According to Trine's physics engine, momentum doesn't exist. You can swing something back and forth until your hand is sore, but the second you let go, it drops immediately down and loses all speed. This is just one of the many moments in Trine where, considering it's a physics puzzle game, it completely breaks my immersion in it. The concept is full of potential, but I felt myself continuously disappointed playing it. It felt like a borderline beta product that was rushed for delivery.
First of all, the story is downright laughable, and barely even feels there. According to Trine's writers, a knight - who, presumably, has an entire castle full of back-up - would "firmly grip" a crystal that two other people are clearly stuck to, with no rhyme or reason. I would think a knight, who clearly has to go through extensive training, would think to get help or question the trapped thief and wizard first. It feels downright silly sometimes; I honestly think it would have been better if they just dropped you into the game and had the story consist of "move to the right."
The game is clunky and awkward to play. I wouldn't call anything in Trine buggy, but it's decidedly unpolished. The characters all move at the exact same rate (a quick and agile thief should probably be able to move quicker than a knight carrying a shield, a sword, and wearing a ton of armor), and the movement feels built on a ragdoll engine. It doesn't feel like you're jumping, so much as moving directly up and down. There's no speed to it at all.
On a positive note, the game is absolutely beautiful. This is probably what saves it from going down another star; it looks superb. Even when the engine fails to deliver in realism, it always looks like you could just touch everything in the game and feel it come to life. Caves LOOK dark and wet, and fire looks like it's coming right at you. I can't think of anything that could have possibly improved this, the graphics are perfect.
Of course, all of these, while glaring issues, can be overlooked if the puzzles are good. Around the moment where I lost all faith in that being the case, I walked into a room near the beginning of the game. Mind you, this is after the story and the beginning tutorial of how to control the characters. The room was full of complicated-looking items and platforms. About five minutes later, I figured out that the only way out was moving directly to the right, through a barely visible hole in the wall. I could have done that the second you entered, but what would YOUR intuition tell you to do? Walk right until you hit a possible entrance, or start climbing?
A lot of puzzles feel very well-crafted, but for every genuine mind-bender there's filler like that to bog the game down and murder the pace. Some of them feel cobbled together with spit, blood and paperclips just to pad out the length of the game. It's definitely disappointing for a game like this. If I may compare it to Braid for a second, what was wrong with that method? You could get to the end of most levels in all of fifteen seconds, but to actually beat the level could take well into the hours mark. Not every game has to be as nonlinear, but if you're going to make a room un-passable without completing a certain puzzle, make sure that it's actually fun to play through next time.
