Developer Everscape Games brings to life a bustling metropolis of Bluescales in a story that brings together humans and beastlings in a quest to stop a conspiracy from causing some serious damage. Playing Threefold Recital brings Chinese folklore to a modern world setting and allows players to take on the role of three of the story’s heroes.
Our three heroes — Triratna, Taiqing, Transia are the story’s main protagonists. Each one with their own sections of the game where they are featured. Each hero has their own abilities and specialties that makes their section unique.
- Triratna — a wolf-monk, with the ability to visualize the threads of cause and effect tying everything together.
- Taiqing — a fox-priest, who is an expert in Daoist spells and transmutations.
- Transia — a snake-artist, has the ability to enter paintings and travel through them and altering appearances.
The game can be described as a 2D platformer and mixes in puzzles throughout the experience. Players will lead these three heroes through their own events to, at the end, find themselves working together to bust a long-standing conspiracy against powerful enemies. The game begins with three storylines that eventually converge into one that will combine the protagonist’s powers, with some help from their friends.
Story
Threefold Recital’s story follows predictable plotlines through the events and converging storylines. There are some twists and turns along the way, but mostly follows the standard flow of video game stories. Protagonist versus villain, uncovering an evil plot, and working to save the world. In this case, the game’s story is on a smaller scale as far as evil plots go. Bluescales, the city location of the game, its fate is dependent upon our three protagonists and their actions to upend the conspiracy.
Starting from the beginning, the game gives players some backstory into each of the three protagonists, and some explanation as to how they acquired their powers. The music from the start gives the game that Chinese traditional story vibe. Music is so important in games like this, especially when there is no voice acting, and I think the music choice in this game is on point. It brings to life the Eastern fantastical world that it has created. This world where humans, monsters, and dragons coexist in the city of Bluescales. Which combines a bustling metropolis with old-fashioned priests and monks in a fantasy setting that is a mix of Persona and Octopath.
Having said all that, the delivery of the story is slow, often overexplained, and provides far too much dialogue. The talking in this game is more than necessary, and many segments drag on too long, which slows the delivery of the good parts of the game.
As the game progresses, players will notice there are some simple, but key accessibility options available. If players get stuck at certain sections, there will be some options to skip or continue to progress the story which is nice for players that find themselves stuck. But for the most part, the game is easy enough the majority of players shouldn’t have any issue at all.
Also, as far as video games go, the environments the game has are diverse enough, and the creatures and characters you will meet along the way are unique in their own ways. It does keep things interesting enough to stay in it, but I never felt heavily invested when I was playing this game.
Dialogue
I mentioned dialogue that was too long earlier. There was so much dialogue that I felt I had to make a specific section talking about it. In the story, there are many sections that have talking, and with this type of game, I expected there to be a lot of talking and points of emphasis for characters to discuss more than others. But it seems that almost every aspect of the game is overanalyzed by the characters as they discuss it, and converse some more about it, and then talk about it some more. It is a lot of talking, and I play JRPG’s quite a bit, and I am still saying it here. You have been warned.
There is another point I want to bring up here. There were quite a few misspellings in English when I was playing through the game. There weren’t misspellings everywhere, but there were enough that I felt I should mention it here, and a couple times the misspelled words were distracting by taking my focus away from what was happening in the plotline.
Although the dialogue is long and there is a lot of it, the characters are interesting. Their stories are unique, and their backstories and how they talk is also different from each other. Almost as if someone different wrote each character, which I thought was a cool aspect to the dialogue. Some of the lines are quirky, and some are meant to be comedic, which more times than not, the punchline missed me.
There is an underlying mystery that follows our three main protagonists throughout their narrative. The mystery of what is causing these odd events to pop up in the city. And what is drawing them together? Players will see events unfold in such a way they begin to notice common themes within names and locations, which will lead them to work together towards their common goal.
Gameplay
The game starts players off in a tutorial where you learn the controls. The game is quite literally, simple, when it comes to controls. I don’t mean that in a bad way, but players will see that not all controls on a gamepad are used. And the gameplay overall, follows suit in the simplicity category. Gameplay is slow, and is found in short bursts surrounded by dozens and dozens of conversation lines. You can walk/run, jump, and interact with things around you. But if you are looking for combat and fighting you have the wrong game. It is not that.
Threefold Recital gameplay consists of moving the main protagonist character around, often looking for clues to solve a puzzle or mystery. When players aren’t looking for clues, other gameplay aspects such as minigames can be found in certain subsections of chapters. The minigames are fun, and add a different style and usually introduce a new challenge for players to tackle.
This game is a little walking sim, a little puzzle solver, and a good bit of JRPG dialogue. Maybe categorizing it as gameplay lite might tell you what you need to know. During my playthrough, there were no puzzles that downright stumped me. There was a section where I couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to find in the room, which then resulted in me going between rooms and then back again only to find what I needed in the back corner of the original room. But simply put, the puzzles/mysteries are easier than most other indie game puzzles that I have experienced.
Summary
Threefold Recital was a decent beginning for a new developer in the games industry but falls far short of an indie smash hit. It is technically sound and mechanically feels fine. The game has a decent amount of story and lore thrown into it, but the delivery of the story doesn’t quite fit right. The plotline is straightforward with a dash of twist and turns placed here or there. The antagonists feel far away from the plotline, there are only a few times that you actually see them during the campaign, therefore making them feel distant and not as threatening as the game wants them to feel.
Overall, I enjoyed the majority of my time with Threefold Recital, but honestly there were sometimes where I felt the urge to move on. If you are a player that loves action-packed games, or lots of combat, this is not a game for you. This experience is much more of a cozy game with some antagonistic plotlines. Oftentimes I felt the ups and downs of the experience and overall disconnected parts of the video game. I still think this is a game worth playing, but just not for all players. I wouldn’t recommend this game to players that do not like this type of gameplay loop.
Threefold Recital is available now on PC.
The Review
Fair
