Fights have more personality as a result and don’t just feel like faceless battles. Roland is a horse-riding lancer who can stab through multiple enemies, while Frederica is a spell-casting fire mage that can set squares ablaze. Rather than using generic troop classes, players get a set roster of heroes, each of which has its own special moves. Much like Fire Emblem, players strategically move troops around a grid and defeat opposing forces by selecting attacks from an RPG menu. Turn-based tactical combat is the game’s primary strength. As you’d expect, that leads to lots of battles. Players control a traveling band of troops, led by the generically stoic Serenoa, as they travel the continent looking to untangle a dense political conflict that’s been raging for decades. The comically titled Triangle Strategy is a tactical RPG that takes place in the middle of a trade war between three countries on the continent of Norzelia. It’s just a shame that you have to sit through countless hours of lifeless dialogue from interchangeably vague characters to get there. Triangle Strategy features strong tactics gameplay delivered with the same striking retro visuals that made Octopath Traveler stand out before it.

So why was I folding so much underwear during it instead? That genre usually means players are in for long battles that require lots of active decision-making and grid management.

The new strategy RPG from the team behind Octopath Traveler is a tactics game meant to scratch the same itch as Fire Emblem or Advance Wars. The problem is that Triangle Strategy isn’t a visual novel, or at least, that’s not supposed to be its appeal. On the contrary, I often love visual novels that I can play while eating dinner like I would with a movie. When I use that term, I usually don’t mean that as an insult.

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