Trine 5: A Clockwork Conspiracy Reviews

My wife's favorite game. Good co op game for one team member who is a non-gamer.

Really fantastic, takes the Trine 4 engine and re-balances the characters a bit. Fairy rope is gone, which made Zoya kind of OP, but there are a few very neat abilities to make up for it in creative ways. Pontius is mostly the same, and Amadeus gets more interesting ways to use summoned objects in both defensive and offensive ways, albeit mostly the latter. Still, as with most Trine games, I used Amadeus more for puzzles, and Zoya and Pontius roughly evenly for fights. On that subject, gone are the boxed-in SSB-style arenas whenever the enemies spawn in, although you do get locked in certain places until the fight is over, but you're granted far more room to maneuver and get creative. You even come up on many of them unaware, able to take your time in setting up a creative opener before the attack puts them on alert and more enemies appear. One of the best abilities to return (in my opinion) is the wall jump, albeit it's exclusive to Zoya (but it makes sense that she'd be the only one with such an athletic ability). Unfortunately, just like 4, there are a lot of hand rails — and you *still* can't grapple to them, which bugs me to no end. It makes a lot more sense that a grappling hook would easily latch onto a hand rail close to a wall than a ring, but oh well. There are plenty of rings from which to grapple, as well as objects to pull around and attach. Trine 3, despite its low reputation amongst the series, introduced many mechanics that were used in 4 and continued in 5. The story probably has the most dire consequences — this only spoils the first ~4 chapters, if it wasn't incredibly obvious from the villain's first appearance. [spoiler]The heroes of Trine, seen as such by the entire kingdom, are framed for the destruction of the Royal Academy (!) as well as a large tower which they are technically responsible for, but at the behest of one of the two villains who led them astray, saying it was a device to stop Sunny (the primary antagonist) from controlling the mechanical knights. So, they must fight not only to rescue Amadeus' triplets who have been taken hostage (where is his wife in all this? I think he's too good for her!), but get to his fellow wizards, and Pontius to his fellow knights, to save them all from being turned to stone, or literally having their souls stolen so they can be used as puppets to do Sunny's bidding. It's a pretty monstrous fate, all while the entire kingdom believes the Heroes of Trine to have become terrorists.[/spoiler] Unfortunately, and I assume the inevitable DLC will cover this, but there isn't much in the way of an epilogue — at least one that deals with more than "this is what each of the three protagonists got up to afterwards". Considering the weight of the inciting incidents, you'd think there would be a lot more explanation required to sum up exactly what happened after the final boss. But, since I just assume there will be DLC, I wouldn't be surprised if this was covered by it. In terms of mechanics, other things have returned, such as visible checkpoints, which is extremely welcome, as it wasn't always obvious in Trine 4 (other than the "Saving" message) when you crossed one, or when returning to finish collecting XP or items, where exactly the boundaries are so you know if you've gone a bit too far. Also changed is that you no longer use XP directly to finance upgrades, instead using points which XP must be converted to. This is done automatically at certain checkpoints, and I never found it a hindrance to my progression. Without directly comparing them, I'd reckon besides Trine 1, this likely has the most abilities across the three characters. The downside is that the majority are active rather than passive, and it can be difficult to remember in the midst of a chaotic fight which each character has and how to activate it, and when. But, they're introduced over time, obviously, so you have some time to get comfortable with each. There are also two classes of abilities: those which are unlocked via solo quests, where one characters goes off to complete a smaller string of sections, with a new ability unlocked as the reward. The othere are unlocked via the aforementioned points. You may still activate or deactivate abilities at will, which is terribly useful for trying them out to decide if they're worth it, or how they compare to others before making a decision. Some abilities I literally never used, so there's quite a lot of leeway when it comes to different playstyles. Lastly, the puzzles: Some are great with creative solutions, others are... less so. Like 4, if I never see another "reflect the light beam so it hits targets X, Y, and Z it won't be soon enough. There's also a newly introduced "hard puzzle difficulty" along with the normal fight difficulty. I haven't tried that out yet, fully intended to, but even if it's not that great, it's another thing to come back for. Some of the puzzles only stumped me because I literally didn't understand that a certain ability had a certain mechanic, or simply [i]forgot[/i] I even had an ability that would accomplish what I needed to, so I ended up either cheesing the puzzle, or looking up a walkthrough to get a hint. This only happened 2 or 3 times, so it wasn't that big a deal, and might only be my aging memory now that I'm nearing 40. The graphics, cutscenes, acting, and design are top-notch, and Trine fans should feel right at home with their banter, feeling like joining old friends on another adventure, which is probably the takeaway. Everyone is more expressive, the setpieces bigger and more elaborate, and more options than ever (clearly continuing from the Trine 4 engine). No launchers to be found here. I'm eagerly awaiting either the next installment or DLC. I cannot get enough Trine!

I've played all the trine games to date and liked all of them, they are nice comfort games. Only ehh thing for this one was that some levels felt a little too long and some puzzles had mechanics not introduced in the upgrade tutorials so was stuck a few times but fairly quickly just tried different abilities until something worked (ex Shield light beam can turn off barriers, either it wasn't part of the tutorial for it or i forgot it.) But happily recommended, playtime is inflated as i had it in the background often, can only play a little at a time, maybe closer to 12-15h for a full playthrough.

amazing, beautiful and fun, the best Trine so far, and I thought 4 was tough to be topped

Cool and fun, just like the previous one! Also prepare for some struggling puzzle out there

I played all previous Trine games, this one feels different. It is longer (more content), and the puzzles are harder and more complicated. The characters have much more magical abilities. I am not sure it is my favourite Trine, but I do recommend playing it to the end.

Heck yes, I love the beautiful environments and the physics puzzles. There's a little bit of girlbossing going on but it's still a fun story. Trine seems to scratch a peculiar itch

It is a good co-op experience to enjoy with some friends. Quite relaxing and more fun than challenging, you still need to think and find interesting solutions to some of the puzzles but many are given in what you need to do. Really liked that you can solve many different puzzles in different ways even when the goal is clear the path to get there is up to you - you are not locked into one way and that is the only way to move forward. Highly recommend.

the first half is nice, like the old trines. but the second half is really annoying : with all the new abilities (teleporting, cloning..) if you can't find the intricate combination and precise item placement the devs have set up for a certain puzzle it becomes frustrating really fast. first trine i won't finish i think

Another great chapter, Frozenbyte work's always a certainty. Waiting for chapter six!