Trigger Witch Review (PS4)

The perfect game for someone with my username, don’tcha think?

If you want a quick answer to why this game caught my attention, you just have to look at the title. There are certain aspects that definitely call to me, possibly telling me that this game was made for you, and one of those is definitely having witch in the title and having witch characters (with the main character being one). Of course, the game still has to appeal to my tastes. The recent game that both called to me and aligned with my taste is Trigger Witch.

Trigger Witch has you following a young witch named Colette who we learn is someone that doesn’t necessarily pay attention in class, tends to do last minute all-nighter study sessions before tests (which same girl), and has two differently colored eyes. She also lives in a world where the old witch ways of casting spells were long forgotten after the first guns appeared. Now, the only few spells still remembered are basic ones used to make life easier, like conjuring bullets rather than having to carry a bunch around. It also seems like long ago, a magic barrier was put up to just above the village Colette lives in, separating the witches and the goblins.

Anyway, today is the very day where Colette and her friends, Remi and Shelly, are graduating and will see if they are worthy enough to first receive their very own gun as well as take a trial to see if they were destined to be a member of The Clip so they can help out in case of any threats and explore outside of their village. First order of business was to go to the Ordinance Rift, which as we know she was deemed as worthy and she gets smacked right in the face with her new hand cannon. When she was out cold she could swear she heard a man in a black coat talking about his evil plan and laughing evilly. But thinking it was just her dream, as Shelly didn’t see anyone, she goes to take her trial. To which she passes and her friends sadly don’t (and one of them even accuses her of using her mom’s connection of being the Grand Receiver to passing without trying, the nerve). And her first order of business? Tracking down that man in the black coat.

From then on, you’ll be able to explore Evertonia and get into the various dungeons. There are various monsters roaming around both the overworld and in dungeons, with them standing in place before they notice you or you start shooting. There are a variation of enemies in terms of how they attack, but not so much in looks other than a differing color scheme. They all differ in health, of course, but they will either attack by ramming into you, shooting a projectile at you, flying over and dropping an attack, and even having status effects like poison or fire. But at the end, they all end in being a splash of blood on the ground (or confetti if you turn on pinata mode). Within dungeons, you’ll encounter enemies in the various rooms, with an addition of hazards like bear traps which will keep you trapped and vulnerable against enemy attacks, as you navigate through the various corridors. Sometimes you’ll encounter a light puzzle and most of the time you’ll encounter a locked door that will take a regular key found within the dungeon somewhere. Some dungeons even have bullet-hell like sections on a broom. Either way, the dungeons end up with you fighting against a boss so you can get what you need.

Considering that the story objectives are marked on your map, you won’t really get lost on that aspect. You also do get access to multiple dungeons at once, letting you choose which ones to go to first. And the puzzles featured are fairly easy to do. The only way you’ll get lost or stuck are finding the regular keys to doors in dungeons. This is due to some of them being hidden in corners that you most likely didn’t know were there when you first swept through.

Combat is pretty easy to get the hand of and you get a variety of guns to use as you continue your journey. You just have to aim, which you can activate a handy laser so you can tell where you’re aiming, and fire by either just pressing the right shoulder button to fire one bullet or pressing it down to empty your whole clip. Your hand cannon, being your primary gun, requires you to manually reload, but it’s a different question for your other guns. You’ll come across 8 other guns acting as your secondary guns, which you can have 2 on the fast equip on the left shoulder button and you can link 4 guns to the shortcuts on the d-pad. You can’t reload your secondary guns yourself, as you need to switch off of them (either switching it to another secondary or having it switch to your primary after a few empty shots)and wait for them to reload themselves. This is usually symbolized by the icon blinking and the gun getting back onto your back, but once you get the rhythm of things you can switch without having to look. You also have a dash to use, letting you get past hazards and dodge attacks, and a health vial which refills with each kill.

I played Trigger Witch on Normal difficulty, which I’d say was pretty middle ground. Once I got the hang of it, I really only had difficulty in scenarios where there were a lot of enemies, especially those that inflict poison and burn. With the other difficulty spots I had was during bosses, which is expected.

You can upgrade your health so you can last longer, and you do eventually get another health potion vial, but you can buy other things that will help you out greatly. Like gun upgrades. Every gun you’ll get will then be available to upgrade so you can deal more damage, reload quicker, have more ammo capacity, and increase your rate of fire. Though, you do need to have found a gun part first to open up the ability to upgrade one of these aspects on one gun. Nonetheless, I highly recommend upgrading your hand cannon and the other 2 guns you use the most. I wouldn’t worry about the possibility of the next gun becoming your favorite as you can just refund all of the upgrades on one gun if you want, letting you upgrade without doing a bunch of coin grinding. It definitely increases your chances of survival as you can hit with more damage and just more bullets as you try dodging the various attacks coming your way. In my case, whenever I was stuck on a boss I went back to upgrade my weapons and it let me survive long enough. I do suspect that you’ll find enough gun parts just by playing, but if you’re wanting to aim for getting all the achievements, you can also buy maps that will reveal how many gun parts are in an area and mark it on your map with a question mark.

And I can truly say that the end-game was not what I was expecting. At all. I’m not too sure how I feel about it, but the last dungeon was fun and I liked the shock the ending and postgame brought on.

Once you finish the story, you can still explore and gather up anything you missed. You can even go to the secret casino (don’t tell anyone) where you can earn the prizes you haven’t gotten yet by earning tokens through this minigame where you play a pinball-esque game where you try to get these onion enemies through hoops (and you can help them in by doing explosions). Or you can challenge yourself at the Arena to see how long you last against infinite enemies in regular or broom mode. You can also do a new game+ so you get to start all over with what you have if you want to.

However, I did encounter several crashes during my time with Trigger Witch. 1 crash when I died and either 3 or 4 crashes when I was entering a doorway. The game does autosave fairly often though, so it was only a small annoyance and no progress was lost other than having to walk back to the doorway again. Other than the crashes, I did find it hard to distinguish what dialog choice I was currently over (luckily most are just two choices) and at times I did wish Colette walked a little bit faster.

Verdict

Overall, I had a good time with Trigger Witch. It really does have that addictive aspect to it which turns “just this one dungeon and I’m taking a break” to the whole game. Or even getting all the achievements like I ended up doing. If you want to play as a witch that wields guns rather than magic and dives into dungeons, this is a worthwhile game despite some crashes here and there.