Threefold Recital is an adventure game that follows beastlings Taiqing, Triratna, and Transia on their quest to save their city from a sinister force. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth buying.
Threefold Recital Review Overview
What is Threefold Recital?
Threefold Recital is an interesting indie adventure-visual novel game where players will follow a unique beastling trio composed of Taiqing, Triratna, and Transia as they traverse through different locations in their city, the metropolis Bluescales. As an important urban hub, many species from all walks of life convene in its streets—the humans, the dragons, and the beastlings. However, as much as it looks like everything is all fine and dandy on the outside, there is trouble brewing behind the scenes. Magic, modernity, and fragments of the ancient times collide and challenge the state of the city, and tensions between the three species are rapidly growing. And thus, these three heroes hold the key to saving their city from imminent destruction.
Threefold Recital features:
⚫︎ Stunning Visuals
⚫︎ Humorous Dialogues And Puns
⚫︎ A Deep Storyline With Twists And Turns
⚫︎ A Wide Variety Of Mini-Games
⚫︎ Accessible, and Engaging Gameplay
⚫︎ Cool Magic Abilities!
| Digital Storefronts | |
|---|---|
 Steam |
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| $14.99 | |
Threefold Recital Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 Fun, Cartoon-y Art Style Engaging Gameplay Compelling Narrative Hilarious Puns |
Translation Issues Story-Pacing Issues Vague End Chapter Scoring |
Threefold Recital Overall Score - 80/100
Threefold Recital is an adventure-visual novel type of game with a compelling storyline, likable characters, and engaging gameplay that will keep you on the edge of your seat for more. It has the power to get you laughing at one point from the humorous interactions between characters, while also having that strong shock factor from twists and turns that slowly unfold as you progress through the individual chapters. It’s easy to get lost in the world of Threefold Recital and the city of Bluescales along with its characters—but its weakness lies in its slow pacing, and small translation errors that momentarily take you out of the fantasy.
Threefold Recital Story - 9/10
Threefold Recital’s narrative is compelling, and in no way is it dry—it first fleshes out the individual stories of the three protagonists before converging in the middle for the central plot. Each of their separate storylines contains a wonderful blend of comedy and drama, starting off with comedic relief and lighthearted banter, before slowly unfolding into a serious underlying plot and a rather shocking twist that is part of a much bigger scheme. Additionally, the characters are all well-written and likable, with individual quirks that make them unique, and add to the overall worldbuilding. Despite all these positive notes, it gets docked a little in points for the rather slow pacing of things.
Threefold Recital Gameplay - 8/10
The gameplay is a fun blend of point-and-click, platforming, and puzzle-solving through mini-games and logic problems in the form of the mysteries you’re tasked to solve. None of these gameplay mechanics are particularly hard to master and provide just enough of a challenge to not be boringly easy, thus being readily accessible to anyone who wishes to play. Getting to play all three of the protagonists at different times also adds some flavor to the gameplay, especially with each of them having their own special magical ability that is used in innovative ways to get them out of sticky situations.
Threefold Recital Visuals - 8/10
The game’s anime/cartoon-style art style is lovely, and all the characters were well-designed. It didn’t matter if they were one of the three main characters or a secondary recurring character or a chapter-exclusive NPC—none of them looked exactly the same and were distinct from each other. Major characters were also treated to their own full-fledged portrait sprite, which were very expressive depending on the tone of their delivery. The backgrounds were also detailed and gave a good sense of the atmosphere.
Threefold Recital Audio - 7/10
Its Eastern-inspired soundtrack is incredibly pleasing to the ears, fitting the overall Oriental fantasy vibes that the developers were going for. There is no point in time while playing that you felt that you needed to turn the music down—it added to the overall atmosphere in the game, whether you’re in a huge mansion or walking through dusty, abandoned hallways. Well-timed sound effects add to the overall experience as well and make certain scenes pop with a little more life. The lack of voice acting is not a big loss, but the game would have benefitted from voice-acted lines, especially with all the humor there is in character banters.
Threefold Recital Value for Money - 8/10
For $14.99 and with a full clear time of at least 10 hours (longer if you find yourself getting stumped on some of the puzzles), it’s a pretty good deal for its price, and a wonderful experience to boot with all the story content to clear.
Threefold Recital Review: A Compelling Recital Indeed
Threefold Recital can easily be mistaken for another run-of-the-mill, cute-looking anime-type of games—however, beneath its rather adorable facade lies a journey with a mix of humor and drama that makes for a compelling experience.
I jumped into trying out this game without a clue as to what exactly it’s about. However, the store page description was enticing—magic, modern, and otherworldly species? Sounds like a great fantasy game, and I do like my visual novels with deep narratives. And in that sense, Threefold Recital definitely delivered.
Appealing Characters, Inside And Out
First off, the art—first impressions are strong, and art definitely plays a big part in that. Character designs are gorgeous, and the art style is great. They don’t only look wonderful, but they’re written well too! The more I played, the more I came to love the main trio and even the other NPCs, who had their own funny little quirks as well. They have their own ambitions and determination to push through with the events in the story, and it all plays a piece in the overall scheme of things. They fill in on what’s lacking in the other, and it makes for great synergy among the three main characters.
Beautiful Soundtrack, Beautiful Backdrops
The soundtrack is great, pleasing to the ears, and fits well with the Oriental fantasy setting that the game was going for. I could listen to it all day. Each area had its own set of tracks that added to the overall experience—bright and punchy in the outdoors, calm and pleasing when inside a rich noble’s intricate mansion, then eerie and downright creepy when trekking through the halls of an abandoned theatre. The sound effects are also placed well, such as to add more comedic value to the scene or to make the mood more somber after a dire event has just unfolded.
Besides the soundtrack, the backdrops are also gorgeous to look at. They’re not highly detailed, but you’re not looking for ray-traced, DLSS-type graphics in this type of game. It’s nice and cartoony, with its own lovely charm.
Funny—Or Should I Say, Punny
It may not look like it from the game’s cover art, but it’s also just the right blend of punny that gets me chuckling every once in a while. For one thing, while the main cast gets pretty mystical-sounding names fit for the setting (Triratna, Taiqing, Transia), everyone else…not so much. My favorite character outside of the main trio is the Young Master To, whose first name is…Toma. Toma To. He has an older brother too—you can guess what his name is. There’s also the officer Naite Maer, young priest Wai Fai, and Taiqing’s roommate who is named…the legendary Sherr Lok. You get the picture. And there’s a lot of them—if I listed the names of everyone I stifle a chuckle in every time I see them, I wouldn’t finish. With how common these puns were, I was beginning to think if Triratna, Taiqing, and Transia were puns in themselves too.
This naming sense extends to objects and events in the world of Bluescales, such as the Prestige Ceremony, or PC for short, an event that bestows blessings through a giant machine that looks suspiciously like a modern computer. Was that on purpose? Probably. The real-world references inlaid into the game’s naming conventions and dialogue make the game much more enjoyable.
Engaging And Accessible Gameplay That Doesn’t Punish
It looks like your typical point-and-click game, but it has some elements of platforming and a rather wide selection of mini-games that tie in with the advancement of the story or side quests. May it be simply dialing a telle fon (as per Bluescales’ language—in English, telephone) to call up the officer, or solving sliding puzzles to acquire a hidden clue, it provides a little respite from the heaps of dialogue that the game will inevitably throw at you, since it partly plays out like a visual novel.
Additionally, each of the three main characters has their own special skill, and how they are used is manifested in a mini-game. For instance, wolfling monk Triratna is able to see "karma lines" because of his monk upbringing. Besides seeing how certain objects and people are connected to each other through these lines, he is also able to manipulate these karmic lines to his benefit, such as severing ties between rocks on the ground to open up a new path. Daoist priest Taiqing is able to enter the secret Fourfold Dimension, while the highly-regarded artist Transia possesses the ability to travel in between paintings. It makes each of their chapters uniquely theirs, keeping the player further engaged.
All these mechanics are not particularly difficult to master as well, making it accessible to anyone who wishes to play.
Although, let’s face it; even with the point-and-click and mini-game sections that break the continuous blocks of text, players may still miss some important details—me included. Thus, I appreciate the 100-page log that players can look back to if they missed a certain detail or dialogue that they would want to view again. It’s saved me from failing choices more than once.
But then again, you can’t technically "fail" in this game either—it doesn’t punish you for wrong answers, and instead will play it out with a comedic outtake before letting you choose again. This goes for puzzles as well—while most of them were generally easy to solve, some can get you pretty stumped. Luckily enough, the devs have added skip buttons to these particularly tricky ones.
A Bit Of Gacha Won’t Do Any Harm
In terms of other interesting mechanics, there’s even a little something for gacha lovers as there’s a gumball machine-like device called the Gachauldron! I personally love myself a little gacha. Players can use their hard-earned Karmarines to collect cool souvenirs from finishing the chapters. The souvenir display room is pretty massive in its own right, so there’s quite a variety of souvenirs to collect. Each souvenir also adds to the worldbuilding with little flavor texts of lore that players can read.
A Well-Written Plot
Despite all its humor, tongue-in-cheek type of comedy, and overall lightheartedness in most of its dialogue, it has some pretty serious moments. The stories delve deeper into a more dramatic plot, most with huge twists that can catch you off guard. Each chapter uncovers something that is connected to the last, and you collect and experience these different sides of the story before they all converge together into one main storyline.
The narrative is compelling and is sure to keep you on your toes as you find out more about what exactly is going on in this mysterious city. The plot twists found when solving the mystery of each respective chapter are shocking, yet they manage to explain in detail why the events unfolded as they did. No loose ends, just one complete story. It has its touching moments too, as well as scenes that dip into philosophical territory the farther you go into the plot. Everything just falls into place as you move closer and closer to the ending, and there’s a sense of accomplishment when you’ve experienced the entire plot, like accomplishing a philosophical journey. "What is life?" is its central theme, and what it means to be a living being.
Translation Issues Can Take Away From The Experience
As the game seems to be written in Chinese first before being localized into English, there are some grammatical errors and strange translations that overall don’t take away from the game experience but can be quite distracting. However, it seems that the developers are slowly working on patches that fix these errors, so that’s a good sign.
Vague Scoring
At the end of each chapter, you get a chapter recap about all the things you accomplished and in turn, get a hefty reward of Karmarines depending on your actions. However, the very first criterion you’re scored on is Role Playing, described as "how well you synchronize with each character." Perhaps this is how many "correct" answers you get on your first try, but the game doesn’t thoroughly explain how you’re supposed to achieve higher scores here. While it is but a minor gripe, it may frustrate the completionist type of gamers who like seeing 100% on their scores across the board.
Is Threefold Recital Worth It?
A Cozy And Funny Philosophical Journey In One Game
Threefold Recital is definitely worth it for a casual and cozy yet also thoughtful experience. It has just the right blend of comedy and drama to make it a worthwhile playthrough and leave you with a little lesson at the end of it all. While it is slow-paced at times and can feel long, it is worth the journey all the way to its ending. It’s a well-crafted game suitable for all ages, and I’ll definitely be looking forward to more of what’s to come from the developer.
| Digital Storefronts | |
|---|---|
| Steam |
|
| $14.99 | |
Threefold Recital FAQ
Where can you play Threefold Recital?
As of writing, it is only available on PC via Steam.
Who are the main characters in Threefold Recital?
Taiqing, the Daoist priest foxling; Triratna, the Buddhist monk wolfling; and Transia, the wandering artist snakeling.
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Threefold Recital Product Information
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| Title | Threefold Recital |
|---|---|
| Release Date | January 14, 2025 |
| Developer | Everscape Games |
| Publisher | indienova |
| Supported Platforms | PC (Steam) |
| Genre | Adventure, Indie |
| Number of Players | 1 |
| ESRB Rating | RP |
| Official Website | Threefold Recital Official Website |
