Tryst Review

The mentioned shortcomings aren’t to say that Tryst doesn’t have its fair share of innovations. First and foremost in the arsenal is A.R.M, the unit customization and upgradeability mechanic that gives the game its true depth. Unlike most RTS games, which might have one or two major upgrades per unit type, Tryst goes full throttle by giving you a full seven or eight possible upgrades for each. Increased health, personal shields, longer range, and a healthy dose of special abilities and spells all give you unseen ability to mold your army the way you like. If you favor your Mad Rats, you can spend your money on making them beefier and give them a special attack. If you’re more of a Javelin fan, you can give them recharging shields and boost their range. The limiting factor in these upgrades is that each unit type is allowed only three upgrades (on from each tier), so you can’t simply go haywire on your opening units and turn them into supermen.

The A.R.M. system’s strength is that it promises an infinite variety of gameplay. Players can’t become too complacent with memorizing counters and build orders because this time around those enemy mercenaries might just pack a much bigger punch than they did in your game ten minutes ago. This also means that Tryst’s metagame has an entire level of complexity beyond simple unit choice: you could spend quite a bit of time trying out different combinations of upgrades on only your starting two or three units. In theory this could cause trouble down the road: dozens of possible unit combinations multiplied by dozens of individual upgrade permutations means that there’s no way the folks at Blue Giant could have thoroughly tested all possibilities against overpowered builds. If the game catches on and because popular, it’s possible that there are particularly nasty configurations that dominate the multiplayer landscape on their discovery. That said, there don’t seem to be any particular problems in that area right now.

Another innovation with a few intriguing possibilities is the energy system. Spells in Tryst generally don’t have mana costs, relying on cooldowns for balance, but every unit require energy in order to fire its weapons, and this energy can be depleted in combat, then regained by gathering drops from fallen enemies. It’s a cool idea on paper, but in my playthrough I never actually found any gameplay value added by the feature.

The game isn’t currently popular enough to have a thriving online community, but all the basic multiplayer elements are there. A handy rating system lets you gauge your own skill against your opponents, and although the after-game data is presented merely as a list of numbers (what, after all, does a score of “130” mean on my resources?); it’s always nice to be able to look over your game after a loss and try to learn from your mistakes. A quick match feature is sorely missed, but it doesn’t take all that much effort to simply start your own public game and wait for someone to manually join. The game includes the smart but niche feature of having a computer AI instantly take over for any dropped player. This seems like an obvious step to make in the RTS genre, although how the game decides on the difficulty level of the AI is a mystery; imagine the nasty surprise you’d get if your tenderfoot opponent is suddenly replaced with a terrifying god-mode computer mastermind.

Tryst isn’t really trying to be groundbreaking and without a good core of fundamental gameplay and overall polish, there sadly isn’t much to recommend the game. The A.R.M. system is unique and holds great promise for the game, but lackluster controls and some questionable design decisions make it difficult to really enjoy customizing your units. It’s simply too difficult to select and control your spell casters to make them useful in combat, and for the moment the multiplayer world is split simply between those who have a basic understanding of the game and those who are newcomers. The game isn’t held back by any particular flaw, but to make up for it, it feels as if just about every aspect of the game is lacking polish. The tutorials are... alright. The online reference is... underwhelming (one would think that Blue Giant would finish the FAQ and the Wiki before releasing the game!). The RTS genre isn’t exactly bursting with new options these days, and maybe Tryst will satisfy your fix for the genre, but if you’re looking for an engaging strategy experience, you might want to wait on this one.