Do you miss the series? Trine? Yes, those same kind, atmospheric and fabulous adventures in the company of true friends? Well, rejoice, Finns from Frozenbyte again invite you to this world. More precisely, not new Trine, and into her universe. Yes, and there are no heroes. More precisely, there are, but not all. But first things first.

Nine Parchments is a cooperative isometric arcade game with twin-stick combat mechanics, developed by Frozenbyte. Which was released on December 5, 2017 on PC and Nintendo Switch, and will be released on Xbox One and PS4 later.

The plot of the game tells the story of graduates of a magical university, where disaster occurs just before the very last exam. An explosion occurs in the library, and nine pages, nine scrolls with powerful spells scatter throughout the world. And the player, or players up to four people maximum, decide to go in search of them. Thus proving that they deserve the highest score in the exam. Actually, from this moment our adventures begin.

Each such adventure is a chain of more than three dozen locations, where sometimes a battle for the scroll takes place. Based on the name, you might think that there are nine such battles, but no, there are six of them. Because each of the available characters already at the start has three basic spells. And only two characters are available at the beginning. The rest are bought for real currency via loot boxes. Joke. The rest are open, but more on that later.

Each mission is a corridor adventure from point A to point B, simultaneously destroying all kinds of creatures. Destroy using both the spells themselves and in hand-to-hand combat, hitting enemies on the head with a staff. At the beginning there are no difficulties. Use any spells and dodge attacks in time. But the further into the forest..

IN Nine Parchment all spells are divided into five elements – fire, ice, electricity, life and death. Familiar? Yes, very reminiscent of the series Magicka, but in Nine Parchments there are no annoying, albeit multivariate, combinations of elements, as in the mentioned series from ArrowHead Studios.

Here, each spell is like a separate https://mummys-gold-casino.co.uk/ weapon in a shooter. T.e. change it to what you need and use it until the mana runs out. Nothing complicated. The only difficult thing is to quickly select one or another element for one or another enemy. It just so happens that creatures almost always belong to one element or another, and sometimes they are also surrounded by an aura of non-perception of the same elements. So you have to wisely change your skills either to neutral ones (lightning versus death, for example), or to the opposite (fire versus frost). There are other elements that appear when the rays of two or more players cross, but they are so unobvious and uninteresting that they are unlikely to be in demand.

So, due to the presence of, so to speak, the “Rock-Paper-Scissors” system during battles, it is extremely important to collect nine scrolls from the skills of different elements. They are collected from three, seemingly random, to choose from after boss fights.

As for the skills themselves, in general you can open almost 50 of them, where you have rays, and mines, and chain charges, and fireballs, and curses, and meteor showers, manually detonated ice bombs, and so on and so forth. Only the basic spells that are tied to a particular character or its variations do not change.

Characters are unlocked by passing tests and completing certain achievements. The main thing you need is to have the right staff. “Ordinary” staves are unlocked by collecting feathers at locations, and “unusual” staves are also unlocked by achievements. Each staff has its own passive properties, such as healing or an ice blast while jumping.

The system for unlocking characters is strange at first glance, but it is addictive, forcing the player to get out of his way in order, for example, to place one enemy under the projectile of another. And all this for the sake of discovering, for example, Amadeus from the Trine series, who, according to canon, cannot shoot fireballs. And yes, friendly fire works not only between players, but also between enemies, which is sometimes very helpful.

In addition to scrolls and staves, players also earn experience and hats. Experience increases the character in level, giving one passive skill point each. By leveling up, the character and all his subtypes receive an increase in health, mana, stamina recovery rate, etc. Hats have only aesthetic value. No, well, they can be sold through the Steam marketplace, but that’s no use.

Generally speaking, there should not be any difficulties in mastering, mechanics and rules. Only two things are not clear – the system for selecting levels and changing characters during the passage. They simply don’t exist. T.e. Having chosen one of two students at the beginning of the game, and having completed, for example, 10 missions, during which a new hero is revealed to you, you will not be able to continue playing with a new character. Only again. The same applies to the change from a solo adventure to a cooperative one. Either they connect to you and you continue playing, or you lose all your progress from completed missions and connect to others. Perhaps, in this way, the developers are encouraging people to replay the game in order to use new heroes with new spells. Maybe. But it’s wildly inconvenient. After all, some tests for unlocking a certain character are available only at later levels. And it’s not so much that I don’t want to go through the whole game for this, but it takes a long time. Even though it plays cheerfully.

No, seriously, the gameplay in the game is enjoyable. And sometimes difficult. Especially if you play in co-op. Players constantly hit their own, fuss, die, resurrect each other. It’s much easier to go alone. Even during boss battles. Probably, it’s all because the single camera isn’t as scary as when playing in co-op. And if in the same Helldivers leaving the screen did not threaten something terrible, then in Nine Parchments players outside the camera die after a while. I’m glad that at least their dead bodies are teleported closer to living players. Perhaps a single camera should be listed as a disadvantage. But this is already a matter of taste and color.

But what definitely cannot be called a disadvantage is the visual and musical design. The graphics in the game are amazing, the locations are varied and rich in detail, there are many enemies, and many are even unique, the bosses are spectacular. And the music… Music is a separate and almost decisive argument for buying the game. Composer in Nine Parchments Ari Pulkkinen, the author of the soundtrack to previous games in the series, also performs Trine. The only pity is that at the moment it is not possible to purchase the soundtrack separately.

The controls in the game, as always, are convenient, three-dimensional, unlike Trine 3, doesn’t interfere. Regardless of what you play on – a keyboard mouse or a gamepad.

But with optimization, not everything is so smooth. As was said, the picture in the game is amazing, but there are no detailed settings in the game. Because of this, it will not be possible to configure the options normally for a particular machine. And it’s a little frustrating.

Well, we seem to have figured out the game. Let’s sum it up. Nine Parchments – a good game and a very worthy continuation of the series Trine. Excellent visuals and sound, convenient controls, co-op for four people, locally and online, variety of spells and enemies, decent difficulty, interesting challenges and low price. Yes, the game has shortcomings, such as an ambiguous mission selection system that simply does not exist, the presence of a single camera for everyone and the lack of advanced graphics settings.

Nevertheless, Nine Parchments – an extremely atmospheric and kind fairy tale for a group of friends, which will appeal to all fans Trine And Magicka. But alas – not for long.