Monday, 08 March 2021 00:00

10 Features We Hope To See In Triangle Strategy | Game Rant

Written by Paul DiSalvo
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The recently announced Triangle Strategy looks to be the next big hit in the tactical genre. Here are some of the features we hope to see included.

Announced during the most recent Nintendo Direct, Triangle Strategy is an upcoming tactical JRPG being developed by Square Enix. Though the game has a visual style similar to that of Octopath Traveler, the game's gameplay appears to be more akin to that of games like Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Ogre, and Fire Emblem. 

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From the single trailer shown, the game appears to be putting an emphasis on player choice, but the game's development is still quite underway, and Triangle Strategy is currently a working title. As the game is currently slated for a 2022 release, they're plenty of time to speculate on what the game can have in store for players.

10 Numerous Endings

Through the premise of the game alone, it's a safe assumption that the game will have numerous ending based upon the choices the player makes throughout their playthrough. Our primary hope is that the game learns from the mistakes of a game like Mass Effect 3, and that the numerous endings each reflect the paths that the player chose to take. While this would definitely improve replay value, it would make for a much more fulfilling ending experience, while giving each choice a player makes have more weight.

"The player's choices matter" gets tossed around a lot these days, so when a game is willing to follow through, it shows.

9 Moral Ambiguity And Difficult Choices

We've already seen from playable Triangle Strategy demo that the choices that player is forced to make aren't always going to be black and white, and that there will be pros and cons to the choices they make. Maintaining this approach over the course of the game will be key, as it can lead to a much more hollow experience with telegraphed outcomes that are much easier for the player to anticipate.

8 Route Exclusive Characters

As the player progresses through the game and makes more and more decisions, we hope that certain characters will only be available behind certain routes.

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This would be especially effective if particular characters weren't locked behind single decisions, rather than chains of choices that would encourage the player to experiment with their choices and greatly enhance replay value through tangible assets that are only available under certain conditions.

7 Route Exclusive Bosses

Similarly, having key boss fights be dictated by a player's decision-making would truly drive home the themes of the game. Perhaps a character that is a playable ally if certain choices are made becomes a major adversary that must be dealt with in another route. These would give the game's various routes more identity while giving the player immediate indicators of how their choices are impacting the game's story.

6 Plenty Of Sidequests

Sidequests in JRPGs can open up a lot of space for the player to gain access to additional in-game rewards such as items as well as allowing the spotlight to be put on side characters for further character development. As Triangle Strategy is being billed as a game built around a player's choices and decision making, sidequests could be used in a variety of interesting ways.

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While some sidequests could only be available to players who made certain choices, the completion of other sidequests could potentially provide additional context to a problem at hand, giving the player insight into how making a given choice may impact the plot.

5 Priority On Character

Outside of combat, one of the key differences between a tactical JRPG and a more traditional turn-based RPGs is that players tend to have access to many more party members in tactical RPGs. As seen with the earliest entries in the Fire Emblem series, this can lead to many less important party members getting little to no character development. However, later entries in the Fire Emblem series introduced the support mechanic that allowed even the most minor of characters to still interact with the cast and show their character if the player desired. In order to make the player care about the characters in their party, the game should feature some method of interacting with their allies outside of combat.

4 Various Means Of Character Customization

Much of the fun of tactical RPGs comes from the player's ability to figure out their own strategies to use in combat. In addition to figuring out one's own strategies, allowing the player to customize their characters to some extent allows a player to further play into the strategies they prefer using while making these characters feel much more personalized. Whether through the use of a class system, abilities, or varied equipment, we hope Triangle Strategy allows players to customize the characters at their disposal.

3 Combat Variety

The worst thing for any RPG is for its combat to grow mundane, bland, or repetitive. As a tactical RPG, Triangle Strategy has the opportunity to feature numerous ways to spice up combat, from interesting map variety to differing win conditions that change from battle to battle.

2 PVP

For whatever reason, very few tactical JRPGs in recent memory have featured PVP multiplayer. Allowing players to face off against each other simply adds more variety to the game as a whole. Additionally, as the game is centered around the player's choices, opposing players may have access to different characters, weapons, and other resources based on the choices they made, making combat even more varied.

1 Post-Launch Support

While having numerous endings and routes within a game incentivizes numerous playthroughs, nothing incentivizes players to keep playing a game quite like post-launch content. Whether these are free updates or DLC, additional content to a game allows it to continue to be fresh over a much larger period of time. As a tactical RPGTriangle Strategy could theoretically add anything from new recruitable characters to entirely new modes.

Next: 5 Ways Fire Emblem Is The Best Tactical RPG (& 5 It’s Final Fantasy Tactics)

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