The Nightmare Prince. Fabulous return / Overclockers.ua

On October 8, 2019, the Frozenbyte studio released a new project Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince – a continuation of the popular bright 2D platformer, tied to the physics of objects and puzzles. After the unsuccessful third part and leaving in 3D, the Finnish developers have tried to rehabilitate themselves in front of gamers and the press. But the main thing is that no one expected anything new, on the contrary, the fans wanted a return to the roots. What happened in the end, and whether the series has a chance for a future life, read in our review.

The magician Amadeus, the thief Zoya and the knight Pontius are back. The trinity of heroes is again called for help – this time it is necessary to find Prince Selius, who disappeared from the magical academy. From fear and not from a great mind, he calls into the world his bad dreams, nightmares and phobias. With them then the good old team of fairy-tale characters will have to be dealt with.

As with the previous parts, the plot of Trine 4 does not pretend to be deep and detailed elaboration of the characters, although we are told a lot about each of them and with humor. This is a sweet, kind fairy tale, where villains occasionally appear, but serious questions are not raised and difficult moral choices are not offered. But in a series of beautiful puzzles with real physics, no one needs this, so the story of the new part is perfect for the game and its tasks – to entertain the gamer and make his convolutions move.

From the first levels of the game, Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince constantly makes it clear that this is the 2D game loved by many with magical views, interesting puzzles, an abundance of humor and ambiguous characters. The creators, as it were, rolled back the game to its roots, but added improved graphics and improved the skills of the characters.

Amadeus again learned to conjure balls, cubes and platforms, and this can be done not only by drawing them in the air, as before, but also by pressing buttons. In battles, he is still almost useless, but Zoya is now able to pile on.

The thief was added a rope from the earlier parts that binds objects, and special rings were placed at the levels, to which the archer attaches her ropes (it is no longer possible to cling to any part of the surface), passes puzzles and even walks on the ropes, like on a bridge.

Knight Pontius was also not deprived of his abilities, and perhaps the most important of them is the creation of an additional shield. With this skill, Pontius learned to overcome obstacles better and cope with enemies faster.

As before, each of the characters has its own tree of skills, which are opened for the collected currency or skill points. True, among their abundance, a couple of three skills will be really useful. The rest were of no use. Although, perhaps, I just did not understand how to use them to pass the 18 levels presented in the game.

Each mission in Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince has been made longer than usual, but this increase does not bother. The developers skillfully distributed puzzles, battles and boss battles within the levels. All this alternates, creating a peppy and fun gameplay.

The battles in Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince remained at the level of the previous parts – that is, easily passed and mostly sluggish. There is another reason – the meager variety of monsters. Either the prince does not have a developed imagination – it is he who creates the creatures encountered in the game – or the developers have it, because apart from wolves, incomprehensible archers and spiders, I don’t really remember anyone. Naturally, you don’t need a lot of intelligence to deal with them, although the enemies are trying to bombard the heroes with arrows and projectiles with different effects. This was not a serious flaw for Trine 4, because we didn’t come here for battles, but the longer you play, the faster you want to go through these combat inserts.

But sometimes you have to tinker with the bosses, but this is not a matter of unique mechanics, although it also has a place to be. Figuring out how to kill a giant enemy is literally half a minute after the start of the battle, but then there are usually obstacles in the face of a crowd of minions and limited space. Therefore, most battles are lengthened in this way. There are also bosses that can only be killed with ingenuity, but this is rather an exception to the rule.

Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince has not been deprived of the cooperative passage familiar to the series. In addition to the standard mode for three players, where everyone chooses only one character for themselves, which is logical, they also brought a fun version for four people. Here everyone can be everyone and most importantly, do anything. This mode gets boring quickly and I have no idea how others play it, but if your goal is to relax and have fun with friends, the new co-op is definitely created for this purpose.

Trine 4 is one of the most beautiful games I’ve ever played. The artists at Frozenbyte are gods creating a delightful fairy tale. Even though this is far from a AAA game, the cutscenes show the graphical limitations of the engine, get ready to gasp and often stare at local beauties.

At the same time, Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince is a low-hardware game that will easily run on a budget build. No optimization issues or glitches were noticed, but some gamers complained about frequent disconnections when playing locally on a PC. I went through the novelty on PS4 and there were no disconnects.

The music in Trine 4 matches the picture – magical. Melodies perfectly emphasize the local world, style and mood of locations, but they are not remembered at all separately, which means they are unlikely to go to someone’s playlist.

Translation into Russian only with subtitles and in the menu, there is no Ukrainian localization at all. There are no complaints about the translation, no errors or typos were found. The original voice acting is done cool, the voices are familiar and are great for both the characters and the voiceover.

Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince is a great bug fix. This is not a breakthrough in the platform genre, but a loud statement about the sanity of the developers and hope for the future for a cool series. The guys from Frozenbyte showed that they understood their mistakes, and Trine 4 became a kind of apology to the fans. At the same time, the next part needs something new, but I don’t know how to do it within the framework of 2D, but without failed 3D. Let the developers scratch their heads. In the meantime, for Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince, it’s not a pity to give up the full price tag of 379 hryvnias on Steam.