Review: Fort Triumph (Nintendo Switch)

Fort Triumph is a strategy, role-playing game published by ALL IN! GAMES. With various characters and classes to choose from, the gameplay can vary greatly each time you pick up the game.

I enjoyed my time with Fort Triumph, but I have to admit that the gameplay was stronger than the story. I felt as though the story was there to make the game seem more worthwhile to play. However, it didn’t do anything for me, and I was perfectly content to play through the game with or without a story. I found myself skipping through cutscenes just to get back into the game. The story’s point is that you have a group of characters trying to make some extra money. You got on quests and took jobs from other people. The banter between characters was humorous sometimes, but it was overall pretty bland and repetitive. 

Fort Triumph plays like any other strategy game. You control a handful of characters and can move them a certain amount of spaces on the map. Then, when you can close enough to an enemy, you can attack.

There are many possibilities here since there are different classes, such as mages, for the characters. Some attacks can only hit one tile away, while other attacks have a range of 14 tiles. You not only need to figure out which character is the best option to defeat the enemy, but you need to place everyone on the map carefully. Not to mention, you have to watch everyone’s health.

With each battle, you earn experience points, and your characters can level up. This makes them stronger in defense, attack, and health. You also earn skill points in which you can upgrade their magic attacks or weapons. For example, some attacks have cooldown times. You can upgrade them to have a lower cooldown.

The map in Fort Triumph was a strategy on its own. Your band of characters has a certain amount of spaces to move before it becomes the next day. You can find battles that you can auto-play to earn experience points and items, find chests, or head to the next area to continue the main story. 

Fort Triumph is a fairly short game, but there are many different ways you can play. For example, you can turn permadeath on or off, and there are different difficulty settings. So, you can challenge yourself once you get the hang of the game. During gameplay, it would sometimes lag when I moved the characters. Otherwise, the game played smoothly.

The visuals were appealing, with pretty backdrops for each level. The avatars were fine, though there’s nothing to customize. What you see is what you get. However, the text was a bit small to read on-screen. I prefer handheld mode and tried the Switch docked to read the dialogue better. The text size was better when docked but still tough to read. The music was probably the best part of the game. The battles were upbeat, and the downtime on the map was good enough to remind you that you were on an adventure. 

Overall, Fort Triumph is a solid strategy game. With its weak story, it’s not the best, but if you enjoy strategy games, this is one to try.