You know, I wasn't originally going to get into this series so soon with me having several games I wanted to get into beforehand, but I had this sudden craving for an adventure story and just couldn't help myself. I have heard massive amounts of praise about this game and franchise, and then one day I was just convinced to give this game a try. This as I look back on it after finishing this game for a little over a week now, may have been one of the best and worst decisions I have made in a long time. Best because I got to experience one of the most comfiest adventures I've had the pleasure to witness. On the other hand, worst because well I started this game during a time when I was supposed to be studying for my Finals that were coming up, but I instead decided to spend a little over 50 hours of my time on this game.

When you think of games that fall under the title the quintessential adventure video game, you may think of games such as: Final Fantasy X, Shadow of the Colossus, Death Stranding, or maybe just any Zelda game.

Well, what if I told you this game, The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky FC, rivals those aforementioned.

It has everything you could ask for in a JRPG with minimal flaws that is left to be desired. I mean this from the story, world-building, OSTs, gameplay, characters, and most especially the dialogue.

The attention to detail and love that is poured into this game is astounding. The amount of text in here is mind-boggling. NPC dialogue refreshes after EVERY story event and treasure chests have a pun or just a line of dialogue after you open it.

The world-building is one of the game's strong suits without a doubt. Since this game is what I would like to call an "intro game", due to it being not only the first Trails game, but also it being the introduction to a world that is now at about 11 games long with Kuro no Kiseki II: Crimson Sin getting its English translation relatively soon and the recent announcement of the 13th game, Kai no Kiseki - Farewell, O Zemuria.

Each chapter you travel to each region of the country of Liberl, and you're introduced to the cast as you progress effortlessly. It's impressive at how effortlessly brilliant this game can be.

The character interactions are also one of my favorite aspects of this game as each character has their quirks and how their personality changes towards one another. This aspect gives the game its unique charm and just makes the game feel more vibrant and alive.

Every game has a hooking point and it may be different for everyone, but I believe during Chapter 2 or 3 of this game was where I was like, "Yeah it's over I'm invested now." Especially whenever you fight a certain someone and THIS SOUNDTRACK STARTS PLAYING I was for sure invested until the end credits.

The length may be something that catches your eye because this franchise has a trend of having its games go easily up to 50+ hours. Luckily those hours fly by playing this game, however.

If you want a comfy adventure to experience or just to start on a legendary franchise such as this, I cannot recommend it enough. Trails in the Sky is a worthy investment.

Incredible.

Trails in the Sky brilliantly sets itself up for the grander story that is to come in the following game, the Second Chapter. Many elements of this game are masterfully crafted: music, characters, side quests, and many in universe aspects as to how the world functions.

The tools of engaging the player with the world did a lot to immerse me in the world. Countless days I've played where I couldn't put down the game due to how engaging and beautiful the game is. Despite a large portion of the game being optional; the Bracer Guild board postings and the occasional hidden quests that you seek out yourself, with absolute certainty I can say I participated in almost every side quest and a handful of hidden quests. The gratification of stumbling upon a hidden substory is unparalleled. Often times, the side quests, hidden and publicly known alike, offer so much knowledge into the world whether it relates to the history, different branches of society, or relationships between characters. Trails has an amazingly realized world that delves into some truly unique territory. Purchasable newspapers, books, and other various outlets for in world authored texts is truly something I heavily appreciate in the game.

Being a PSP game, it should come to no one's surprise that the soundtrack is fairly limited. Exploration of the world can only be so grand, combat has many hardware limits inflicted upon it, and NPC dialogue can only go so far. That being said, the game utilizes all of these aspects to their fullest.

The soundtrack is about an hour in length, yet throughout the +40 hour duration of the game it ceases to wear itself out. Not once was I able to find myself annoyed with the choice of music or even the existence of a track altogether. I absolutely adore when and how the developers chose to use certain tracks for cutscenes, locations, and events. Sound design is, simply put, superb, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Standard battle music, boss music, and any music played during specific fights always land. I can very easily recall moments where the game uses music to its advantage. The most notable and memorable being a scene in specific where a character snaps, eliciting a reaction from an opposing person, then eerily creeping back into their ominous foreboding song. Contextually, this scene is absolutely fucking loaded with emotion and intense story significance. Typing it this way to avoid spoilers absolutely does it zero justice, you have to witness it firsthand. Music in this game carries a LOT of emotional weight, the use of music to fit regardless of tone or setting is also shown in how music environmentally consistently matches the mood throughout the entire main story. For what it's worth, given the length of the game and the length of the soundtrack, I have an utmost level of appreciation for how expertly crafted the music and environments are built in tandem.

Exploration and visual flair is definitely one of the biggest aspects in my adoration with the game. Areas are beautifully crafted, with each space having such uniqueness to it. Each of the main explorable cities and their outskirts are all uniquely interesting and a blast to explore & learn about their history upon reaching them for the first time. Bracer Quests are equally one of my favorite mechanics for this reason. Should you not feel compelled to explore the lands of your own volition, Bracer Quests act as one of the supporting reasons to explore and familiarize yourself with your surroundings. The 1.3 GB file size for the original PSP release still absolutely blows my mind. I love the unique style in how the world is designed and how it presents itself, that early 2000s JRPG aura is super emphasized, and I'm here for it.

I don't want to delve into the specifics of the combat much to be honest. I enjoyed it for what it offered and that's about the most I can put into words about it, I'm willing to excuse its simplicity for it being the first game in the series. Though I can safely say I'm not the biggest fan of sepith farming, I do however like the payoff. It grants the complexity of crafting your “perfect” orbment loadout for your characters, adding just another layer of strategy to the base combat that I'm definitely a fan of.

Edit: if you’re finding this in 2023 or later, I played the second fucking game.

The gameplay here is immaculate. Pure JRPG goodness, if a little on the easy side. No wasted mechanics, winning is fun, losing is fun, random encounters and boss fights are all fun. The money/equipment economy feels balanced all the way through, which is incredibly rare for this sort of thing. There’s no minigame chaff except for one unbelievably bad stealth section. Normally immaculate gameplay should guarantee a three-star review, but this clearly /wants/ to be a story-focused game above all else, so I have to underweight the fighty stuff.

I can see where people get confused and think this is a good game, story-wise, because it has the structure of a much better game. There’s a lot of sort of baseline stuff that suggests a lot of care went into designing this as a game that could tell a complex story through lots of different kinds of scenes. PCs swap in and out as the story demands so it’s not stuck to the “adventuring party” format; there’s a certain deftness to the blocking with the little sprites that gives a lot of flexibility to the talky bits; and it’s /very/ talky—these games are famous problems for localizers, I guess, because every little JRPG-type man-on-the-street interaction is a novel and changes contextually every time a character so much as sneezes. It’s all suggestive of a game that’s very patient, that does a lot of “worldbuilding” and character work, and is setting up something more complex than the normal get-the-boys-together-and-fight-God JRPG plot.

But it’s not! The story and the character work are, in practice, /incredibly/ bad here—pretty bad even by video game standards. A comment you’ll see about this game is that it’s unfortunately a bit boring because it’s doing all this patient worldbuilding and setup work rather than getting to the story; this is false. In fact, at the end of the game the kingdom has been taken over by sinister conspirators whose palace coup is actually a front for an apocalypse plot involving retrieving an ancient doomsday weapon from a secret prelapsarian robot palace beneath the castle. This is actually where most JRPGs end up after forty hours. What seems to be giving players the impression that this is not in fact happening—that the two main characters are still walking around meeting different Mayors and battling small-time Sky Bandits at the end of the game, as in the beginning—is A) this sort of ambience of “slow-burn” that the game projects and B) the fact that all of this is so completely dramatically inert.

I’ve never felt an RPG journey from “let’s go to the sewers for some training!” to “the A U R E O L E has been unleashed, and the R I N G G U A R D I AN has awakened” to be so free of conflict. These characters never really struggle. The story structure revolves more around them being /delayed/ then thwarted—there’s never really a point where they don’t know what they’re going to do next. They are constantly encountering and re-encountering incredibly helpful, friendly people who have the exact information they need. The next step in the quest is often, “let’s go to the bar to talk to X about this,” or, “Y wants to meet in the morning, so let’s go back to the hotel.” Characters do a lot of checking in on each other and relaying information, sometimes along roads full of monsters, and then eventually they find where the bad guy is and go proactively to bring them to justice.

All of this would work out fine if the scenes of characters hanging around hotels were psychologically insightful, or compellingly naturalistic, or funny, or sexy, or anything like that. Other reviews of this game on this website will suggest that this is so—a lot of “plot: 6/10; CHARACTERS: 10/10.” Anyone who thinks this desperately needs to watch an R rated movie. All of the writing here (and it’s not just the localization, which seems high-quality) is… I would define it as “sub-anime.” The “jokes” are terrible and often homophobic. Everyone’s primary character trait is how happy they are to see each other, plus maybe some plot-inert “flaw” (Schera drinks too much, but in a cool high-functioning way; Olivier is bisexual, which grosses the other characters out, but they heroically put up with it; Agate has a gruff exterior, which everyone immediately sees through to his heart of gold). There’s not a single joke that lands.

There is one main dramatic thread about which the game musters up a bit more genuine passion, and it fucking sucks: the main characters are a sixteen-year-old brother and sister by adoption, and they’re starting to develop feelings for each other. Watching this warmed-over Pornhub scenario play out completely mechanically, without an affection mechanic to jimmy or even a nominal love triangle to form an opinion on, is like a forty-hour-long sleep paralysis nightmare, in which you know exactly what’s going to happen but are powerless to prevent it. Imagine my horror when a character casually mentions that a nearby town is famous for its hot springs…

There are two other major dramatic threads: the first involves the characters’ father, who disappears in the beginning of the game. This should at least give you something to worry about, except that the game, terrified of stressing you out, keeps having characters insist that your dad is fine, or even that they just talked to him last week. He does in fact reappear at the end, completely unharmed, to tell you how proud of you he is. The other thing is Joshua’s mysterious past, which is way too vague to be of any interest, and then sort of comes out in a sputter at the end of the game. I was told that the game ends on a cliffhanger, by the way, which is such a generous definition of “cliffhanger;” a minor character reveals himself to have been evil all along, announces that everything that happened in the game was according to his plan, and then walks off with a vague promise to continue doing bad-guy stuff in the future. No cliff, no hang.

What the game is counting on is propinquity, the great ally of the game developer. If you spend enough time with these people, watching them hang out, alternately imagining that you “are” them or that they’re your friends, eventually you’ll fall in love. Clearly this has worked on a lot of gamers, and if the game were any better (say, as good as Fire Emblem: Three Houses, another game I would not describe as well-written) it might have worked on me. As it stands, I kind of like Kloe, the schoolgirl (I know, I know) character who turns out to be the secret princess and fights with a rapier and a trained falcon named Sieg. Sieg is cool, and Kloe kind of seems most convincingly like she would be friends with the protagonists. Her bit of the game includes a fascinating interlude where the protagonists are assigned (the gimmick is that you belong to “the Bracer Guild,” which is a sort of multinational benevolent fantasy Pinkertons) to attend a high school (?) to help out with a school play (??) in drag (ah, okay). I’m not sure I was ever more interested in the story than during this bit, which promises all the parapedophilic low-level sexual intrigue one expects from a different sort of game. (This is one of /two/ sequences in the game where Joshua has to crossdress, by the way; the other one involves a maid uniform, for purposes of sneaking into a palace. This all just makes me nostalgic for the edgier, more complex queerphobia of Final Fantasy VII’s crossdressing gag.) But it all fizzles out into the same chumminess as the rest of the game; all the schoolgirls agree that the siblings are made for each other and you walk around after the play meeting an array of Mayors, each of whom congratulates you on your stunning efforts.

Apropos of the secret princess, a note on the politics of this game: it’s completely unreflectively pro-royalist. The Queen of the Liberl Kingdom (yes, “the Liberl Kingdom”) is a wonderful old lady, and her granddaughter, Kloe, is a wonderful young lady. But there’s another heir, through the distaff, the queen’s nephew the Duke, who is a shitty, pampered, self-obsessed aristocrat. Kloe and the Duke have a coequal (not “contested,” just “equal,” like no one has gotten around to reading the line of succession yet, the Queen being only sixty) claim to the throne, and nasty bad actors in the military, in service to foreign interests, lock the queen in her room and abduct the princess and announce that the Duke has been made heir. Vile treason! Luckily the Benevolent Fantasy Pinkertons are here to set things to right. Now, I’m not a whiner about this stuff, and I’ll accept a benevolent princess and kindly queen, but this isn’t Zelda: it’s supposed to be a complex palace intrigue story! Maybe it should think about this stuff for even a second!

Anyway, I haven’t ruled out playing the second one eventually, because I’m a mark, and it’s supposed to be better, and the gameplay really is fun. But I’m very glad that I have regular exposure to way, way better art than this. If this is your idea of “plot pretty good, characters excellent,” I consider you a victim. Of what, I’m not sure exactly. This game, much like every villain I sliced my way through in the course of playing it,, is only the innocent pawn of something much larger and more sinister, but that I can’t spend too much time thinking about, because it’s boring and I have better things to do.

A refreshing break from the god-slaying adventures of most JRPGS. The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky FC really stands apart as a cozy and relaxing adventure. All aspects of the game work together to deliver a grounded and charming adventure that holds up almost 20 years after it's initial release.

Pros:
- A grounded, yet well paced story full of adventure
- Solid turn-based combat, enhanced by excellent battle systems
- A catchy and complementary soundtrack
- Awesome world-building and character development
- x6 TURBO mode on PC

Cons:
- Janky UI, difficult to navigate with little feedback

Overall:
The world of Trails in the Sky is always fun to explore, with a charm and coziness that really makes it standout. The standard turn-based combat is elevated by the supporting battle systems that allow for lots of customization and different strategies. The systems feel similar to Final Fantasy VIIs Materia. The art style remains timeless, but unfortunately the UI has aged quite poorly. After a few hours of gameplay you can navigate without too much pain, but it is a shame on an otherwise polished title. The delivery and pacing of the story are similar to a fantasy novel, but beautifully designed around letting the player explore at their own pace. The soundtrack is catchy, and really fits the theme of the game.
I wasn't sure what to expect when I started playing. It has a really different pace to most games, but sometimes its nice to step away from non-stop action and spectacle and enjoy a more grounded and cozy game. I had fun playing this first chapter, of the first arc, of the Legend of Heroes games. Similar to One Piece the initial length of the series put me off, but immediately I understood why it's so popular. Now I'm glad there is so much to catch up on!

Trails in the Sky is an underrated JRPG that needs to be hailed and recognized for its outstanding story and compelling characters. One of the game's strongest substances is the relationship between Estelle and Joshua. It's uncommon to witness such strong rapport between two mostly alone characters in a genre that favors ensemble casts with several characters. Their interactions are authentic and realistic, allowing you to feel their affection grow deeper as the game continues. The writers behind this game clearly put a lot of work into crafting the detailed dialogue and it shows.

In a genre dominated by male heroes, Estelle is a breath of fresh air. She embarks on her journey as an impressionable young woman with little life experience, but as she crosses the nation and interacts with new people, she learns priceless lessons about accountability, selflessness, and the value of family. She doesn't hesitate to face challenging circumstances, and many around her are motivated by her bravery. Her bond with Joshua is undoubtedly at the heart of the plot, and it's a joy to watch them interact with each other. Her progress and evolution throughout the game make her adventure all the more enjoyable, and she's certainly become my new favorite protagonist in a videogame.

The music score is also worth addressing in greater detail. The OST was composed by Falcom Sound Team jdk and is a testament to their widely praised brilliance. The music is eclectic and covers a wide range of tones and themes, from energetic fight tracks to somber piano compositions. Each track fits wonderfully in its own scene, and they're all memorable in their own way. The game's opening theme, "Sora no Kiseki," is very catchy and sets the tone for the game, and Factory City Zeiss is one of the most vibe-filled bops I've heard in a JRPG.

The combat system in the game is turn-based, similar to that of most classic JRPGs. While it isn't extremely unique it is serviceable and takes some strategic thought. You can customize your party members' abilities and equipment, and there are a range of foes with varying strengths and weaknesses. However, it can feel repetitive at times, especially since most battles boil down to using the same tactics over and over again.

While the graphics may not be up to modern standards, it's crucial to remember that this is a 2004 game. So, while it is a flaw, it is not surprising, and the game's aesthetic more than compensates. It's also worth noting that, despite the presentation being filled with chibi models, the actual dialogue box artwork for each character is so visually appealing that it's heartbreaking to see the Evolution version of the game replace these images. They have an incredible appeal that should have been preserved.

Despite the previous points, the most significant flaw is the story's unbelievably sluggish pacing. And this is not stated lightly. Over half of the game is mainly focused on introducing the world and its characters, and it honestly can feel like nothing is really happening. I found myself often asking "Where's the plot?" several times, or "when does it get juicy" all the way to the end of Chapter 2. Despite these criticisms, the pacing is justifiable, as the immersion in this game's world and its characters is essential for later context near the end of the game's story. The narrative is captivating and dramatic once it gets to the point and it does not slow down at all. The story addresses challenging topics like political corruption and familial ties, and it tackles these topics with maturity and complexity. The finale is satisfying and enthralling, and allows the perfect amount of room for the second chapter to follow. If you stay around for the entire journey, which I almost didn't, it's a good payoff.

Trails in the Sky is an absolute must-play for JRPG enthusiasts. Its strong characters, outstanding musical score, and incredibly relevant themes more than compensate for its weaknesses such as the rough pacing and hardly serviceable combat. It's an excellent introduction to the Trails series. Just tackle the slow start with patience and you'll be rewarded with a fascinating trip filled with some of the most diverse and colorful characters and world-building you'll ever see.

For the first game that started this large story spanning multiple titles, I can't be more happier with this. It's been a long time since I finished an actual game for once so FC did a good job with not just getting me back into video games but also making me give JRPG's another shot.

It just felt like such an enjoyable game to play when I wasn't busy. Exploring Liberl with Joshua and Estelle felt way too fun. Talking to random NPC's was also a blast, always changing dialogue made them feel alive.

The companions and adventure-esque structure reminded me a lot of my other favourites and childhood shows growing up.

Gameplay was pretty good too, though I definitely say it lacked a few stuff which I know will be added in later series. It did feel kinda overwhelming at the beginning though but I got the hang of it pretty quickly afterwards.

THE MUSICCCCCCCC

The ending is probably the best part though outside of the worldbuilding and everything else. It just MAKES me wanna go play second chapter right now and I probably will.

Eiyuu no densetsu IV : Sora no Kiseki, or just The legend of Heroes : Trails in the sky in west is the first game of the "Kiseki" franchise even if it's technically the 6th one of a long series of spinoff in the Dragon Slayer series. Like the games prior in that spinoff series it embrace the label of "Story-RPG", so basically games focusing first on the story and then the RPG elements. As the first game of this series that Falcom launched way back in 2004, it have the mission to introduce the player to the universe, the terms, the characters, the systems etc and try to hook them into the series, first Second Chapter the sequel and the all the other games that expand the universe even more, planned or not from the beginning.


Did Sora no Kiseki succesfully completed this mission ? I think the answer is yes and surely without problems. Between the OST, the envrionement, the diversity of all characters, the charming art style, the slow story but surprising having an enough good pacing to hook the player from the start. Sora no Kiseki did succesfully all those points. Also in West we were lucky to have the excellent translators and Localizators from Xseed giving us probably one of the best translation in the industry, well in PC rerelease, we don't talk about the first translation on PSP.

Personally Sora no Kiseki is one of my favorite game in the series, I probably love everything about it, from the characters to the exploration of grancel sewers. I think this game is a masterpiece in terms on an introduction of an universe and sadly outside of Zero no Kiseki Falcom wasn't able to reproduce something on this scale for me, maybe Kuro no Kiseki in the future, but we will see at that moment.

Here's each party member's favorite From Software game:

Estelle: Dark Souls 2. (Nobody is perfect I guess.)

Olivert: Bloodborne. (Actually, this ins't his favorite, he just likes people to know he has a ps5.)

Kloe: Elden Ring. (She often says that Mountaintop of the giants is not that bad.)

Joshua: Kuon. (Dude is just edgy as hell.)

Agate: Sekiro Shadows die Twice. (He believes that Sword Saint Isshin Ashina is one of the best final bosses of all time, and you know what? He goddamn right.)

Tita: Armored Core: For Answer. (Honestly, I don't think I need to explain.)

Zin: King's Field. (And of course this old ass boomer often says that all games after demon's souls are garbage.)

Scherazard: None. (This bitch is too busy drinking all day to play video games)

For me, Sky FC is "the JRPG of all time" other than the final boss and literal last 10 minutes of the game. This is partially due to it being a "setup game," (of which I've played next to none, but have seen this often done in visual novels, and it's infinitely worse with an actual videogame due to gameplay losing tension) and as such is automatically an underwhelming part of the story. The combat system is probs my fav JRPG one from what I've played here and the 2 hours I played years back in Cold Steel I, especially later on when both you and enemies can cancel Arts (spell) casting before the attack is delivered, very strategic. The gameplay is fun, the worldbuilding is already good and this is just the first game in the series, true, and the music is good (though a popular JRPG having good music is a given), and it certainly has... soul, but it just felt like an okay experience most of the time for me. It was episodic for most of its story with okay characters and okay plot and okay pacing until it got better near the end. Although it's strange how the overwhelming majority of FC's thematic value is from that last part alone, and before that it feels more focused on worldbuilding and slice-of-life or something? The low points were Tita, Dorothy and Olivier (when he's a walking trope and/or stereotype) being annoying, as well as the stealth missions. I didn't care for the romance either.

I was feeling a little burnt out in the penultimate dungeon, too, which isn't a good sign when it's the first game in the 500+ hour series known for the "trust me bro, it gets peak" effect, with a coin toss on whether a specific player will like a particular game/arc. Additionally, it already feels bloated (it feels like I got 10 hours' worth of actual content out of my ~30 hour playthrough with how one-note some things, especially characters, were), so that's concerning.

In any case, the trailer for SC near the end looked very hype, so I'm excited to play that sometime this year.

Didn't know a whole lot about this game going in, but it seemed interesting enough and the one song I'd heard from this game was really good so I thought I might as well give it a try.

This games combat is addictive, and the orbment system takes inspiration from FF7's materia system, but uses it in a better way. I feel this game will be a lot lighter in plot than the others, it is more about the journey and getting to know the characters and setting up the future plot points than anything else.

It's definitely got some filler too. But having said that, the characters are strong, the music is great and I don't think I've ever had expectations flipped completely by a games ending before in my life. Thoroughly enjoyable, and while not a 5/5 due to flaws in how chapters drag on and how there is a bit of filler, I can easily say that it is a brilliant game and I'm excited to play the rest of the series.

combat is a bit... *pulls collar* but its really really great at building up a world and really focusing on it bit by bit, feels like i only just finished reading fellowship of the ring. it's extremely thorough. that's like the best word i can come up with for it. even just having the normal jrpg protagonist dynamic switched is interesting from the get-go.

joshua maid dress mmm

psst.. wanna hear a secret... it's really not as long as everyone makes it out to be

You can really tell this game was made in 2004; the graphics aren't the finest, menuing is often a pain, and you'll be constantly holding down the turbo button if you don't want every engagement to take a century due to the animation lengths. That said, the world building and characterization is fantastic, and the soundtrack is quite understated yet exceptional. If you can get through the somewhat sluggish beginning, you'll be fairly pleased with what's to come. Not my favorite game in the Legend of Heroes series, and I definitely had my gripes with plenty of aspects (stealth missions...), but I ended up liking this a lot more than I had originally expected.