Posted in: Games, Review, Video Games | Tagged: game review, Maximum Games, Troll And I

Mythically Pounching Through 'Troll And I' With A Couple Little Jitters.

Published Thu, 23 Mar 2017 13:45:29 -0500

Back at E3 2016, Troll And I was basically the darling game of the convention. A fantasy setting with some linear moments in the present, the game's original demo won over critics who attended and it looked like it was going to be one of the biggest breakout games when it finally came out. It's been a long nine months since then, but this week we finally got Troll And I for console and Windows, so it's time to see what this game really can do.

You start off in 1953 London where a rich millionaire is offering a hunter big money to find him a troll, dead or alive. You make your way to Scandinavian five years later, and you join the exploits of a teenage boy named Otto, who looks like Link with dreadlocks. During the middle of a crisis where some bounty hunters set your village on fire, you stumble across a real-life troll and other nasty creatures! In order to escape, you and your newfound friend need to work together to solve puzzles and get through obstacles, while becoming friends along the way.

The controls are fairly easy to pick up. Objects that you can interact with shimmer in the light, and as you approach you'll be given control options for interaction. You can play the game solo switching between characters or co-op with each person controlling a character, utilizing the skills and power they each have. Otto and smaller and navigates better, uses stealth and can get into areas a lot easier. While the troll is there for brute force, strength and size advantage as you pounce on enemies. That doesn't mean either one is better than the other, and in fact, you can one-shot die a lot of the time with either character if you're not careful. There are issues dealing with enemies sometimes as you'll be right on top of them and hit the, but the shot doesn't register and they get in a cheap shot.

Hunting for animals and other items is probably the biggest waste of time in the game. You can track what's nearby and kind of see tracks in the grass, but they're a pain to track and follow and often you'll be cut off because you took too long to find it. Especially since there's no discernible map for you to follow half the time. The graphics to the cutscenes is stuff and jumpy. Watching people walk around is nerve-wracking, as they appear to be twitching all around with some form of Dyspraxia. There's a bunch of stuff that feels like it could have been cleaned up before release and it was just left to the side because it wasn't important.

Overall, Troll And I is pretty okay and the story is nice, but it's got a lot of weird little quirks to it that feel like it's unfinished. That's not to say it's a bad game, it just feels like it could have used a spit polish before they put it out onto the world. Totally wroth checking out if you're down with folklore in a modern time kind of story, but maybe wait to see if they release a patch to clean it up a bit.

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