Threefold Recital review

Our beloved video games come in all shapes and sizes. Some fit nicely into genre boxes and are solid and dependable, while others break free from these shackles and just do it all. A game like Threefold Recital is a hard one to pin down genre wise. It’s a platformer, it’s a narrative game, it’s a detective game, and there are some light puzzle elements. It does a whole lot more than I expected from a colourful 2D adventure featuring animal protagonists, that’s for sure. I guess more important than putting this game into a box though is deciding if it’s enjoyable, and I’d say for the most part it is; although it’s rather different from anything else I’ve played.

It opens with some pictures and text about the meeting of three friends who had vastly different religious beliefs. The in-depth discussions of these friends were overheard by the animals in a nearby forest, and over time the animals took in these free philosophy lessons and became humanoid. Now many generations later these creatures have evolved and have their own society just like humans, albeit in a city made up of zones for different classes to live and a healthy dose of injustice (again just like humans). Threefold Recital follows three friends who live in this society, and their separate (and eventually combined) adventures.

After a slightly confusing introductory chapter featuring the whole cast, you’ll be sent to your first stage as Triratna. This wolf monk is minding his business when a rich man locks him up for a crime he didn’t commit. With the aid of an unlikely ally and his power to see karma lines (the magical rope that holds objects together and connects people close to each other) he’ll have to prove his innocence. This involves a whole lot of exploring the mansion of his captor to solve the case, as well as completing simple rope puzzles.

Next up is Taiqing, a fox priest who is enlisted by the police to investigate some dodgy supplements. His powers are based in transmutation, and alongside this he can also jump into other dimensions by folding himself up like paper. It’s all rather bizarre, but for the most part you’ll still be trying to solve a mystery by finding clues regardless of the plane of existence you happen to be hopping around in.

The final protagonist of Threefold Recital is Transia, a snake artist working as a tutor for the daughter of an odd wealthy family. The old theatre this family lives in is a little mysterious and it turns out full of danger, so you’ll need to use Transia’s powers to travel through paintings and disguise herself with body paint to survive. Although they seem very separate, all of these scenarios end up leading towards one key figure in need of investigating which means teaming up these friends and combining their powers in a final exciting section of the game.

Despite including a bit of jumping around, Threefold Recital is very much a narrative game in a platformer’s clothing. It gets into some pretty deep topics too, like what it means to be alive, how to deal with death, and all sorts of tragic situations. Occasionally the writing and long windedness of the game lets it down in this regard, but it undeniably explores some interesting themes.

There are some more elements to dive into in Threefold Recital too, though, like how in each chapter of the game you’ll earn bonus currency for acting like the character you’re playing as, or for completing side objectives. This currency can be spent between chapters on a gacha machine that unlocks items for a cool gallery you can explore in the hub area, which I particularly enjoyed filling with all sorts of character art and audio tracks.

As much as in theory I really like what Threefold Recital has to offer as a game, in reality the slow pacing and wordy writing take some of the shine off an otherwise nice idea. Although the game is mostly about solving mysteries, you generally are just handed the answers to the big questions by investigating objects, and you’re rarely required to put two and two together. It’s a little disappointing because all the pieces of a great game and there, they just never quite fully come together.

Threefold Recital is an intriguing narrative game with some seriously interesting ideas, but the pacing and some of the writing lets it down. Still, if you’re looking for something completely different to play that asks big questions, then you’ll certainly find it here, and likely have a good time on Triratna, Taiqing, and Transia’s bizarre adventures.