Trulon: The Shadow Engine Review

Imagine a game which is old school Final Fantasy, but instead of your characters taking turns to fight, your characters attack each turn by using cards, well that’s what Trulon: The Shadow Engine is offering. I enjoy RPG’s as much as the next person so when Trulon: The Shadow Engine arrived I was quietly hoping for something that would tick most boxes of a classic RPG.

Starting off plot-wise, somewhat similar to Horizon Zero Dawn, in the past there were lots of machines in an ancient world which has now been replaced by Maelon. You start off as Gladia, a monster hunter who has just woken up. You speak to your dad and then decide to visit the local town. You speak to the town mayor and are tasked with clearing a local forest of inhabiting monsters and thus the main adventure begins. Just like Final Fantasy, there is a larger world to traverse when travelling between areas on note, as you move between the different areas there are random battles. When you enter a place of interest the perspective changes to an isometric top down viewpoint, it’s in these areas where you will move the story on, along with taking part in a few battles which use a card mechanic.

As you progress through you will meet new allies who will join you on your quest, there’s only four in total though that are a mix of magic and physical attacks/defences. When you do enter a battle, you will have a set of cards available to you that can be used once alongside a standard attack card and wildcard. In Trulon: The Shadow Engine the cards are referred to as ‘tactics’. Card attributes can vary from boosting your attack/defence, hitting multiple targets, curing teammates etc. As you find chests, complete side missions and battle, you will unlock more cards to add to your arsenal, you can remove cards from your pack which will limit your variety of skills but this reduces the chances of randomly picking lesser cards from your pack. Some cards can be used by everyone and some cannot. It’s a turn based attack metric, so your characters attack then it’s the enemies turn. There is an element of leveling up and improving your statistics which can further be enhanced by additional skills you can apply to your characters. For example you can increase your attack and health or you can add special traits to your attacks such as doubling attack damage or setting a target on fire. With a good draw you can unleash some pretty potent attacks, the standard set up would be to stun the enemies, double up your attack, then use a tactic which doubles the damage on stunned opponents.

The learning curve on Trulon: The Shadow Engine jumps up quite quickly, so it’s recommended to level up early on otherwise you will have issues later on the game, there will be points where some enemies will be too powerful to beat without adequate attributes. There are no save points, so if you find yourself in particular difficulty then you can’t reload an earlier save. Graphically Trulon: The Shadow Engine visually comes across with reasonable charm whilst the plot is something you would have covered many times before. The side missions help break away from the main story but besides one, don’t really challenge you in any way or add anything to the experience. There is a lack of direction in Trulon: The Shadow Engine, there are times where the task is not clear, so you will lose far too much time talking to people you’ve already spoken to or investigating areas you’ve already cleared.

Trulon: The Shadow Engine is a fairly simple RPG that holds a certain charm. Be aware the game can get very difficult if you skip lots of fights early on which unfortunately isn’t highlighted when you play. If you like short RPG’s with a story you’ve seen plenty of times before then you’ll get some enjoyment out of Trulon: The Shadow Engine but overall it’s not a game you’ll remember for too long.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary Sony Playstation 4 code was provided to Bonus Stage for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to press@4gn.co.uk.