I missed out of playing the original Trine, and had no idea what to expect when its sequel Trine 2 showed up. It was described as a physics-oriented puzzle platformer, and this proved to be apt as players are given control of three different heroes with unique abilities. This puts Trine 2 in pretty good company, standing alongside classics in the genre such as The Lost Vikings. By taking that idea and expanding upon it with a skill tree system, various hidden tidbits to find, and online or local co-op, this is one game that does quite well for itself.
Set in a fantasy, swords-and-sorcery world, You’re given control of three characters who fit right into that theme. Amadeus is the wizard, serving as the voice of reason whose primary skills are creating new objects (such as boxes and planks) out of thin air, and being able to levitate various things he finds. Pontius is a big man who "loves a good drink and a good battle", using a shield and various close-range weapons to handle most of your direct fighting plus breaking obstacles. Finally, Zoya is an opportunistic thief with a bow and a grappling hook; these make her well suited to moving to places the others can’t reach and giving her one of the few intuitive ways to attack distant enemies.
While the easiest puzzles and fights only require the use of one character, such as by charging right at the enemies with your sword or conjuring a box to serve as an improvised ladder, later situations may call for you to use characters in tandem with each of them providing a part of the solution. The inclusion of a skill-tree system also lets you get new abilities every so often, though you’ll have to decide whether to improve how your heroes fight or giving them access to new ways to solve puzzles; you can’t get everything right away. This same thing allows for some challenges to have multiple solutions, since one area might normally call for using Pontius’ shield to protect yourself from an environmental hazard but you may also be able to just have Amadeus levitate a large object around to accomplish the same thing. That said, not every puzzle is so open to random solutions; some are linear and you’re expected to do things in a fairly specific order.
You’ll be glad for the ones that do accept improvised solutions, because your characters can die very easily. A single mistake against suitably large enemies can be instantly fatal, as can some errors in puzzles. This shouldn’t be interpreted as Trine 2 being a brutal game, since it’s easy to revive a dead hero and even losing all three of them is punished by nothing worse than restarting play at the nearest checkpoint. Hints are optionally provided if you get stuck for too long, so while the game is quick to kill it also clearly wants you to succeed so long as you put in honest work for it. This sort of pacing is very nice, keeping play from being too brutal or insultingly easy.
