10 Things Triangle Strategy Does Better Than Fire Emblem
A good strategy game can find a balance between the number of choices available and how impactful those choices are. Triangle Strategy is one of the most recent strategy games to come out on the Nintendo Switch, and its charming pixelated aesthetic draws comparisons to old-school games like Final Fantasy Tactics and Fire Emblem.
Triangle Strategy is very comparable to both, but thanks to the huge popularity of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, a lot of gamers have noticed the similarities. In many ways, Triangle Strategy diverges sharply from the mold that FE:TH created, even as it builds upon the established traditions of the genre.
Very literally, Triangle Strategy builds on the tactical RPG tradition by utilizing directionality in many ways. If a unit is facing away from its attacker, it will receive critical damage, requiring much more consideration of how players leave their units at the end of their turn.
But this is not the only way directionality is used. Many unit skills and abilities interact with the directions their targets face. This ranges from spells that change their target's direction to attacks that deal more damage or have additional effects when used from the target's back or side. This simple addition provides depth to players' choices in party formation and battle.
Speaking of turns, Triangle Strategy makes use of a much more dynamic turn system. Fire Emblem games are very much turn-based, alternating between the player turn and the enemy turn. This simple method allows players to form much more large-scale battle plans but tends to be less intense in terms of things to consider.
Triangle Strategy, on the other hand, utilizes an individualized turn order. Each unit has its own speed stat, which means alternating between enemies and allies much more dynamically. This leads to a lot more consideration during each unit's turn - which character attacks next, which way is safe to go, et cetera.
Terrain advantages are not often heavily utilized in Fire Emblem and tend to provide static bonuses to units if anything. Triangle Strategy builds a very robust number of mechanics into their terrain, providing players with more to utilize or avoid while planning out their units turns.
As an example, tiles on the battlefield can catch fire, which causes units that end their turn on the tile to take damage. Some wind-based spells and abilities can cause this fire to spread, allowing players to use the hazard to their advantage. Depending on the enemies players are battling, this could be a huge edge.
Fire Emblem games tend to allow a good deal of customization for each unit, typically providing a good amount of depth to each one. However, this can also cause players to start building each team they make in similar ways. Even with the many mythical heroes of Fire Emblem, this can make units feel less distinguishable from each other in some way.
Triangle Strategy gives each unit unique abilities and skills, making each character unique both on and off the battlefield. This integration of character onto the battlefield grants players the opportunity to find very unique combinations of units, as well as build a team that feels more individually theirs.
Thanks to the fact that each character has unique abilities and skills, Triangle Strategy is a complicated game that's not for beginners. There are multiple types of magic-user, archer, and knight, with each one using different methods of fitting into their strategic space. Though there are fewer units in general, the variety feels higher due to their distinct natures.
For instance, in Fire Emblem, any magic user can be equipped with tomes, allowing pretty much any of them to use the same spells as long as the player has the tome for it. But each magic user in Triangle Strategy has an array of specific spells to utilize, such as the pyromancer Frederica's fire spells vs. the sage Narve's wider-reaching spells.
This is more of an opinion, but Triangle Strategy not having perma-death by default builds a healthier attitude towards strategizing, particularly as the game's battles are much more difficult in general. Permadeath in strategy games can cause players to be overly cautious, and artificially lengthen playtime by virtue of trying to keep everyone alive.
By allowing units to fall on the battlefield, players are not only allowed to make mistakes, but are allowed to take advantage of those mistakes much more freely. Chess wouldn't be as strategic without the back-and-forth of losing units and trying to draw opponents into a trap - something that comes up frequently in Triangle Strategy.
Fire Emblem stories tend to be very straightforward. Even the story of the best strategy game on Nintendo Switch, Fire Emblem: Three Houses only really has 3 endings, which depends on which house is chosen at the outset. Each storyline is self-contained and can be seen as its own game in a sense - there is very little crossover between these chosen storylines.
Triangle Strategy makes use of a branching storyline, which incorporates player choices in a much more active way. The game alternates between linear chapters which follow the central storyline and branching chapters that will influence the game endings. When the central story branches, each of the endings is made distinct by the previous choices made and the characters brought into the team.
On top of a more dynamic story, the Triangle Strategy RPG is more interested in the storyline in general. Fire Emblem: Three Houses often comes across like a visual novel or life simulator, in which more emphasis is placed upon the character development and relationships between the player character and their companions.
Triangle Strategy provides players with many opportunities to interact with companions, but much less of the downtime between battles is spent doing things with or for party members. The story is made much more central to player actions in many ways, driving players to be way more active in how they interact with the storyline.
In Fire Emblem games, the linear nature of the storyline often lends itself to simpler morality. The villains tend to be very ambiguous, and often very compelling in their motivations. But player choices tend to be more or less black-and-white. Triangle Strategy allows players to make much more interesting philosophical decisions.
Triangle Strategy has a moral system that is divided into 'convictions' which come in three categories: Utility, Morality, and Liberty. These are affected by many different choices made by the player, beyond just dialogue choices. How the player prepares for and performs in battle, and even how they shop will affect their convictions.
As the player character's choices are vital in deciding which of the endings is achieved in each playthrough, this provides a much more dynamic story, as well as providing players with the feeling of truly having made impactful decisions that matter throughout their gameplay. The number of endings is a big part of this.
Where Fire Emblem games tend to have only one ending, Triangle Strategy gives players 4 different endings that they can achieve, not including the many ways that each ending is affected by the party members and side-quests that are completed. How replayable Triangle Strategy and Fire Emblem are will depend on whether the player is more committed to the characters or the plot itself.
Source: Screenrant
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