Game review 28 July 2015, 13:58

author: Luc

Trove Review: A Second Coming of Cube World?

Trove is a new member of the voxel-based games family - an MMORPG resembling the very promising but currently lost in limbo Cube World.

The review is based on the PC version. It's also relevant to PS4 version(s).

I’ll be honest with you. I tried to understand the fad for Minecraft and all the other boxy titles but it just wasn’t to be. Is this the modern equivalent of playing with LEGO bricks? Or did the world change and square just became the new black? I don’t know and I’ll most likely never will but I understand one thing – this is not the last title starring boxes we’ll be seeing in the future. Voxels have invaded almost every available game genre by now; we have voxel-based survival games, shooters, action-adventure games, to name just a few. If there was one thing that was missing, it was a decent voxel-based MMORPG. Yeah, there was that one attempt with Cube World but some of you perhaps still remember how that turned out; or how it didn’t, to be precise. Trion Worlds studios decided to secure that free spot with Trove. The game was in development since late 2013 and its final version debuted recently. Did this one turned out ok? It did and it didn’t, sort of.

Or a square in any other shape…?

Our voyage through the voxel world will have to begin with character creation. Here’s where we get pleasantly surprised – there’s more to choose from than the “holy trinity” of mage, warrior and rouge. Instead, we get some truly interesting and original classes distinguished by more than just their names. Our options include the bow-wielding Shadow Hunter; the Dracolyte, who certainly knows how to tame a dragon; the dangerous Neon Ninja or the voracious Candy Barbarian. The choice is wide and you won’t have trouble finding something to suit your taste. There’s just one problem… each account can only have one registered character. Should you want to try something different in terms of profession you have two options: create a second account just for that (that’s right) or change the character class on your existing account – for a certain amount of money. This includes money earned in game as well as your hard earned salary. I can see why the creators decided it this way but, with the way we play MMORPGs these days and with its character creation caged like this, Trove suffers tremendously from this decision.

Let’s assume we’ve successfully chosen our perfect hero and are ready to embark on the adventure. Since the story is basically non-existent and our character laughs at its puny attempts to tie him to a storyline, all we have left is to proceed. The sandbox mechanic in this game is absolute – given you have a sufficiently high level you can walk through any portal you see and explore any part of the world you’ve just been brought to. Trove lacks the classic quests but during your travels you will come across dungeons and monster lairs where you will be given something akin to mini-quests i.e. kill the monster that is prowling the area. The experience points you gain after defeating monsters are not the main course of the gameplay. Gathering equipment - that’s where the true fun is. And Trove certainly doesn’t skimp on that equipment.

Rough cuts

Can the abundance of equipment be explained by the game’s creators’ excessive imagination? Not this time – the ones responsible for this state of affairs are the players themselves or rather the fact they can propose their own pieces of equipment to have them placed in the game. The propositions can be posted on Reddit and, if they get accepted, later found by other players in the game. There’s no money in that, obviously; well, no real money at least since the originator receives a small bonus in game’s currency. An interesting idea and it certainly adds to the game’s diversity, which is impressive as it is, offering an abundance of various creatures and almost twenty different biomes scattered across several worlds… Sounds impressive, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, Trove’s problems begin to emerge roughly few hours into the game.

If the world is full of unique creatures and gear then what’s not to like? There are several things, actually, but it is the wearingly repetitive endgame experience that takes the cake. After hitting the level cap (at level 20, but it can be “boosted” with equipment level) we are left hunting high and low for better gear (not very diverse in terms of types available, to tell you the truth) and… that’s it. That is basically how Destiny’s endgame works, but Trove leaves you much less to work with: you can kill some bosses; fight off waves of mobs or visit the Shadow Arena and its high level challenges where you… fight off waves of mobs yet again. The locations: dungeons/caves/castles and other places are quite small and a lack of engaging combat mechanics makes it a never ending onslaught of boredom even with the available diversity of opponents.

To add insult to injury, the combat in Trove constitutes no challenge whatsoever. All you have to do is push three buttons; drink some potion from time to time and dodge some of the attacks. Just to make it clear, I don’t expect much from an MMORPG in terms of combat mechanics but the experience here falls so flat that combat in Trove quickly becomes nothing but a chore. There are moments when a flip or spell casting looks particularly nice but once you know the ropes and memorize the right combat pattern for every class you’re just going to stick to it. Mostly, because there are no alternatives… And even if there were, you wouldn’t have the occasion to try them since there is no PvP mode. The creators have promised to introduce one in the future but for now slaughtering AI controlled voxel creatures is the most we can get.

This square of mine

Fortunately, Trove can give you entertainment other than combat that lasts for more than a few hours. When I wasn’t busy with fishing for gear pieces scattered among pieces of enemies I recognized that gathering materials and building can provide a substantial amount of fun. The system we find in Trove is based mostly on - yeah, you guessed it – Minecraft but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The options here are somewhat limited but, all in all, building my own house took me several dozen of very pleasant minutes. You can build things all over the world but I suggest you focus on your home. Once it is done, you can pack it, move it and place in some other location. You can position you home on special points, which are quite commonly found around the world. If you need to resupply, craft something or take a rest, you just have to find one of the “camping spots” and you’re set. Surprisingly, although I don’t really fancy building in games, Trove made me place blocks like there’s no tomorrow.

One thing that adds to the game is the atmosphere established by very likeable visuals, especially the color palette, from the very first moment. However, if the ever-present squares and edges get on your nerves and just seeing voxels makes you shiver, you should give up on Trove. I’m not hostile to the idea itself and it was executed well enough to make me actually enjoy the sugar coated scenery with its numerous details visible from time to time. The visuals are excellent, if you take into consideration that the creators wanted to make something that wouldn’t rival Crisis in terms of hardware requirements.

Angular Wheel

I believe Trove is not a bad game. It is far from perfect, that’s for sure, but I think the game will secure a decent fan base (it already did, to tell you the truth), which could have been a world-wide fan base if not for its irritating shortcomings. The game has some really interesting user-friendly ideas, diversity of environments, weapons and character classes, but on the other end we have corny combat, off-putting endgame experience, lots of tedious grinding and a login queue worse than all of the aforementioned put together. The game has a potential and perhaps Trion Worlds can make that potential shine with a sufficient amount of updates but for now Trove is nothing more than a mediocre game.