Trinity: Souls of Zill O'll Hands-On

At the Electronic Entertainment Expo earlier this year we had a first look at the action role-playing game Trinity: Souls of Zill O'll, also known as Trinity: Souls of Zill O'll Zero in Japan. The game is set to come out in the island nation later this year, and we still don't know when it will be released stateside, but we were able to play a demo through the Charity Springs Forest to get a feel for this button-mashing adventure.

Trinity: Souls of Zill O'll Zero is an action game where you can swap between three members on the fly. You have your handsome but average-speed swordsman, who looks to be a half-elf; a sexy, nimble, and lightning-fast woman with dual blades; and the big, brawny, slower-moving guy who looks like Zangief from Street Fighter. They're all actually quite fun to play as, since we spent a lot of time just rotating between the three heroes to see what they could do.

In the forest, we faced swarms of little gremlins and flying beasts, which made it feel like a Dynasty Warriors game since they came out in droves and all had little health bars above their heads. The half-elf had the best range, and his weapon came with some fire and ice abilities too, so we used his fire ability to light up some brambles that got in the way to help clear a path and his ice ability to freeze enemies when water was nearby. His attacks are mapped to three face buttons, and R2 was used to switch between characters. The burly man was helpful when it came to clearing out a swarm of ground foes, because he was able to pound the earth and damage multiple enemies at once. The woman was incredibly quick, making it easy to dodge, but her forte was fending off enemies in the air since she had a ranged attack.

When your health bar depletes, you automatically switch to someone else while that character recovers. The health bar indicates how much time before he or she is back in the action again, so it seems like you can't really kill everyone off, or at least it would be hard to. The AI does a decent job of using the abilities that the characters have, so when we weren't playing around with the swordsman, he would use his freeze spell quite frequently.

As we made our way deeper into the woods, we eventually came across a larger body of water and had to face a hulking, grotesque-looking ogre. The ogre isn't very smart, but it hurts a lot when its giant fists make contact with you. In this instance, we decided to switch to the thief-like dagger lady so that we could keep a safe distance lobbing daggers while the boys kept the big oaf busy. It eventually went down, and our demo was over, but it was good to get a feel for the game, which at this point we don't know too much about. The art style has a blurry, misty effect to it, which gives it a hand-drawn look that makes it stand out from all the other glossy CG graphics. When you're fighting, there is sometimes a bit of slowdown before the finishing blow, to give the game a cinematic feel.

Trinity: Souls of Zill O'll Zero is on the PlayStation 3 only, and though it seems like it would be an ideal cooperative game, for now it looks to be a single-player experience. We'll have more details, so stay tuned to GameSpot.com.