Triangle Strategy review: The greatest Game Boy game never made

For one thing, the game has an incredibly detailed lore to it, with players thrust into a brewing conflict between three neighbouring countries in a fantastical continent that has shades of Final Fantasy about it (despite being a brand-new IP). There is lots to learn if you're looking to fully understand the machinations of all the characters, but there is also the option to fast-forward through all of the dialogue and world-building scenes if you just want to get to the action.

That action is impressively deep, too. Triangle Strategy, as its title suggests, is a strategy game. As you assemble a surprisingly sizeable roster of fighters, you'll guide them into a series of grid-based battles where their varied abilities will shine under your leadership (if you're doing it right).

The battles take place in a number of unique environments with a variety of different objectives — sometimes its as simple as 'defeat the other team', but at other points you'll need to laser focus on a very specific objective (such as getting one important character to a point of safety).

The characters in Triangle Strategy have a wonderfully diverse set of skills between them, and it's often joyful to guide them through tense turn-based battles that pack plenty of surprises. There are melee specialists, sneaky spies, magical healers and even people flying around the battlefield with powerful arrows to fire at your foes. Plus, there are many more skills and weapons that we won't spoil here. After all, part of the fun with Triangle Strategy is working it out for yourself and gradually realising just how deep this particular rabbit hole goes.

Everywhere you look in Triangle Strategy, there is an incredibly admirable level of attention to detail. The musical score is rich and varied. The entire game is voice acted well. There is lore to read, skills to level up, training to take part in and impactful choices to make. There are side missions that flesh out characters on different sides of the central conflict. There are even little exploratory segments when you can walk around villages, converse with the locals and uncover hidden items.

It's also worth taking a moment to praise the visuals of Triangle Strategy — they blend the old and the new to marvellous effect, with those 2D-esque characters moving through eye-catching environments against beautiful backdrops with loads of detail. The game looked nothing short of sumptuous on the Nintendo Switch OLED's bigger, better screen, especially when the colourful spells were popping off mid-battle. Heck, even the overworld map is gorgeous!

Honestly, it's hard to find anything to criticise about Triangle Strategy. Any flaw that you could find, there is a solution that the developers have already thought of and built into the game. For instance, you could say the story takes up too much time and gets a bit too dense, but the game deliberately allows you to skip through literally all of that if you're not interested, and the battles still make plenty of sense if you do skimp on the lore dumps.

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The level of challenge is also pitched just right. You'll fly through your first few encounters (especially if you've played grid-based tactics games before), but it won't be long before you're having to pick your party a little more carefully, plot your paths to victory with a bit more forward-planning, and make liberal use of items and upgrades to help your team push forward.

The game offers plenty of ways to help you, too, if you do get stuck. You can review battlefields before you jump into them, alter your team's starting positions, and there are plenty of support characters you can bring with you to help stave off failure. Despite being a game with plenty of depth, it never felt intimidating.

The overall experience is a very satisfying one, whether you're skirting through for the battles alone or really relishing each morsel of information about this very-fleshed-out world. There are also multiple endings and paths you can take towards them, so it's easy to imagine committed fans playing through this game again and again and still finding new things each time they do.

It's also easy to imagine how this game could spawn a franchise if the demand is there — a multiplayer mode would certainly be very welcome, for one thing, and there's definitely space for sequels if Square Enix wants to make them. As it stands, though, Triangle Strategy is a solo experience that we very much enjoyed and would recommend to anyone that has enjoyed a tactics game before. If it had been a Game Boy game, it would've been one of the best!

Triangle Strategy launches 4th March, exclusively for Nintendo Switch. We reviewed on Nintendo Switch OLED.

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