Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince

[Neerasrc]

The thief has become uglier...and it seems she is a gypsy now.

haha cookie games. I'm still waiting to see new classes. Maybe trine 5 -)

 

[baud]

The thief has become uglier...and it seems she is a gypsy now.

All the character have ugly faces, I don't know why the devs went that way. The thief could have been a gypsy before thoug, it's the first time we can see her face

 

[fantadomat]

The thief has become uglier...and it seems she is a gypsy now.

All the character have ugly faces, I don't know why the devs went that way. The thief could have been a gypsy before thoug, it's the first time we can see her face

Nah,it was see plenty of time in the first two,don't remember about the third one. I don't know about gypsy,but she was pretty white.

 

[baud]

The thief has become uglier...and it seems she is a gypsy now.

All the character have ugly faces, I don't know why the devs went that way. The thief could have been a gypsy before thoug, it's the first time we can see her face

Nah,it was see plenty of time in the first two,don't remember about the third one. I don't know about gypsy,but she was pretty white.

I stand corrected, I only thought about in-game character models and not concept art. At least now she's showing less skin and no cleavage

 

[Valky]

Trine 4: The Prosperous Prince.

 

[Infinitron]

Well now: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-10-07-trine-4-review-the-biggest-and-best-trine-yet

Trine 4 review: the biggest and best Trine yet
Fourth Trine's the charm.

Outrageously pretty and newly refined, Frozenbyte's series finally strikes gold.


Trine 4 is a game I didn't know I wanted until it was on the screen before me. Three Trine games was more Trine than I ever thought I'd need, and given the title it seemed fitting to end the series as a trilogy, even if the last one was a bit duff. Trine 4 sounds like a Douglas Adams joke, only humour has never been Frozenbyte's strong point.

Pretty games aren't exactly rare these days, but it's also important to emphasise just how pleasant Trine 4 is. There's something warm and comforting about the whole design - a fireside fairytale on a snowy winter's eve, all gingerbread cottages, Sleeping Beauty castles and anthropomorphic animals. One level takes place inside a hobbit-like badger's burrow, filled with rustic furniture and teetering stacks of books. In another, you help a grizzly bear pull a thorn from its paw, who then proceeds to follow you throughout the level. My favourite animal encounters involves a friendly seal who acts as big blubbery bouncepad to help you reach higher vantage points. In case that sounds a little cruel, the game briefly puts down its storybook to point out that it's a special magic seal, and that, generally, animals shouldn't be jumped on.

The chocolate-box visuals are matched by the mechanics, offering an impressive level of puzzling variety within its 2.5 dimensions. The fundamentals remain the same. Amadeus conjures boxes, balls and planks to create platforms and bridge gaps. Zora's arrows can trigger distant switches, while her grappling hook lets you create tightropes to cross chasms. Ser Pontius is all about smashing obstacles and bashing enemies - always your first choice in combat. But Frozenbyte elaborate considerably on these basics, introducing a new ability or puzzling element in virtually every level. Around the middle of the game, Zora acquires a "fairy rope", that lifts objects into the air, while Ser Pontius can create a spectral version of his own shield, allowing him to bounce light and water off it at multiple positions.

To solve Trine 4's many puzzles, these abilities need to be combined with countless different objects. Scales, seesaws, elevators, rotating wheels, sticky snowbanks, electrical currents, magnetic force-fields, portals, the list goes on. Some puzzles have hard solutions, while others allow you to essentially build your own, erecting a Meccano-like structure out of boxes and floating planks, then tying them together with ropes. The power of Trine's puzzling toolset occasionally works against it. Some puzzles that involve getting to a higher vantage point can essentially be "skipped" by placing a plank on the high platform and then grappling up to it. But personally, I've always liked the spongy fringes of Trine's play, and there are more than enough puzzles that require you to engage directly.

It's as well Trine 4's puzzling is so rich. Combat has always been Trine's weakest area, and in Trine 4 it might as well not have turned up. All the enemies in the game are "nightmares" made manifest by the prince, which translates to "Six or seven enemy types repeated across the entire game." Rather than being baked naturally into levels. These combat sections "appear" suddenly at set points, almost like a minigame overlaid on top of your puzzle-platformer.

There are plenty of ways to tackle these battles, from chucking boxes at enemies with Amadeus, to freezing them with Zora's ice-arrows. Yet because enemies attack all at once, it's very difficult to use these more elaborate powers. Consequently, I ended up relying overwhelmingly on Ser Pontius' stomp, squashing these phantasms into dust like an obese, tinned Mario. The combat becomes rote after a few encounters, and by the end of the game you'll sigh every time the screen turns purple.

If the combat is bad, the boss battles are worse. I don't understand why Trine has boss battles. The Ugly Duckling doesn't end with the duckling battering the swans. Admittedly, Trine 4 tries to make these encounters thematically appropriate, with our three heroes confronting manifest versions of their fears. But the stakes never feel particularly high. Ser Pontius fears being ridiculed by fellow knights we've never met before, while Amadeus fear some creepy witch aunt of his that might actually be his mum. Speaking of Amadeus, that particular boss battle, which is puzzle based, might well be one of the most frustrating things I've played all year.

Fortunately, the boss battles are few, and the combat, while tedious, is also fleeting when it occurs. Like Toy Story 4, Trine 4 wasn't a necessary sequel, but I'm nonetheless glad it exists. Here's to Trine 5: We Increasingly Regret Calling It Trine.

 

[Infinitron]

PC Gamer is less positive: https://www.pcgamer.com/trine-4-review/

TRINE 4 REVIEW
Trine 4 is a fairytale with a sort-of happy ending.

It's not often that the fourth game in a series is considered to be an ideal jumping-in point. That’s the case here though, for a few obvious reasons. Firstly, the controls and systems are taught with a wonderful understanding of pace and communication. Secondly, the story requires no knowledge of the previous games. Thirdly, things are so similar to the first two games in the series that Trine 4 is arguably best enjoyed by players who are experiencing it all for the first time.

It almost feels unfair to highlight the similarities to what has gone before. After all, Frozenbyte attempted to address the grumbles around Trine 2’s similarity to its predecessor by moving to 3D environments for Trine 3. The result was identifiably the weakest game in the series, so it’s back to 2.5D for Trine 4. Series fans will find that it’s still the same characters, with largely the same abilities—but perhaps that’s a good thing after Trine 3.

For the benefit of the uninitiated, Trine concerns three playable characters, each with unique abilities. You can play with other people, or switch between your gang solo, puzzles often changing when there’s more than one of you. There’s some platforming, and a bit of combat, but the puzzles lie at the heart of the experience.

I’ll occasionally cheese my way past a problem, as I so often do in life, with a simple but effective fix. In Trine 4’s case, this means using the wizard to conjure up a box, and levitating it to a position where the thief can jump, attach her rope in mid-air, and pull herself up. Take that, spiky pit of death! Thought you could make me use my brain, eh? Hah!

Mind you, it’s clear that the developers know people will be doing this. Many high platforms have barriers specifically designed to prevent placement of any of the wizard’s items. Just as well too, as the puzzle design is superb, and deserves to have players explore it. While the fundamentals may sound limiting—reflecting sunlight, making rope bridges, diverting water, weighing platforms down, and other familiar concepts—they are used in all sorts of ingenious ways. Sure, many puzzles I solve very quickly, but more than once I hit a roadblock that initially seems utterly insurmountable. I always persist, never frustrated, and always end up working out the solution. It’s at times like these that I experience an immense rush of satisfaction, and an intense hit of admiration for the evil geniuses behind these setups.

The Knight Before
Combat fares much less well. Rather than dotting enemies throughout each level, the developers have created enclosed single-screen arenas for fights with multiple foes, triggered when a player walks past a certain point (look carefully, and you might spot telltale purple smoke). The best tactic is usually to get the knight in there, mashing the attack button and using his shield to deflect any projectiles. The thief’s bow and arrow is a fair second choice, while hitting things with boxes as the wizard is awkward and silly. My reaction to each and every one of these fights is a roll of the eyes and a desire to get it out of the way as quickly as possible. It’s just not fun.

The blow of the terrible combat is softened somewhat by the overall determination to make the whole experience gentle and friendly. Checkpointing is generous, characters resurrect almost instantly outside of combat, and during those horrible fights, a fallen comrade can be brought back to life within a few seconds. Not once during my 12 hours or so playing Trine 4 did I see a game over screen. For a game that leans on its superb puzzles for its appeal, this is very much a good thing.

Nonetheless, something soon starts to feel off about Trine 4, and it takes me a while to identify what it is. There’s so much to like. The puzzles, which I really do love; the art, which nails the dreamy fairytale vibe; the music and sound effects, which support the atmosphere of the graphics perfectly; the inclusion of a talking badger with a curious number of platforming puzzles in his house. Then I consider things holistically, and it clicks—or, rather, it doesn’t.

As a whole, the experience doesn’t feel complete and consistent. The final boss is anticlimactic and overly simple, whereas the second boss had me stumped for a while due to its reliance on puzzles. I breezed through most of the final stage, while three hours earlier I was struggling with how to progress. The story offers no cohesion either, being far too lightweight to sustain interest. Trine 4 is a series of middles sewn together with the thread of great puzzle design.

THE VERDICT
73

TRINE 4
Puzzle design does the heavy lifting for Trine 4, a fun but ultimately hollow experience.

 

[Valky]

I wonder if it will be possible to play through the entire game with each character independently, that would make for nice replayability.

 

[Infinitron]

Released:




https://af.gog.com/game/trine_4_the_nightmare_prince?as=1649904300

 

[Ivan]

should be good fun w/the nephew

 

[Valky]

Trine 3 is finally released!
Purchased last night at 12:00am because I know I'm going to actually play this one and I don't want to wait a year for the GOTY edition that includes whatever this preorder level is supposed to be.

I hope they do what they did with Trine 2 and make an expansion for this down the line. Goblin Menace was fucking fantastic.

 

[Valky]

---------------------------
Unhandled exception
---------------------------
Exception code: 0xc0000005

Address: 0x00000001401B68EC in trine4.exe:00000001401B6000
Related modules: trine4.exe ntdll.dll kernel32.dll

Failed to load dbghelp.dll from tools\dbghelp_x64\dbghelp.dll. Will try with plain name next

Success with DbgHelp.dll

Minidump: C:\Games\Trine 4\trine4.exe_5fb4816.dmp

Wew fucking lad. First and last time in the last 5 years that I get a game on launch. The executable will not even start the game.

Edit: Here you go friends. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...-windows-7-sp1-and-windows-server-2008-r2-sp1
Installing this update has allowed the executable to actually start the game. And fyi it's not one of the telemetry KBs.

Editx2: Played for two hours before my bedtime. I finished the 3 tutorial areas for each character and the first real level. First impressions compared to Trine 2.

Visuals: Pretty much the same AFAIR. Nothing to complain about, the settings look really nice like a fairy tale. If I max out AA and textures, I start getting lag which is strange because the graffixal fagdelity isn't a technical improvement over 2 from what I can tell, so I'm just going to assume this one is poorly optimized. The game better be big compared to 2 because it's like 14 GB compared to the ~4 of Trine 2, so I don't know where the space could come from.

Physics: So far this one is a solid downgrade from Trine 2. In 2 I could rope swing extremely fluidly, in this one Zoya has a noticable jerkiness when moving on ropes. The wall grabbing is also really annoying, characters latch onto walls whenever given the chance, which interrupts your gameplay when you are trying to make different movements. There is a gameplay option to prevent this when Zoya is on the rope, but it doesn't seem to work all the time and still affects every other situation anyway involving ledges and you being in midair. Jumping around ledges causes characters to glitch up them sometimes because the game wants to be so helpful and invisibly autocomplete when you're close to climbing up a ledge, which makes it look really strange. I haven't encountered fluids yet so no comment there. There's apparently magnet shield again and a new fairy rope thing for Zoya that makes whatever is attached float up like gravity is reversed. Amadeus can't conjure boxes anywhere on the screen now, it always appears right above his head, which prevents you from spawning in blocked off areas to your character unlike Trine 2. However, the box will auto hover above his head while moving around unless you move it, which is really convenient. The mouse draw to create boxes is complete decline, it thinks you want to make a box when you draw a line sometimes, and overall is less sensitive to the actual shape you mouse out and not worth it anymore. Now you can also just press a key on the keyboard to instantly spawn the boxes, compared to Trine 2 where you had to draw them, which is unenjoyable and basically what you have to do as a result of the aforementioned shit mouse drawing now.

Character skills are in this one and look ok. Amadeus is the one that immediately is the most improved, there are skills to make your held boxes slam down or horizontally with strong acceleration so you can deal damage and break objects.

Combat: It feels weaker than Trine 2, but again I've only played the tutorial areas and the first level. There haven't been any enemies roaming around the environment like in Trine 2, you just trigger a flag in an area that locks you into one spot that you have to then move around the screen fighting in, and there are multiple instances of these "set piece fights" spread around the level. There was a boss right at the end of the first level, which was neat, suggesting there may be a lot of boss fights in this one compared to Trine 2.

Puzzles I can't comment on a whole lot yet since I've only done the first level.

So far, the physics being laggier than Trine 2 is the major detractor for me. Being able to mess around with the environment so fluidly in Trine 2 was one of the best parts of it. I'm hoping the magnet shield in this works like it did in Trine 2, because creating attracting and repelling magnetic fields was one of the best uses of the physics to play with. Regardless, unless some expansion can add more, I'm going to go ahead and say Trine 2 remains unmatched on that front, nothing is as good as the anti gravity field arrow.

 

[baud]

I don't know what it says about that me that I recognize immediately the error code at the top of the post .

Regarding Trine 4, it look like the hook can only latch on big-ass rings instead of any wooden surface, look like decline on that front. Or perhaps it removes the retarded attempts of grabbing the extreme end of a platform to cheese a jump?

 

[DemonKing]

Playing couch co-op with my sons on the PS4 - very noisy with lots of high fives as particularly diabolical puzzles are solved. Puzzles changed depending on the number of players too FYI. Combat is nothing special but that's not what this game is about.

 

[Valky]

Difficulty:
There are now only "normal" and "easy", and no other options AFAIK. Normal is journalist difficulty, and right off the bat Trine 4 is a noticeable decline on this area, even though the previous games weren't terribly hard games. In Trine 2, you at least had the option to set it so that if all of your characters died, you had to restart from the beginning of the level. In this one, you don't get any sort of option like that, and death basically shouldn't even exist at this point. There are literally over a fucking dozen checkpoints per level, and even while you are in combat now, your characters still fucking respawn if they die. The respawn frequency and drowning volume of checkpoints in Trine 2 were nowhere near this level. In Trine 2, it was possible to gain a level of urgency and real consequence for death, which you wanted to try to avoid. In Trine 4, it genuinely means piss all. Just throw your characters into every hazard because there is no consequence for doing anything poorly. I suppose it's a sign of the type of audience Frozenbyte is clearly catering for.

 

[what am i doing]

I'm about halfway through so far. Music is as great as ever, art direction is great, graphics seem a little bit, not sure how to put it - they seem to be very crisp and detailed but somehow not quite as good as before. I like the level variety a lot better than 2, which I found really dragged on in terms of endless jungle/swamp.

The gameplay is piss easy. You face a lot less punishment for dying than before, as Valky has said. I'm playing on Normal and I literally have not seen the "everyone's dead" screen once. I'm not even sure if the game has checkpoints because there's no visual indication of it and you just respawn at the nearest surface if one character dies. That being said I don't really fault the game for this because at its heart the Trine series is a puzzle series, not a combat series, and after Trine 2 shat all over puzzle difficulty (once you get anti-gravity arrows, with some basic gaming skill you can basically just climb around the air as Amadeus and briefly switch to Zoya whenever you need to reposition the bubble, bypassing most puzzles as challenges), Trine 4 bringing puzzle difficulty back is a welcome change - even if it's nowhere near as good as the original. I don't like some aspects of the gameplay such as not being able to draw a box where you want it, but I can sort of see where they were going with that since being able to put it anywhere on creation would make combat even easier and bypass some of the puzzles. The blink ability certainly is nice.

Overall so far I'd rate the series 1 > 4 > 2. Frozenbyte's clearly back on their game. Just need to bring back checkpoints and increase difficulty for 5. I suspect the difficulty loss is due to designing the game too much for multiplayer convenience.

EDIT: Also, this is a very trivial thing but I like that there are more NPCs. Makes the world feel more alive.

 

[Valky]

I'm about halfway through so far. Music is as great as ever, art direction is great, graphics seem a little bit, not sure how to put it - they seem to be very crisp and detailed but somehow not quite as good as before. I like the level variety a lot better than 2, which I found really dragged on in terms of endless jungle/swamp.

The gameplay is piss easy. You face a lot less punishment for dying than before, as Valky has said. I'm playing on Normal and I literally have not seen the "everyone's dead" screen once. I'm not even sure if the game has checkpoints because there's no visual indication of it and you just respawn at the nearest surface if one character dies. That being said I don't really fault the game for this because at its heart the Trine series is a puzzle series, not a combat series, and after Trine 2 shat all over puzzle difficulty (once you get anti-gravity arrows, with some basic gaming skill you can basically just climb around the air as Amadeus and briefly switch to Zoya whenever you need to reposition the bubble, bypassing most puzzles as challenges), Trine 4 bringing puzzle difficulty back is a welcome change - even if it's nowhere near as good as the original. I don't like some aspects of the gameplay such as not being able to draw a box where you want it, but I can sort of see where they were going with that since being able to put it anywhere on creation would make combat even easier and bypass some of the puzzles. The blink ability certainly is nice.

Overall so far I'd rate the series 1 > 4 > 2. Frozenbyte's clearly back on their game. Just need to bring back checkpoints and increase difficulty for 5. I suspect the difficulty loss is due to designing the game too much for multiplayer convenience.

There's like a billion checkpoints per level. Look in the map view where you select levels.

edit: I'm seeing even more evidence, the physics are really off the mark compared to Trine 2. Boxes don't break. Arrows don't arc unless you have zero draw. Movement is jerky and immediate instead of smooth and natural.

Holy FUCK this ledge autograb is unbelievably maddening! You cannot fall if you are trying to sometimes.

 

[Valky]

The true antagonist of Trine 4... racism.

Spoiler

 

[Valky]

I've finished Trine 4, and while there are some great parts of it, the slope angles at a decline in the overall comparison to the previous games in the series, besides 3 which I can't comment on due to skipping after witnessing the overall player dissatisfaction with it from the big risk/departure from the tried and true 2.5D perspective in the first two games. Thankfully Trine 4 returns to the formula of the first two games, but it does so in a way that makes me think Frozenbyte is either unwilling to take risks anymore and improve the formula, or possibly out of a lack of motivation in the series besides an established name to get sales, which I really hope isn't the case.

To get the aesthetic presentation out of the way, the visual and audible aspects of the game was pretty much on par with Trine 2. Now, this isn't a bad thing by itself because Trine 2 (and 4) had a fantastic visual storybook direction with plenty of color and style. Trine 4 had some great looking moments, but the game did not have the variety of locations as Trine 2, which led to much more samey looking areas. The problem is that there was no indication of an attempt to grow beyond Trine 2, which would have been fine for not the fact that the game is around 4 times the hard drive space, measuring out at around 14GB, and doesn't bring forth even twice the quality or value. I strongly had the expectations of Frozenbyte to bring forth that value going in given that they have had years and the failed experiment of Trine 3 under their belt to learn from mistakes and improve what works. The sound was not bad, but it was not notable. I wanted to like Trine 4, but none of the soundtracks left a lasting memory on me like the ones in Trine 2 did. I can remember many parts of the OST in Trine 2, they stood out. Trine 4 is not having the same effect so far such as tracks in Trine 2 like Mudwater Dale and Searock Castle.​

Trine 4

Trine 2

Onto the drive of the game. This is actually the high point of Trine 4 which I will happily admit is a step in the right direction over Trine 2. In Trine 2, what was the incentive, the context to your gameplay? The main story of Trine 2 was about saving two sisters, who you find out are the princess/queens of the kingdom who had some family issues. Its Goblin Menace expansion has the most barebones plot possible of "Green Man bad" which serves to motivate you to traveling across a variety of locations to fight goblins. Trine 4 on the otherhand, starts with the premise that a prince studying at the magic academy starts bringing his nightmares to life through lack of control over his magic, and it's up to the three main characters to help resolve this problem. There was a discernible plot development exercised here, surely helped out by the up close and slightly uncanny valley cutscenes between levels, a new addition over Trine 2 which overall did not detract from the game and were more interesting than listening to the narrator spew dialogue at you through the levels. It showed that growth in a positive direction had happened.​

Unfortunately, the decline started to show soon after. The difficulty is the first major point of contention I had. While Trine isn't La Mulana, I expect an effort to at least pretend to care. In Trine 2, you had multiple difficulty levels and could configure such that if all of your characters died simultaneously, you had to restart from the beginning of a level. This, paired with the revival points being fewer and farther in between, and characters not re-spawning instantly in the middle of combat, gave a sense of urgency and forced you to be deliberate and risk consequences for making mistakes. Revival in Trine 2 consisted of picking up healing bottles that could be found throughout levels or pop out of defeated enemies, and each one would heal only a fraction of the character health bars, also being your way to revive downed characters.
Now to Trine 4. Trine 4 doubled down on the opposite in an attempt to appeal to a newer, short attention span, risk adverse, participation award base of customers. There are now only two difficulties at all, normal and easy. There are no configurable gameplay setting options that can tweak the game challenge from what I found. I played on normal, and I can only imagine that easy mode is a developer mode where health loss is disabled and you get to noclip through obstacles, because normal left me at a loss for what could possibly be done to make the game more easy. Healing is now entirely different from Trine 2, in the wrong direction. There are no more health pickups, in their place now all characters automatically rapidly regenerate health at all times outside of combat, and upon death have roughly a 3 second cooldown before they instantly revive. While in combat, you lose the regeneration, but downed characters stay floating as ghosts where they fell and as long as you manage the relatively unchallenging task of standing near their ghost for about 5 seconds, the character will then instantly revive. Compared to Trine 2 where you had limited health drops, Trine 4 gives you unlimited chances. Unrelated to the difficulty level was another steep decline in the sickening volume of checkpoints strewn across every level. All combined, these changes all serve to strip any sense of difficulty, challenge, risk, consequence, and give you full agency to approach every new situation in the game by mindlessly throwing your characters into arrows, spikes, fire, dream wolves, and click mouse buttons until something passes through. You don't have to try, you just have to show up, and you will beat the game eventually.​

At some point, it gets insulting

The combat of these games is not the focus, but it ended up feeling clunkier and lazier in Trine 4. Instead of enemies dotted through the level like in Trine 2 that you could freely approach in different situations, each combat situation feels like a scripted event in Trine 4. Where you see clouds of purple smoke, walk further and the screen will block off all exits and create misty purple platforms with enemies similarly spawned, which you must defeat to end the sequence and be free to continue with the level. It felt much more scripted and forced in this manner, not natural or like it fit in like Trine 2 enemy encounters.​

The physics and environmental puzzle interaction was my personal greatest disappointment with Trine 4 compared to Trine 2. The game is less fluid in motions and physics interactions than Trine 2. There is a certain feeling of "jerkiness" in your actions, such as moving up/down platforms and swinging on ropes. Some things feel lazier and have less detail. For example, standing or even jumping on giant leaves just act as solid platforms that bounce up and down a tiny bit, whereas in Trine 2 the leaves acted like actual leaves and would give way under weight to let you fall before going back to their original position. Another example are the spikes you can stick stick boxes on. In Trine 2, you had to move objects onto spikes along the length of the spikes to "stick" the objects into the spikes, and you couldn't move objects onto spikes from the perpendicular side because the objects physically couldn't be penetrated by spikes in this manner in reality. In Trine 4, spikes are no more than an area of glue that you can move boxes into from any direction and they stick. One particular change from Trine 2 needs to be highlighted as the most aggravating thing I experienced throughout my entire playthrough. In Trine 4, your characters have the ability to hang onto the edge of nearly all platforms and flat surfaces, in addition to "push-up bars" stuck onto the sides of walls for you to grab onto when scaling the environment. This isn't a bad thing alone, it adds more interaction and movement variety. What is horribly frustrating about this is that the characters will autograb any ledge that they get in close enough contact to. Which resulted in an incredibly aggravating experience throughout my entire playthrough where my environmental exploration was consistently marred with my characters auto-grabbing every ledge in arms reach when jumping and walking around, and having to constantly press jump or down to insist to my characters that I wanted them to let go and freely move about, instead of flaunting how well developed their upper body strength was by statically wall hanging at every surface they had the chance to. Another decline in the formula was in the method of creating the wizard's objects. In Trine 2, you had to physically draw the shape of the object with your mouse, and the shape detection was detailed enough that it forced you to draw the correct shape mostly in order to create the object at the mouse point. In Trine 4, the physical shape drawing remains, but the detection algorithm is so broad that half the time you could get a box created when you weren't even trying to draw a box, it just tries to pick up any mouse drawing it can and make a shape as fast as possible. There are also now keyboard buttons to instantly create each object above the wizard's head, which removes the thought and touch of detail in the gameplay that Trine 2 had by forcing you to physically draw all of your boxes. And frankly, with how terrible the shape detection is compared to Trine 2, you're better off using the keyboard buttons to just instantly manifest boxes.
There are some places that Trine 4 improved through skill interaction over Trine 2, but it still felt like more was taken away compared to Trine 2. The good was; the thief rope can be used to connect objects together and grab/pull things that have attachment rings. This was great and adds the most depth of variety to physics interaction and unique ways to solve puzzles. It is further complemented by the fairy rope, which is a fun twist that makes it so anything you attach it to reverses gravity and starts to "fall" upwards. Another great thing was the dream shield, which allows the knight to create a floating copy of his shield at a point so you could create extra angles of deflection for things like water and light. Unfortunately, that's about as far as the additions go, and they don't measure up to what Trine 2 had unique to itself. Trine 4 brings back magnetism, but in a reduced, simplified form where now, there are only set locations in (the last few) levels where magnetic panels or circles on the walls/floors are set in the environment, and any metal object (all of the wizards structures count, obviously) in contact with these magnetic spots or magnetized objects become themselves magnetized and stuck together. The knight can unlock an ability to make his dream shield magnetic, but this isn't much more than just having the ability to create a single extra static magnetic source at a time wherever you can securely stand.
Compare this to its predecessor. In Trine 2, the knight could unlock the ability to make his shield magnetic, but it was vastly different. When holding his shield out, you could press a button to toggle it magnetic or not magnetic. You could make objects coming into contact with the shield become magnetic in this manner in a very dynamic manner, but additionally, the magnet shield had another property. When turning on the magnetism, the shield would attract metal objects at a distance to fly towards and stick to the shield, which you could carry with you while holding your shield having the magnetism toggled on. And then when turning off the magnetism, you could emit a magnetic wave of the opposite polarity away from the shield, which could be used to send metallic objects accelerating away from you, further adding to the interaction with the game's physics engine. The other great addition Trine 2 had was the thief's anti-gravity arrow. Shooting this anywhere would create a large bubble around the impact location, in which gravity was greatly reduced and movement of objects and enemies slowed. This could be used to effect in combat and greatly in puzzles or just messing around in the environment, and nothing quite as complex as it exists in Trine 4, with only the fairy rope functioning as a greatly simplified poor analogue or nod to the fantastic ability lost in the transition from Trine 2 to 4.
As far as the puzzles themselves go however, I can't say that I felt any disappointment in this area, and in some places I could see a slight increase in the thought required to solve a few puzzles.​

Example of a magnetic source on the ceiling which makes connected objects magnetic as well, and the fairy rope reversing gravity on a box

To expound on the point earlier of Trine 4 being nearly 4 times the hard drive space but not even twice the value, you can see a bit of the length of the game in the previous screenshot. There are five acts to the game, each one having four levels, not counting the bonus preorder level. To compare, Trine 2 with Goblin Menace had a total of 20 levels. It's been a while since I've played Trine 2, and I may want to replay it in the future again - not a feeling I have so far from Trine 4 - but I couldn't tell there being any significant difference in the length of the individual levels either, so for all intents and purposes they are roughly the same length. There wasn't a playtime counter in the game but I believe I was roughly around 10 hours by the time of finishing. This would increase if you have the drive to go back through every level to find the experience and collectables. The point being here that for the asking price of $30 and ~14GB, you are not getting the same efficiency of value as Trine 2. As far as the locations in the game as well, it was very focused and did not have a terrible amount of variety. Multiple levels were in a castle or building which ended up feeling very samey. The fewer outside areas had some promise, such as a snowy area and some of the forest ones. Compare this to Trine 2, which had all of these things in its main story, and Goblin Menace levels bringing you to an excitingly fun palette of places like a desert tomb, inside the digestive system of a giant sandworm, in a volcano, and the beautiful floating islands. There were however an increased number of boss fights compared to Trine 2, which could be seen as good or bad in different viewpoints. For the good, it gave more variety to the gameplay as there were only two main boss fights in Trine 2, which left me wanting more like it. On the other hand, what was in Trine 2 felt like more balanced out boss fights that had more attention to detail in them, along with a very few additional mini boss fights in some levels in the game. Trine 4 doesn't have these mini bosses, only the disappointing set-piece gamey combat sequences strewn about, but its boss fights while being more in quantity, individually felt slightly more linear.
As a full disclaimer on this point, Trine 4 has just released, and I'm referring to Trine 2 here in its complete form after the fantastic Goblin Menace expansion. We could very well see a Goblin Menace for Trine 4, but I'm afraid that simply adding more levels and variety of levels for the gameplay will not be able to outweigh the other areas of decline that exhibited in Trine 4. The underlying gameplay needs to be at a level to support more content to use it for; simply adding more levels on top of an inferior challenge, combat, and environmental physics interaction isn't going to allow Trine 4 to surpass its predecessor.​

Trine 4 starts off being challenged to perform to expectations due to the failure of Trine 3 and having to show up Trine 2 to restore the quality that the first two games in the series had. Ultimately, I won't say I regret having played it now that the time is gone, and I will be open to running through any Goblin Menace style free content that may come out, but I can't honestly recommend someone to purchase it, knowing what I know about it now. I was left with the final impression that Frozenbyte did everything as safely as possible in order to not take a risk and repeat Trine 3, but in the process didn't deliver anything past Trine 2 and in parts dialed back on what was good about it. Better off getting Trine 2, which was the high point of these games, which expanded on and solidified the base created by Trine 1, if you are interested in the series.​

 

[baud]

Thanks for the write-up. Back on the wishlist pile it goes.

 

[Life of the Party]

 

[Ivan]

this was just the pre order exclusive level....

 

[Zibniyat]

Valky great review, spot on.

I did not finish Trine 4, nor intend to. After an hour or two it was clear to me that Trine 4 was a serious decline over Trine 2, and I would even dare say how Trine 1 is more enjoyable.

I would also add that among countless failures of this game is the fact that the thief's rope cannot be randomly shot at things, which in Trine 2 (and Trine 1 I think) resulted in a pretty much freer and more natural and fluid movement, since the rope could be shot and attached to almost any wooden surface; in Trine 4, as if we are mentally retarded, there are only predetermined and exact points that could be targeted by the rope, and to make matters worse they're shown as having that giant ugly and unnecessary ring. Thief was usually my favourite character, and I was stunned by the extreme limitations introduced by what would otherwise seem like a small and welcomed addition.

Trine 4 screams laziness, decline and simplification all over the place, and although Trine 1 and 2 weren't that hard and complex games to begin with they were made with genuine creativity. I agree that the Goblin Menace expansion had basic plot, but it all felt somehow sufficient and enjoyable, and the levels in that expansion were brilliant. I mean, it's not like I went far enough in Trine 4 to declare its levels bad, but from what I've seen it all was pretty boring and lacked any real inspiration. The fact that the enemies spawn mid-air, and that we aren't allowed to "escape" them is just another sign of laziness, not to mention how it sometimes takes away from the experience by making it all seem like a detached "event" that you complete and continue further; in Trine 1/2 all encounters with the enemies were felt as an integral part of the journey, I just loved toying with goblins and stuff, whilst here it's just so annoying to fight. Despite it being pretty easy.

Its graphics, ironically, feel inferior to Trine 2, but it may just be a matter of personal taste. The music is bland and uninspired, so much so that it's annoying if listened to for any prolonged period of time. The Searock Castle in Trine 2 was one of the truly beautiful and memorable compositions that I loved to listen to even outside of the game, and it complemented the levels where it played perfectly.

Verdict: 4/10, play only if you're a die-hard fan of the series (but expect major disappointment), otherwise there are better things to do in life, like shitposting even.

P.S. Somehow even Trine 3 felt more enjoyable, but I also did not finish it because... I really don't even remember, maybe it just didn't "grab" me enough.

 

[Infinitron]

Trine 4: Melody of Mystery is a 6-level story campaign coming soon for Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince that continues the travels of Amadeus, Pontius, and Zoya. The new adventure features new upgrades for the heroes' skills, and new puzzles with new gameplay elements for our heroes to take on.

 

[Ivan]

music is always on point