If you haven't played a Trials game before, it is incredibly rewarding, fun and difficult with a harsh skill curve and lots to master. it involves heavy use of analog controls for precise and challenging platforming and runs at a smooth 60fps which is good because for the 1st year of its release it had constant random frame drops to 40fps for no apparent reason. There are many checkpoints, basically one after each obstacle and many Ubisoft made tracks to play and master as well as hundreds of thousands of fan made tracks to play as well with a good rating system to find quality tracks.
If you are new to Trials games, you will probably have to do about 30 minutes of contract grinding to get enough xp at some stage depending on how good you are with maybe 1 hour or so of grinding if you have played a Trials game before. This is okay though (not a big negative) as the game by nature is very grindy, in order to get the best times so I barely noticed the grind because I was grinding tracks to get gold medals anyways. By grinding, I mean good fun grinding to improve your skill rather than other games that make you do the same thing over and over again with no rewards for doing it better.
The game has tracks based all around the world which means that each track has its own unique identity and feel. The track selection is better than ever.
This is due to both the track editor having way more features than previous games as well as the Ubisoft made tracks being much better. Each Ubisoft track has its own look and feel to it with some being colourful and fast paced with many moving parts such as the Eifel tower track and others such as the Stonehenge track being slower. The DLC in the gold edition has some fantastic tracks as well and there is also a giant selection of tracks to choose from. There are 10 leagues in the base game (and 4 per dlc) as well as the skillgames and Trials University so there is a lot to master with over 200 tracks on top of extra dlc in track packs and some free dlc in the gigatrack.
The extreme and especially the hard tracks are the best I've played in any platformer, let alone Trials game. The visuals look good as well, especially for a locked 60fps game but are not outstanding. The base game has loads to do and the dlc is great too. There are also infinite ways to use stickers to customise your character or buy using in game currency other people's designs from the in game store to make yourself look fabulous.
The only real cons are that the menus are laggy and difficult to navigate and the online is dead due to the playerbase mainly focusing on offline grinding for medals. Some people will talk about lootboxes, but these are optional, entirely cosmetic, mean nothing and are completely avoidable.
In conclusion: The gameplay is Outsanding with lots of tracks to play and probably 100 hours of gameplay for a new player who is good at games to get gold on all the Trials tracks (but don't worry there are ninja tracks too). The graphics and performance is now very good and in my last 20 hours of gameplay have been locked at 60 during gameplay. The only negative I have is the laggy menus.
Tracks are filled with variation
and unique gimmicks, but all retain that
core challenging premise. Sprinkle in ghost
challenges, a superb co-op
tandem bike mode, excellent
tutorials, and minigames, and
this is the best Trials package
to date. [Issue#161, p.84]
Long-time Trials fans will find a familiar yet enjoyable game in Rising. It may feature a wealth of content and many truly memorable moments but it still doesn't quite feel like a huge step up for the series.
Trials Rising is a fun game. There will be those who play it for a while just to see the different ways you can crash or to see its wacky tracks. And there will be who wants to master it's controls and become an expert in the game. This is the game's greatest accomplishment, that it can be fun for different type of players and everyone will have a unique experience with it. However, it will become repetitive rather quickly.
Those who can look past the charmless modernity of Trials Rising will find a lot to love in the core mechanics of the moment-to-moment gameplay, but Trials Rising is a perfect example of how seemingly minor and modern changes can drain the fun out of an otherwise great game, completely derailing the experience.
Trials Rising is Trials at its' best! It keeps you entertained from the very first track till last. Game is full of chaotic fun, it also runs very smooth and looks great on PS4. Despite some minor flaws I totally recommend it to all Trials fans and people who are not familiar with the series.
What's good:
- Huge variety of well designed tracks
- University of Trials tutorial tracks teaches you how to perform some expert techniques
- Track Editor is back and it is limited only by your imagination (just play some user created tracks)
- Customization allows you to create your own personalized Rider and get into battle with cool or crazy (or both) looks
What's not so good:
- Some contract rewards are not balanced: you get low rewards for difficult mission and vice versa
- Songs list in soundtrack are not that many and it may get annoying especially if you decide to play the game for hours
- Some contracts may feel repetitive
Such a shame. This isnt like previous Trials games where the challenge was about finishing the Hard course even after 20/30/40+ faults or 100+ if trying Extreme! This is about racing. Its about speed. I can do most Gold trophies on 0 faults - which means its not hard enough. You race 3 ghosts (gold, silver & bronze) so you always know how fast you need to be going in order to obtain the trophiy. Faults dont count toward trophies anymore apart from they cost you 5 seconds - and time is what gets you trophies. It feels like a multiplayer experience but offline. The game is decent as youd expect from Trials and the world map is fun and the courses based on world locations are also fun but just not that tricky... every level runs very smoothly and all courses can be done under 1:30min.
The biggest issue is how you have to grind to unlock further levels and stadiums.. I think it was patched but I have hit a wall at level 64 where I need to replay hundreds of levels potentially in order to unlock the final stadium - and the chances are I wont be doing this and my time with Trials Rising is over prematurely (unless the game is patched again!?)
Die Level sind defintiv verdammt geil, aber leider ist die Weltkarte absolut unübersichtlich und gegen Mitte/Ende der Kampagne muss man hundert mal die alten Strecken fahren (mit neuen Aufgaben) um die nächsten Strecken freizuschalten. Da war mein Spaß auch nicht mehr da. Grind in einem Trials-Spiel ist meiner Meinung nach nicht nötig.
Redlynx and Ubisoft chose a bold new direction for Trials. They wanted this game to revolve around multiplayer, lootboxes and community-generated content, but they screwed it up hardcore, and in its current state, Trials Rising is a broken mess ****.
The first several hours are nice. All the tracks have great design and are fun to ride. There are extensive tutorials throughout the game that help you learn skills. Mid-way through the single player campaign, events become locked behind high levels, and you're required to grind out contracts to earn XP, regardless if you earned gold/platinum on every previous track. This is a tedious chore for long-time players, and a genuinely daunting task for newbies.
The game's difficulty is shockingly inconsistent. In order to progress to the Grand Finale track (which is merely a HARD difficulty track, not EXTREME or NINJA, which I unlocked long before this one), you must complete 9 different Stadium Finals tracks, which feature abnormally difficult AI opponents. In these events you must string together several consecutive PERFECT RUNS in order to BARELY **** by. This is a major source of frustration by all skill-levels of Trials players, I myself nearly had an aneurysm trying to complete them.
The Skill Games are another instance of inconsistent difficulty. I can barely muster a bronze medal on several of these events, but on others I can effortlessly achieve a DIAMOND medal. An obvious lack of play-testing here, no way the devs could consider this balanced!
You can download rider equipment that other people design, which is pretty cool... when Redlynx/Ubisoft allows it! They constantly remove copyrighted yet unoffensive content due to... reasons. I literally never seen this happen in any other game. It's ridiculous.
Wanna play this game with friends? You better synch up with them in a ranked lobby, because private multiplayer lobbies arrive months after launch!
On the technical side of things, It's astonishing how bugged this game is, especially when you consider this game had 3 f***ing betas to sort out issues.
-Freezing for a second on every track, throwing my timing off. Sometimes it starts to chug along at 10fps for no reason.
-Game crashes fairly often.
-Bad inventory bug causing items to duplicate or delete at pure random.
-Stickers on items erase themselves at pure random.
-Ranked multiplayer just came out, and the scoring system is an absolute wreck, I've won each race, yet my rank keeps dropping and dropping.
-While it hasn't happened to me, I've noticed people complaining about their Acorns disappearing. Acorns are the premium currency you can buy with real money. Ponder on that for a bit.
tl;dr Trials Rising had vast potential, but launched in an unfinished state with inconsistent difficulty, poor design decisions & countless bugs. It's possible the game could be great by the end of 2019, but it's absolutely depressing right now.
I love Trials and have been a playing since HD. This game was such a huge let down. The UI was horrible and the World Map was an absolute mess. The non-linear layoutr and the grind just to unlock tracks made this game seem like a bad mobile port. -(also, here's looking at you premium currency and loot crates) I unlocked the first set of hard tracks then deleted the game after finishing them. I hated this because I enjoy the hard and extreme tracks the most, but I'm not going back and doing 25 backflips and riding wheelies for 100m on pretty much every track just to progress to the next set. I'm pretty sure it was Ubisoft who influenced these awful decisions (especially the constantly online feature) that essentially were game breaking. Slowdowns and stutters were terrible, and I'm sure they are game-breaking for high-level extreme players. If they do make another Trials game, go back and look EVO. It pretty much did everything right. But this game was just a mess.
SummaryExplore challenging tracks around the world, from Yellowstone Park to the peaks of Mt. Everest and everywhere in between. New Tandem Bike mode allows two riders to control one bike. Hone your racing skills and level up from local backyard competitions to stadium races. Make a statement with customizable outfits and bike skins.