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Trinity Zill O’ll Zero TGS hands-on, 5-minute gameplay video

By Heath | September 26, 2010 at 9:47 pm

Trinity Zill O’ll Zero is a must-play for action RPG fans with a PS3. The demo at TGS was fabulous and only left me wishing I could play more.

It started with a CG story sequence which was all well and good, but in a jiffy I was plunked in the middle of the most basic and most wonderful story ever told: “There are bad guys who want to kill you, so you must kill them first.” Sweet, sweet simplicity. Hand me my stabbin’ sword! Three characters walk around in unison, and with L2, the player can switch between any one of them. Classic archetypes were represented: the human male with a sword, the big oaf who smashes things, and the girl who’s weaker but faster. Triangle, Square, and Circle buttons each performed a different attack or special move, and there were other combos available as well. What’s great about it is that the player isn’t just relying on the overused three-move combo that every action game has. The other moves are not just cool, they’re downright essential to survival. I watched a guy get mowed down in a hurry because he was one dimensional. Poor noob. I told him he was a noob. I sent a letter to his family with his picture of him getting owned and describing what a noob he was and his dad was really mad that he’d raised such a one-dimensional weiner noob.

Just gonna say again in case it wasn’t clear: this game is awesomely fun.

Each character had situational benefits; for example, the woman was the only party member who could double-jump, so when the time came that the party’s general navigation needed to reach something high, the player should change to her. The small dude could freeze water with a rad ice attack, which then let the characters walk on it.

Bosses didn’t have weak points, they had weak moments. Any time a charcter connected with an attack, it would do damage, but sometimes it was a better strategy to steer clear of a powerful enemy until the exact right moment to strike. These times were only very brief, though, so one couldn’t just hang out at the Copa Cabana waiting for the bad guy to lighten up. No, since the time window for this was only about three seconds, the characters still had to be somewhat close. What would happen was there’d be a magical symbol on the boss; the longer it was there, the stronger ally attacks would be. When it was gone, so was the damage boost. There was a little bit of lag time after using special moves (common in action games and ARPGs), and if that special ring showed up near the end of an attack, it’d be hard to connect during the prime window, so it was important to be careful and not just button mash too much.

The end of the demo concluded with a good-looking trailer. The game itself was somehow a good mix of fast action and strategy. Trinity Zill O’ll Zero is an awesome game, and North American gamers should either be on their knees praying for a stateside release or on Play-Asia arranging to import a copy.

After my play session, I recorded a few other people playing the game. Here’s a 5-minute video, mostly focused on one guy’s adventure through the TGS demo:

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Topics: Koei, Previews, Tokyo Game Show 2010, Trinity Zill O'll