Trinity Souls Of Zill O'll Review For PS3

The problem with games like TRINITY: Souls of Zill O’ll starts at the foundation. A title seemingly comprised entirely in jibberish may cause potential buyers to stay away, wary of this strange code. When deciphered, it spells out “obtuse hack and slash JRPG” in bold, flowery font- the same font that often accompanies cheap wedding invitations, or a twelve-year-old anglophile’s first MySpace page- brought to you exclusively on the PS3 by Omega Force and Tecmo Koei. Behind the unnecessary trappings and the identity crisis lie many more questions (including the reason for using cruise control on the game’s title) and there don’t seem to be any obvious answers: why couldn’t Omega Force just let this game be good?

It begins without a preface. The main screen is bare bones and unwelcoming, giving off the impression the game couldn’t care less if you played it or not- it’s completely content to spend eternity collecting dust on your shelf while it carves its feelings into its wrists with mom’s Venus razor to the musical stylings of The Cure.  It does not care enough to set the stage or even welcome you to the suspension of disbelief. You are thrust, ass first, into a tutorial. At once, you are given control of all three characters, which I only recognized because I’d taken the time to ogle at the cover art while I was on the phone. There are no names or reasons for being. Our triumvirate of heroes arrives, center screen, to face off against a man who is obviously evil because he has a deep voice and wears only half a mask. If that doesn’t scream “malevolent mastermind” at you, then you’ve missed out on the last century of dramatic fiction. I think we call it “cliché” now. What follows is a slapdash attempt at acclimatizing the player to this world. The swords are swordy and the magic is mystical. These abilities are mapped to three buttons and can be combined to form combos.  Blind mashing often substitutes for a detailed battle strategy.

You fell a roomful of goblins and the setting falls away. You forget those characters and are suddenly transported to days long passed. Suddenly, you’re at square one. All of the flourishes and powers you relished in the tutorial are gone. It’s a taunt, a cheap trick.  Mommy’s alright, Daddy’s alright.  Now you must advance the plot if you ever want to know that power again. You come to find that there is some satisfaction in learning these abilities again. Areus, the main antisocial protagonist, can wield a sword as well as the power of elemental magic. Ice spells can freeze water to impede foes while fire blasts set debris aflame, scorching enemies as they approach. This adds a modest bit of strategy to magic combat, but it’s not much of an innovation.

There are pieces of potential buried under layers of rubble, leaving the player with a sense of wanting. It lacks some cohesion, feeling unfinished in places. Yet the Greek and Roman flair entices me to continue, and part of me wants to give this game a chance, especially when there’s a story that might just be worth following.

The plot unfolds and reveals the seeds of intrigue. I was taken aback by the maturity of the premise. A mad emperor is fed a prophecy of doom and demise- his only salvation lies in the destruction of his children. Emperor Balor has his pregnant daughter murdered in the forest as his grown son, a prince of the kingdom, gets wind of his father’s plot and mobilizes the forces loyal to him. The beauty of these scenes is the lack of exposition after the prophecy is recited. An elven woman flees the forest, carrying her children as she tries to outrun the emperor’s cavalry. The prince rides to the rescue, his loyalists in tow and intervening in the siege. The prince hoists the elf and her children into his saddle as they narrowly escape an arrowed loosed from an enemy bow. Brief dialogue reveals that this prince has come to the rescue of his own children, half-elves living removed from imperial life among the forest elves. Moments like this are scattered throughout the game, breaking the cycle of cliché for a moment, giving way to a deeper sentiment. These moments are fleeting, however, as they are usually followed by two-dimensional scenes of text blocks.

Then combat ensues and the gladiatorial games appear like a heavy rain cloud across a clear sky. The enemies are uninspired, most hailing from Greek myths. The young hero, half-elf son of the fallen prince, grows up to be a sell-sword and fights to one day avenge his father. But this cannot be accomplished without first completing fetch quests across a flat, uninteresting map of this uninspired world.

Combat is repetitive and simple, but lacking in very important areas. There’s a lock-on function that seems to exist more for the camera’s benefit than the combat mechanic. An enemy may be fixed in the reticule, but that’s no guarantee that any attack will hit. Perhaps the worst part of these battles is the grotesque Photoshop filter that completely dulls the scene. TRINITY is not a very good-looking game by PS3 standards and it’s as if Omega Force knew this. These fast-paced action sequences are masked by a paper layer, which gives everything a bumpy texture. As though this has all been scrawled into a watercolor sketchbook. But it muddles everything, makes you squint and curse and rue the day you every believed that “Zill O’ll” was more than just a meaningless collection of the letter L.

And then there are the menus. The ugly, omnipresent menus that keep you from free roaming and force the fast-traveling down your throat. There’s nothing pretty about them. Though they don’t impede progress and do make sense, they just seem so out of place in what was supposed to be a fast-paced, fantasy RPG. I am earnestly saddened by how easily this game could have captured my attention. There were hints at substance. After three hours, I hadn’t found a single set of magic-using twin children, or a pink-haired girl trying to talk my ear off. This warrants a heaping helping of brownie points, but I couldn’t reward the game for not being awful. It possessed the maturity to carry players through an odyssey, but lacked the polish to do it well. This game, so steeped in potential, only scarcely rewards those willing to give it a chance to make something of itself. It doesn’t shine- but glitters faintly from behind a veil of ambiguity.

Source: ripten.com