
Building Your Arsenal
Melee weapons work the same way. They have a 3 or 4-hit combo and that’s it. Instead of offering multiple combat styles, you instead choose the weapons based on what ailments and buffs they apply.
In particular, poison, burn, and electrify change the game while dungeon crawling, inflicting additional damage and staggering enemies more easily.
That’s not to say there isn’t any weapon variety. There are long swords, daggers, axes, and sickles as well as sniper rifles, bazookas, handguns, bows, and assault rifles.
These only differ based on projectile distance and melee reach. Naturally, sickles reach farther than daggers do. Regardless, the distance isn’t a factor that affects how you go about fighting.
All in all, the complexity and depth of combat and upgrading may not be on offer in Trinity Fusion, but it makes up for it with its leans into universality.
Sniper rifles do tons of damage, even at close range, and some handguns let you shoot through multiple enemies. All of these weapons function the same ways as their counterparts, but their unique effects impact far more than the type of weapon you use.
That’s the inherent approach to rogue-lites that Trinity Fusion takes, and it’s all the more better for it.
Evening The Odds
With that in mind, two currencies that you collect along the way allow you to unlock different beneficial Psychic Augments and Combat Upgrades. These enhance your health and increase your critical hit chance, regenerate health, and one perk in particular that revives you one time each run.
While costly, these make a world of difference on your overall experience.
Though not groundbreaking, the other nice thing Trinity Fusion is the kinds of accessibility options it includes. As mentioned before, you can change the entire button layout.
Then you also can use Aim Assist with your range weapons. Another thing is Hyper Mode, which reduces the amount of damage you take with each defeat, bottoming out at 65% damage reduction.
Trinity Fusion maintains a sense of convenience to the game without skimping on the action. The game also offers several difficulty levels, opening itself up to a wide range of players.
It’s a demanding game but not back breaking, and it strikes a fantastic balance between the two extremes without losing the heart and soul of its gameplay.
One thing I wish Trinity Fusion had is more enemy variety. The roster of enemies is pretty vast, spanning variants across three different universes. At the same time, the same three boss fights pop up over and over.
The first few attempts test your mettle, but the other runs feel easy. The magic of boss fights comes in figuring them out, and more bosses means more chances to test opponents. The bosses in the game are quite good, but they soon become routine.
One knock in particular that bothered me is the occasional issue that comes up with the procedurally generated maps. This didn’t happen often at all, but it happened enough times that it could become an issue.
In some maps, I got stuck simply because I could not reach the exit. In particular, this happens when I use a character that didn’t have the grappling hook. The only remaining path I can take leads me to a place well out of reach simply because I don’t have the correct character.
After it happened, I ended up choosing Kera at the beginning simply because she starts with the grappling hook by default. This eliminates any issues. Trinity Fusion also provides a means for you to fuse with one of your universe counterparts and take on their unique abilities.
In doing so, you create the perfect character to dungeon crawl with. It’s an odd thing to deal with, but it’s a rarity and can be avoided with a little hindsight.
A Fun Rogue-lite, Especially for Newcomers
If you’ve ever been curious to try a rogue-lite, but the repetitious and challenging natures of the genre keep you away, then you need to try Trinity Fusion. It lacks the complexity of most rogue-lites, and it has the weird anomaly with procedurally generated maps.
At the same time, Trinity Fusion keeps you moving forward with a story that does just enough to accentuate the game’s fun, engaging gameplay.
Combine that with some welcome accessibility options, and you end up with the recipe for success.
Trinity Fusion is now available on PS5 and PS4.
Review code kindly provided by the publisher.