During the Dyneskal-Rostorl War, a boy loses his father and runs with his mother away from the chaos. He is named Areus, a half-elf who spends his childhood living quietly in the forest. Having suffered discrimination for his mixed heritage, he hardened his heart and followed the advice of his sword instructor, Darqin. Nineteen years later, Areus accepts his master's sword to become a gladiator in the popular city of commerce, Liberdam. With his fellow comrade and friend, Dorado, Areus aims to become the best gladiator of the age.
This game has the following tropes:
- The Ace: Areus shows nothing but competence and skill. In cutscenes he is always shown having the upper hand, even when ambushed and outnumbered.
- A Taste of Power: During the game's prologue.
- Action Girl: Selene, Sheelagh and Kheryuneia.
- After-Combat Recovery: After a battle, your party will regain all their health (though their maximum health level will drop if they have been knocked unconscious). However a battle can be prolonged if there's a straggler you missed or a monster wanders into range.
- And Your Reward Is Clothes: Somewhat averted: you will eventually get a 2nd outfit for each character once you have joined Ancient as a mercenary. You can switch back to the original outfits from the equipment menu. The game did have additional outfits as DLC in Japan, but will not be available elsewhere due to the game's low sales.
- Anguished Declaration of Love: Sheelagh kisses Areus right before she dies.
- Anti-Hero: Your party, really, but mostly Areus. They're mostly doing the adventuring gig for their own reasons and at first only teamed up because it was convenient. Their vendetta against Balor is more personal than Nemea's group.
- Badass Longcoat: Xenetes has a nice long black one.
- Bare-Fisted Monk: Dagda.
- Bittersweet Ending: Boy is it ever. Areus performs a Heroic Sacrifice to remove Balor's immortality and kill him, but at the cost of being forgotten by everyone. By the way, his whole family is dead. So is his love interest. But at least the tyrant is dead and will have a much nicer ruler on the throne!
- Big Bad: Zofor and Lord Balor.
- The Big Guy: Dagda, and Reig to a lesser extent.
- Break the Cutie: Areus His father, adoptive brother, mother, best friend, and love interest are dead by the end of the story, in that order.
- Can't Drop the Hero: Subverted, whilst the player cannot force Areus out the party, he will however leave automatically for story reasons, leaving only Dagda or Selene as party members until he comes back.
- Catchphrase: Dagda:"<Party Leader>, let's squash them between us!"
- Character Development: Lots. It makes the Break the Cutie moments just that much more heartbreaking.
- Chrome Champion: Dagda can learn to turn his body into shiny steel.
- Combination Attack: The Trinity Attack which will kill the enemy you use it on, as all three characters attack a foe in a cutscene. Also a special combo attack can be done where different party members does a special move after another person does theirs.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Areus is literally wiped from existence after killing Balor.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Areus delivers one of these to Sheelagh and Zeraschel, despite them ambushing and outnumbering him. He gets another one much later with Dorado in their first battle, disarming him with no effort in no less than 10 seconds, causing Dorado to get a new weapon.
- Cutscene Power to the Max: The game's intro cutscene, granted you do some of the stuff shown in it, but not like THAT. There's also Reig's first appearance of him taking down 3 Ogres.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Areus and Selene both use Dark elemental attacks, however they are not evil, though not exactly good either.
- Deadpan Snarker: Areus.
- Despair Event Horizon: Areus, Dorado, Selene...
- Despite the Plan: After meeting Nemea, Areus decides to fake capturing them to gain an audience with Balor to kill him. All goes as planned until Molzova exposes them, resulting in their imprisonment. However, Areus still manages to escape and kill Balor nonetheless.
- Determinator: Areus. His goal from beginning to end has always been to kill Balor and get revenge. Even after his brother and mother are killed in front of him, he keeps himself in check to stay in Balor's army just for the chance to get close to him and kill him.
- Dual Wielding: Reig uses two swords at once. Selene uses two knives.
- Duel Boss: Areus VS Reig, plus several more.
- Dual Boss: Areus VS Sheelagh and Zeraschel.
- Died in Your Arms Tonight: Twice Dorado, then Sheelagh.
- Doppelgänger Attack: Selene's mirage step increases her speed and creates a duplicate of her for extra attacks. At full power, she gets 4 duplicates and her attacks become More Dakka.
- Elemental Powers: Your party can use different elemental attacks. Special note goes to Selene's Earth Lore which uses different elements depending on the terrain.
- Playing with Fire: Areus, Dagda
- An Ice Person: Selene, Areus
- Shock and Awe: Selene, Dagda
- Casting a Shadow: Selene, Areus
- Dishing Out Dirt: Dagda
- Holy Hand Grenade: Dagda
- Elite Mook: Magic versions of enemies that can be hit by Trinity Strikes have different weaknesses than their normal counterparts, and are slightly more durable.
- Elves Versus Dwarves: Subverted they seem to get along. At least when they're not being racist to each other.
- Emotionless Girl: Played with and subverted with Selene.
- Episode Zero: The Beginning: In Japan, the game is titled Trinity: Zill O'll Zero.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The False Sword of Nihil.
- Enemy Mine: Areus joins Balor's army and fights with them later in the game just to get close to Balor. Also Sheelagh's party will join with Areus' party on a few occasions.
- Fantastic Racism: Elves and human towards Half-Elves and Darkneith.
- Fetch Quest: There are a lot of them in this game.
- Escort Mission: Surprisingly NOT annoying. The NPCs in the game are pretty much Made of Iron and even help you in fights.
- 20 Bear Asses
- Fighting Your Friend: The fight with Dorado, then Sheelagh.
- Fragile Speedster: Selene, her defenses are low, however her HP is on par with Areus' allowing her to take quite a few hits. Selene more than makes up for her poor armor by being able to double-jump and air-dash up to 4 times in a row. She's also slightly faster in a run than the others and her dodge has the longest range, she also has the longest combo chain.
- Gameplayand Story Integration: Areus will use his magic in cutscenes the same way he does in gameplay. One shining example of this is when Rieg relentlessly attacks Areus whilst he dodges all his attacks, once Rieg catches his breath he gets blasted by a fireball and stumbles back, similar to how in gameplay you must target an enemy's weakness after they catch their breath after a powerful attack you dodge.
- Gladiator Games: Areus is a gladiator and there are a number of bouts in the arena that he can fight in. His early bouts are solo, but later on Selene and Dagda can join him.
- Ground Punch: One of Dagda's better moves, he can string up to 3 punches to the ground which has a small blast radius.
- Guest-Star Party Member: Dorado in the early game, as well as Dagda and Selene before they officially join you. Later on you get Nemea's and Sheelagh's party helping you out, as well as other NPC Soldier's and Civilian's for certain quests and escorts.
- The Hero Dies
- Heroic BSoD: Areus, Dorado.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Sheelagh pulls one of these. So does Areus at the very end.
- Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Dagda and Selene to some extent
- Human Weapon: The Proto-Eclipse monsters are Darkneiths who had been altered by evil weapon dealers into becoming giant lizard monster with the Darkneith plugged in from the waist up (vaguely like a centaur). Selene is desperate to find one particular Proto-Eclipse.
- Idiot Ball: Dagda is shown to be surprisingly intelligent, however he still falls for a simple pit trap and is stuck there for days until Areus rescues him.
- Immortality: Lord Balor.
- Immune to Bullets: Selene can get a talent that can give her up to a 90% chance of being unharmed if shot.
- The Infiltration: Areus joins the mercenary force for the Dyneskal army in order to get close to their leader and kill him.
- Invisibility with Drawbacks: Every skill in this game is useful and Selene's invisibility is no exception. Unlike many games, enemies will not detect her when she's invisible (even though they can't target her, they can still hurt her if they were trying to a different party member and she was in the way). To keep from being too overpowered, Selene will break her invisibility if she attacks or uses a skill while invisible (effects like mirror-step do stay with her, if she turns invisible after).
- Jack of All Stats: Areus. He is above average in all stats, and has the most skills to allow him to target enemy's weakness. Because of this you will most likely be controlling him most the time.
- Jerkass: Molzova. He killed Areus' brother and mother, exposed Areus' consorting with Nemea which resulted in Areus being forced to kill his best friend, and then later ruined Areus' chance to kill Balor which resulted in Balor taking his Sword of Plot Advancement and the party being imprisoned,which resulted in a confrontation with Balor's right hand man, Zofor, which gets Sheelagh killed. Also he's rude to everyone below his authority.
- Magic Knight: Areus, he is equally skilled in both Sword and Magic, using them both in gameplay and cutscenes.
- Market-Based Title: See Episode Zero: The Beginning.
- Money for Nothing: Somewhat averted, monsters seldom drop money and the shops are random in their selection and change fairly frequently (shops carry items that range from being garbage to rivaling a good artifacts). Money stays useful in-game for a surprisingly long time.
- My Parents Are Dead: Well, except his mother. Not for long though.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Herod: King Balor received a prophecy from his advisor that he would be killed by one of his own children. Thus king Balor has all of his children slain. Areus The Hero escaped as a child and because of this event now seeks revenge on Balor.
- The Not-Love Interest: Selene ultimately grows very close to the other two main characters, but there aren't any real indications that it's anything but platonic.
- Orcus on His Throne: Big Bad kills his son and daughter during intro sequence, however he prefer to warm his throne even while his castle being attacked by a dragon.
- Our Vampires Are Different: Darkneith only have to drink blood on full moons and doesn't have to be human.
- Pet the Dog: Although Sheelagh tries to kill Areus or steal from him, Areus will still save her if she is in trouble.
- Poor Communication Kills: Areus never even tries to settle things with Dorado, leading to his meaningless death. Dorado lampshades this, saying that if Areus told him who Areus wanted to beat during their arena days, Dorado would have joined Areus's cause instead as he dies.
- Proud Warrior Race Guy: Dagda, Reig. They're members of the Boldan race, who are large humanoids with a quick physical maturation time.
- Red Baron: You collect these throughout the entire game by fulfilling the title requirements.
- Shout-Out: Might be a coincidence, but one of the rescue missions has Areus say "Come with me if you want to live."
- Stripperific: Sheelagh, Kheryuneia and Selene (though Selene shows less skin once she becomes a mercenary). This gets lampshaded in a random tavern encounter where someone who has a great deal of respect for Kheryuneia and her rebel band, but still notes that she's basically wandering the mountains in a green bathing suit.
- Selene to lesser extent.
- Sword of Plot Advancement: Sword of Nihil serves as this for majority of the game. Also serves as a Legendary Weapon and the Achilles' Heel to Balor's immortality.
- Sword Pointing: Areus does this a lot, moments before he kicks the ass of who he is pointing it at.
- Stuff Blowing Up: Go to Fire Mountain, and have Areus use his flame attack whenever the geysers blow out air. Enjoy the fireworks. This makes killing mobs that much faster.
- Tragic Hero: Areus.
- Two Guys and a Girl: Areus, Dagda and Selene are one and Sheelagh, Zeraschel, and Xenetes are another.
- Undying Loyalty: Selene's biography states that anyone who gains her trust will be given her loyalty in return.
- We Cannot Go On Without You: Averted. If one of your party members are defeated in combat they are simply resting for some time, once they rejoin they suffer an injury and have their maximum HP reduced. You only get a game over if all of them are defeated at the same time.
- World of Badass: Your party is quite badass, considering their accomplishments in the story. Anyone that isn't a generic NPC too, really.
- Wrestler in All of Us: One of Dagda's attacks will allow him to grab enemies and (depending on the enemy type) perform a wrestling move. These include a backbreaker on Skeltons, a suplex on Ogres and Trolls and if performed on Giants or their variations, AN ARM LOCK
- Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: When trying to find the Sword of Nihil, Areus instead finds a sword called False Sword of Nihil.
