2014 In Review: Mr. Triangle's Adventure

Write and read reviews of games that have been uploaded to Slime Salad.

Moderators: Bob the Hamster, marionline, SDHawk

Post Reply
User avatar
Gizmog
Metal King Slime
Posts: 2622
Joined: Tue Feb 19, 2008 5:41 am

2014 In Review: Mr. Triangle's Adventure

Post by Gizmog »

I keep getting hit by the big ones! I've heard tell that this game might have as many as 25 hours worth of gameplay, and there's no way in hell I'm gonna be seeing all that. I'm callin it quits at just around the 2 hour mark. I'm on a pirate ship, I have four people in my party. I've just found a key and I have no interest whatsoever in going back to find out where that key goes. The maps are so big and so empty that it's easy to get lost, easy to forget where you've explored and where you haven't and very hard to see where you're meant to be going. OkeDoke's maps were big too, maybe not quite as big, but there were enough differences in the tiles that you had some sense of progress, and there was always like... a treasure chest or a hallway just off camera to let you know "ahh! That's where I need to go next!". Mr Triangle's Adventure doesn't have that at all, it just has big open bunches of newbie game tiles.

I'm probably going to keep comparing MTA to OkD, because I think the games have a lot to learn from each other. Mr. Triangle's Adventure does a much better job of giving you things to do on the macro-scale.. "Chase this bad guy! Find a farm! Get to the castle and tear down this wall!" even if it does it in the most cliched of terms, and OkeDoke does a much better job on the micro-scale of "Where does that hallway lead? I wonder what's in that chest! How do I get up there? Is that a new cave?" even though you don't always know the grander scheme of things.

The battles in MTA are slow, sometimes painfully so. It reminds me a little of Thanksgiving Quest, in that each character has a very specific role in the party. Mr. Triangle is your main damage dealer, punching and stealing. Jojo the gorilla (my favorite character) is 100% dedicated to heals and buffs with different colors of banana. She cannot fight. Gary the Gatormage can choose from 4 kinds of elemental damage, and Marvin the Manateer can fire rather puny rockets or lock-on to an evasive enemy for a guaranteed hit. It seems like a design goal was to keep things very simple, there's no MP and no Magic menus to sort through, all of your options are on that main menu. That's a noble goal, but it comes at the cost of depth: You're not going to be developing terribly deep strategies to solve problems, merely rearranging the same few tools in new ways. There's no way to burn a few MP to end a boring battle. You're in everything for the long haul, and with battle speed the way it is it can be quite a long haul indeed. Since you can buff damage for free, everyone's attacks feel underpowered by default, as if to compensate.

I get the feeling like the wanted to eliminate the "hold down enter" problem, but hit upon the same problem that Thanksgiving Quest had: Instead of holding down enter to attack your way through a battle, you have to deliberately choose the saaaaame options each time for every battle, which makes it even more tedious. I would've liked to see some simple additions to make things a little less thought-intensive. Yellow Banana should automatically prefer to target the player character with the least health. I'm pretty sure OHR games can do that now. I can't say how many times I accidentally healed Mr. Triangle when I meant to heal the weaker Jojo.

There's also the danger inherent in giving your characters such focused skill-sets, which is the possibility that your healer will be killed, or your damage dealers paralyzed and then you're kind of screwed. The game addresses this by being very generous with healing items that every character can use. Every time you use one of Jojo's abilities you get a banana peel, and you're given a device very early on which allows you to convert banana peels into the three basic healing items of the game. 30 HP Smoothies, the weirdly named Rehabs that heal 50 HP and revive you when you're downed, and Party which can only be used out of battle and heals everyone to max health. Even then, it seems like you spend too much time in battle healing and not enough fighting.

I don't understand exactly how the elemental system works. It seems like one element is as good as another in terms of damage, except fire makes corn pop. I would've liked to see this used as a kind of knowledge-gate: Try each element on each enemy and see which does the most damage (With one being a clear favorite! None of this fire does 12 damage and water does 11! We're talking like 24-12, doubles, maybe triples!) and then have an easier time the next you run into that battle. Maybe it does that later and they're trying not to be too advanced too early, it's impossible to tell.

One credit to the game is stealing. Most games don't do a very good job with the steal command, it almost always feels like a waste. Mr. Triangle's Adventure does a good job of giving each type of enemy a unique piece of equipment you can steal to tweak your stats. It feels kind of collectory, which is nice and makes you want to check out each enemy in an area. Furthermore, stealing seems to be an integral part of the boss battles, which encourages you to try it in situations where most games wouldn't.

My main complaint comes down to the length of the random encounters and the set-up you've gotta do in them. Not having a multi-targeted attack makes things a long time, and as big as the maps are with NOTHING to keep your interest, it makes it a really big bore. The enemies are all vegetables, which makes me think that maybe the game is intended more for children? But if that were the case, I'd really like some flashing lights and pretty colors and stuff to help their (..our) short attention spans.

The story isn't anything to write home about, but it serves its purpose so far. Mr. Triangle goes to the bathroom and when he comes out he's ambushed by onions! A lady gorilla shows up and helps him fight 'em off, and the two decide (as heroes in newbie games do) to go investigate these weird vegetables at the nearby farm. The nearby farm is under the influence of THE MASTERMIND, and that night the alligator guy joins the party (Again, for no real reason other than that he can). We find out a little bit more about what the Mastermind is up to, the goose from Grafitti Goose keeps showing up for exposition, it's pretty good at giving you a trail of bread crumbs to follow, but at the same time it's not particularly compelling. I keep saying newbie game because that's clearly the feeling they're going for. RedMaverickZero himself admits that this is an attempt to make "the definitive Mr. Triangle game" and what was Mr. Triangle's slimy Adventure if not a newbie game? There's a certain charm to newbie games, but it seems like RMZ and company take as much of the bad as they do the good and it ultimately hurts the product.

The stuff that *isn't* homaging a homophobic 13 year old's first foray into rpg making is very encouraging. The intro was nicely paced, and I love his company logo and main menu, that's super professional and polished. There's a donation button that gives you secret priveliges, and it knows if you're lying about donating! It's worth lying about donating just to see that it knows you're lying! The soundtrack is fantastic, and I've seen teasers of a Guitar Hero styled minigame that might be pretty fun. To me, that's the interesting stuff. I would've liked to see the best game that RMZ and company can make NOW, rather than the best remake of his old slime.

All that said, there is an audience for this game. I'm not sure it's a terribly big one, and I'm not sure they're going to "pay to win", but there are definitely people out there who will like this. I don't see myself as one, just because of the pacing of random encounters, but the bosses were pretty neat and there's nothing particularly bad about the story, it just isn't particularly good either. Fairly average OHR Game, with the advantage of being finished.
Attachments
I think this is why RMZ doesn't show too many screenshots of the maps.
I think this is why RMZ doesn't show too many screenshots of the maps.
triangleadventure0060.png (3.31 KiB) Viewed 3121 times
It's that kind of game.
It's that kind of game.
triangleadventure0064.png (5.92 KiB) Viewed 3121 times
The characters look great, but the backgrounds are so dull.
The characters look great, but the backgrounds are so dull.
triangleadventure0065.png (8.15 KiB) Viewed 3121 times
Fire Damage! Earth Damage! Physical Attack! All of the attacks announce themselves this way and it's a little annoying, but nice to know what they're doin, I guess.
Fire Damage! Earth Damage! Physical Attack! All of the attacks announce themselves this way and it's a little annoying, but nice to know what they're doin, I guess.
triangleadventure0070.png (6.95 KiB) Viewed 3121 times
I've never seen Jojo miss, so why would she need a weapon that raises accuracy, especially when you compare the penalties to her other equipment?
I've never seen Jojo miss, so why would she need a weapon that raises accuracy, especially when you compare the penalties to her other equipment?
triangleadventure0091.png (8.45 KiB) Viewed 3121 times
I giggled at this!
I giggled at this!
triangleadventure0099.png (5.57 KiB) Viewed 3121 times
This was a nice diversion, but I think it could've all been in one big field rather than 3 seperate little ones.
This was a nice diversion, but I think it could've all been in one big field rather than 3 seperate little ones.
triangleadventure0114.png (6.31 KiB) Viewed 3121 times
Post Reply