Really fantastic, takes the Trine 4 engine and re-balances the characters a bit. Fairy rope is gone, which made Zoya kind of OP, but there are a few very neat abilities to make up for it in creative ways. Pontius is mostly the same, and Amadeus gets more interesting ways to use summoned objects in both defensive and offensive ways, albeit mostly the latter. Still, as with most Trine games, I used Amadeus more for puzzles, and Zoya and Pontius roughly evenly for fights. On that subject, gone are the boxed-in SSB-style arenas whenever the enemies spawn in, although you do get locked in certain places until the fight is over, but you're granted far more room to maneuver and get creative. You even come up on many of them unaware, able to take your time in setting up a creative opener before the attack puts them on alert and more enemies appear.

One of the best abilities to return (in my opinion) is the wall jump, albeit it's exclusive to Zoya (but it makes sense that she'd be the only one with such an athletic ability). Unfortunately, just like 4, there are a lot of hand rails — and you *still* can't grapple to them, which bugs me to no end. It makes a lot more sense that a grappling hook would easily latch onto a hand rail close to a wall than a ring, but oh well. There are plenty of rings from which to grapple, as well as objects to pull around and attach. Trine 3, despite its low reputation amongst the series, introduced many mechanics that were used in 4 and continued in 5.

The story probably has the most dire consequences — this only spoils the first ~4 chapters, if it wasn't incredibly obvious from the villain's first appearance. The heroes of Trine, seen as such by the entire kingdom, are framed for the destruction of the Royal Academy (!) as well as a large tower which they are technically responsible for, but at the behest of one of the two villains who led them astray, saying it was a device to stop Sunny (the primary antagonist) from controlling the mechanical knights. So, they must fight not only to rescue Amadeus' triplets who have been taken hostage (where is his wife in all this? I think he's too good for her!), but get to his fellow wizards, and Pontius to his fellow knights, to save them all from being turned to stone, or literally having their souls stolen so they can be used as puppets to do Sunny's bidding. It's a pretty monstrous fate, all while the entire kingdom believes the Heroes of Trine to have become terrorists. Unfortunately, and I assume the inevitable DLC will cover this, but there isn't much in the way of an epilogue — at least one that deals with more than "this is what each of the three protagonists got up to afterwards". Considering the weight of the inciting incidents, you'd think there would be a lot more explanation required to sum up exactly what happened after the final boss. But, since I just assume there will be DLC, I wouldn't be surprised if this was covered by it.

In terms of mechanics, other things have returned, such as visible checkpoints, which is extremely welcome, as it wasn't always obvious in Trine 4 (other than the "Saving" message) when you crossed one, or when returning to finish collecting XP or items, where exactly the boundaries are so you know if you've gone a bit too far. Also changed is that you no longer use XP directly to finance upgrades, instead using points which XP must be converted to. This is done automatically at certain checkpoints, and I never found it a hindrance to my progression. Without directly comparing them, I'd reckon besides Trine 1, this likely has the most abilities across the three characters. The downside is that the majority are active rather than passive, and it can be difficult to remember in the midst of a chaotic fight which each character has and how to activate it, and when. But, they're introduced over time, obviously, so you have some time to get comfortable with each. There are also two classes of abilities: those which are unlocked via solo quests, where one characters goes off to complete a smaller string of sections, with a new ability unlocked as the reward. The othere are unlocked via the aforementioned points. You may still activate or deactivate abilities at will, which is terribly useful for trying them out to decide if they're worth it, or how they compare to others before making a decision. Some abilities I literally never used, so there's quite a lot of leeway when it comes to different playstyles.

Lastly, the puzzles: Some are great with creative solutions, others are... less so. Like 4, if I never see another "reflect the light beam so it hits targets X, Y, and Z it won't be soon enough. There's also a newly introduced "hard puzzle difficulty" along with the normal fight difficulty. I haven't tried that out yet, fully intended to, but even if it's not that great, it's another thing to come back for. Some of the puzzles only stumped me because I literally didn't understand that a certain ability had a certain mechanic, or simply forgot I even had an ability that would accomplish what I needed to, so I ended up either cheesing the puzzle, or looking up a walkthrough to get a hint. This only happened 2 or 3 times, so it wasn't that big a deal, and might only be my aging memory now that I'm nearing 40.

The graphics, cutscenes, acting, and design are top-notch, and Trine fans should feel right at home with their banter, feeling like joining old friends on another adventure, which is probably the takeaway. Everyone is more expressive, the setpieces bigger and more elaborate, and more options than ever (clearly continuing from the Trine 4 engine). No launchers to be found here. I'm eagerly awaiting either the next installment or DLC. I cannot get enough Trine!

Really fantastic, takes the Trine 4 engine and re-balances the characters a bit. Fairy rope is gone, which made Zoya kind of OP, but there are a few very neat abilities to make up for it in creative ways. Pontius is mostly the same, and Amadeus gets more interesting ways to use summoned objects in both defensive and offensive ways, albeit mostly the latter. Still, as with most Trine games, I used Amadeus more for puzzles, and Zoya and Pontius roughly evenly for fights. On that subject, gone are the boxed-in SSB-style arenas whenever the enemies spawn in, although you do get locked in certain places until the fight is over, but you're granted far more room to maneuver and get creative. You even come up on many of them unaware, able to take your time in setting up a creative opener before the attack puts them on alert and more enemies appear. One of the best abilities to return (in my opinion) is the wall jump, albeit it's exclusive to Zoya (but it makes sense that she'd be the only one with such an athletic ability). Unfortunately, just like 4, there are a lot of hand rails — and you *still* can't grapple to them, which bugs me to no end. It makes a lot more sense that a grappling hook would easily latch onto a hand rail close to a wall than a ring, but oh well. There are plenty of rings from which to grapple, as well as objects to pull around and attach. Trine 3, despite its low reputation amongst the series, introduced many mechanics that were used in 4 and continued in 5. The story probably has the most dire consequences — this only spoils the first ~4 chapters, if it wasn't incredibly obvious from the villain's first appearance. [spoiler]The heroes of Trine, seen as such by the entire kingdom, are framed for the destruction of the Royal Academy (!) as well as a large tower which they are technically responsible for, but at the behest of one of the two villains who led them astray, saying it was a device to stop Sunny (the primary antagonist) from controlling the mechanical knights. So, they must fight not only to rescue Amadeus' triplets who have been taken hostage (where is his wife in all this? I think he's too good for her!), but get to his fellow wizards, and Pontius to his fellow knights, to save them all from being turned to stone, or literally having their souls stolen so they can be used as puppets to do Sunny's bidding. It's a pretty monstrous fate, all while the entire kingdom believes the Heroes of Trine to have become terrorists.[/spoiler] Unfortunately, and I assume the inevitable DLC will cover this, but there isn't much in the way of an epilogue — at least one that deals with more than "this is what each of the three protagonists got up to afterwards". Considering the weight of the inciting incidents, you'd think there would be a lot more explanation required to sum up exactly what happened after the final boss. But, since I just assume there will be DLC, I wouldn't be surprised if this was covered by it. In terms of mechanics, other things have returned, such as visible checkpoints, which is extremely welcome, as it wasn't always obvious in Trine 4 (other than the "Saving" message) when you crossed one, or when returning to finish collecting XP or items, where exactly the boundaries are so you know if you've gone a bit too far. Also changed is that you no longer use XP directly to finance upgrades, instead using points which XP must be converted to. This is done automatically at certain checkpoints, and I never found it a hindrance to my progression. Without directly comparing them, I'd reckon besides Trine 1, this likely has the most abilities across the three characters. The downside is that the majority are active rather than passive, and it can be difficult to remember in the midst of a chaotic fight which each character has and how to activate it, and when. But, they're introduced over time, obviously, so you have some time to get comfortable with each. There are also two classes of abilities: those which are unlocked via solo quests, where one characters goes off to complete a smaller string of sections, with a new ability unlocked as the reward. The othere are unlocked via the aforementioned points. You may still activate or deactivate abilities at will, which is terribly useful for trying them out to decide if they're worth it, or how they compare to others before making a decision. Some abilities I literally never used, so there's quite a lot of leeway when it comes to different playstyles. Lastly, the puzzles: Some are great with creative solutions, others are... less so. Like 4, if I never see another "reflect the light beam so it hits targets X, Y, and Z it won't be soon enough. There's also a newly introduced "hard puzzle difficulty" along with the normal fight difficulty. I haven't tried that out yet, fully intended to, but even if it's not that great, it's another thing to come back for. Some of the puzzles only stumped me because I literally didn't understand that a certain ability had a certain mechanic, or simply [i]forgot[/i] I even had an ability that would accomplish what I needed to, so I ended up either cheesing the puzzle, or looking up a walkthrough to get a hint. This only happened 2 or 3 times, so it wasn't that big a deal, and might only be my aging memory now that I'm nearing 40. The graphics, cutscenes, acting, and design are top-notch, and Trine fans should feel right at home with their banter, feeling like joining old friends on another adventure, which is probably the takeaway. Everyone is more expressive, the setpieces bigger and more elaborate, and more options than ever (clearly continuing from the Trine 4 engine). No launchers to be found here. I'm eagerly awaiting either the next installment or DLC. I cannot get enough Trine!