My largest takeaway from Trails in the Sky FC is that everyone I know is terrible at setting expectations.

They say the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step- even one taken out of impulse boredom while waiting for FFVII Rebirth- and yet the enormity of this Trails journey hasn't quite set in. Rather, I find myself feeling... comfortable. Cozy, even. The patient, pastoral fantasy adventure of Estelle and Joshua wormed its way into my mind with such ease that it's hard to believe I haven't been aware of the two young Bracers all my life. Could that be down to the enormously slow pace and jovial atmosphere? The homely PS1-sounding soundtrack that's clearly trying to sing its way into a cottagecore Nobuo Uematsu compilation? The fact that this is the first RPG I've seen to truly nail the justification of why we both stop the end of the world and rescue cats from trees with the very idea of Bracers, flashing me directly back to Majora's Mask and hitting me unfairly in the heart as a result?
It's probably some combination of all of these, but still I look for a root cause regardless.

It's likely worth starting where my attention first got hooked- the presentation. I genuinely knew nothing about the circumstances of FC's release, and for the first scenes I believed this was a game for the PlayStation. Imagine my shock, then, when I learned the game is as old as me and was released on the PSP. It's interesting how the game... well, I wouldn't say "chooses" to look like a PS1 title, but rather how it chooses to use much simpler pre-rendered sprites on a fully-modeled environment. Not even Final Fantasy kept that up for the battles, and yet even the enemies are pre-rendered. It's a charming look, reminiscent of an earlier age of RPGs- exactly what the doctor ordered for me right now. Not all of that "retro" charm is welcome, for certain, but the aesthetics definitely benefit. The soundtrack also clearly yearns for that classic PS1 Final Fantasy feeling, eschewing more complex instrumentation and recordings that games like Birth By Sleep and Peace Walker got (I'm not terribly familiar with the PSP's library) in favor of an extremely old-school sound. The "guitar" samples in the final boss theme feel directly lifted from Final Fantasy VII's boss track in particular.

As for the music itself, it's... unique. Whereabouts of Light is as classically whimsical and somber as any 90s RPG theme etched into the annals of history (I'm personally reminded of "A Place To Call Home" from FFIX), and the soundtrack takes that thesis statement of cozy whimsy and runs it all the way across Liberl. It's an alright soundtrack overall, even if my brain kept filtering out certain songs and replacing them with songs from other games (the New Delsta theme from Octopath II was the only thing in my head when the theme of Bose played). Standout honors go to every song in Grancel and the Sealed Area. That final dungeon may give me a reflexive urge to kill when seeing the words "Donkey Missiles," but the music is genuinely great. And of course... Sophisticated Fight. I'd be remiss to not mention it, but sadly I don't think I'm going to miss it going forward. I can see how someone would adore it, though.

What I do adore is the battle system and customization. FC's combat-so-classic is so unbelievably refreshing to me right now; a refined taste from a more civilized age, if you will. Any glimpse at my profile will show my boundless love for Final Fantasy VII, and the Orbment system obviously appeals on a deeply personal level as a result. Once the system finally clicked, following each diverging line on the Orbment and manipulating Sepith values to get every last spell that character could possibly need, using Quartz-type requirements as vague indicators of a character's role yet branching out into pure freedom beyond that, it is EXTREMELY satisfying. Not perfect- funneling everything through the limited pools of Arts & Crafts, as well as the more egregious trade-offs, prevent FC from getting to that pure freedom of a game like FFVII, but being 70% of the way there is damn impressive enough that I don't much care.

The game's systems outside of combat and Quartz leave a bit more to be desired, sadly. Despite it being tied understandably to story progression, it's nevertheless deflating to have party members leave so often. The slow progression of powers and abilities is what makes a game like this so engaging to play, and having a full party is a power in of itself. Stripping that away at intervals is just... cruel. As hinted previously, I adore the concept of Bracers as a meaningful excuse to give us side quests to help the average citizen as RPGs tend to do anyway, and it results in a fairly decent pace of switching gears from "plot mode" to "Bracer work mode." That being said, the requirements of certain hidden quests and items (I gave up on Carnelia so quickly after missing chapter 3 you have NO DAMN IDEA) are absurd. Locking BP behind dialogue and scene choices- and NOT WARNING THE PLAYER ABOUT THAT- is an incredibly stupid idea; the only saving grace is that you can make it to Rank 1 without maxed BP, which is good- the only reason I could see for engaging with the BP system at all is getting rank rewards, and those aren't locked behind impossible perfection. And that's hardly the only way the game feels tough to play "optimally" without a guide; the lacking of any dungeon maps of any kind is AWFUL. The layouts of everything except for the Tetracyclic Towers are so incredibly samey and impossible to memorize that maps are nearly required, and yet the game gives you nothing at all. At least a game like Final Fantasy VII is phenomenal and well-paced enough to encourage multiple playthroughs to keep trying to find new secrets- that, and its structure does encourage that kind of exploration and discovery. I have also been told SC gets worse in this department, and yes, that is making my ass clench as I write these words.
Aidios save us all.

And yet, none of this feels like what anyone wants to hear, because I feel every Trails fan breathing on the back of my neck anticipating my opinions on the story and ending. And while that's entirely fair, I feel that those who "warned" me about FC's slow pace once again misplaced my expectations. I was told that it's a game defined by being "slow, but worth it," to put it one way. And frankly? No. It's not. Not entirely. Though even saying that feels too harsh... I suppose Joshua's the best case study of all this. Is that twist ending foreshadowed? Yes. Did I miss ALL of the clues about Professor Alba, leading to me feeling like an utter moron ever since Joshua laid out his case? Yes! Is that ending scene incredibly effective and haunting, especially considering how long we've spent with Joshua and Alba? Absolutely yes!

...and yet, was it all necessary? Unfortunately, not. Hints like Joshua hating himself on the farm in the prologue, or fearing the worst when Sieg delivers the letter to their hotel room in Chapter 4, are genuinely great moments- but so many times, Joshua will get "reminded" of something and ellipses off into the middle distance in the exact same fashion, and it simply gets repetitive! The whole game is not a necessary slow burn. About 70% of it is a necessary slow burn, and the remaining 30% is blatant padding with no new information. I feel deeply connected to the kingdom of Liberl and desire to bring Joshua home safely, but I wholeheartedly believe that could have still been done in 35 hours and not 45.

I feel almost bad for being so negative on something that I feel deserves it, when the positives deserve equal and opposite amounts of praise- the cast is, pardon the pun, STELLAR. Estelle and Joshua are two of the most charismatic leads I've had the pleasure of journeying with, riding the lines of their sibling dynamic's genuine support and relentless mockery as their personalities clash hilariously well. Estelle in particular, for being possibly the dumbest "Shonen-type" hero I've yet come across (her EQ is almost as low as her IQ, contrasting a character like Monkey D Luffy), is just a treat to follow. And most importantly, she never gets too stupid to still be likable. Dorothy sponges that up nooooo sweat. /lh
(An aside about the romance: It initially made me want to punch my screen. I suppose it's well-paced enough for such a thing, and Estelle's internal dialogue and Freudian slips are beyond adorable, but the adopted sibling romance dynamic is one of those anime tropes that just... REAAAAALLY gets under my skin. Joshua's insinuation at the end that he has a biological sister gives me pause in this, because their relationship can easily be spun as childhood friends if SC goes all-in on establishing Joshua's actual family and past while maintaining that "his time with them was a five-year dream" or some such, so I have hope for it to get better... but that doesn't make chapter 2 any less annoying. Same goes for micro-misogynistic and homophobic sentiments littered all throughout the game. It was a different time, I can ignore it, I don't want to dwell when the game doesn't necessarily want to either, but... bleh. At least Dunan's anti-feminist agenda falling apart right before the girl squad at the end was one of the most priceless moments in gaming history.)

And the rest of the cast is no slouch, either. Schera's a ton of fun, with a great design (though her similarities in backstory and role to Primrose Azelhart getting her into my personal waifu hall of fame kind of makes her the first one to enter the hall on the basis of... basically nepotism, funny how that works); Olivier is a FAR more interesting and endearing character than I expected out of "the gay one," with his hedonistic tendencies often standing aside for his very genuine view of the world and smelling the roses as the most important thing in life; Tita and Agate don't feel complete enough for me to REALLY dig into right now, I nearly guarantee SC is just going to rip their stories wide open; and Zin's just fun. He never left my party, and the amount of times enemies just hit him for 0 damage after he taunted the entire board was pure cocaine into my system.

The standout, however, goes to Colonel Richard. I did NOT expect this game to have a villain this good. Everyone, to the point of frustration and exhaustion, sings the sheer glory and brilliance of Cassius "Tripod" Bright, but to have the villain play off of that and into that is fascinating. Cassius is pegged as the hero of the military, the very reason the war was won, Liberl's own veritable Achilles. For someone like Richard studying under him, he saw his nation freed by the sheer might of this one man. But Cassius never saw it that way. He saw his tactics and prowess as nothing without the entire armed forces backing him up. That, and such displays of might prompted retaliation- retaliation which killed his wife and left his daughter in her dying arms. And yet, swept up in the hype of his mentor, Richard only saw that power saved their nation. Little wonder, then, that he saw fit to unearth the greatest power imaginable. The small chat he has with Estelle and Joshua in Grancel Castle, where he remarks that he finally has a clean conscience about his actions after taking the kids' words to mean that Cassius would have wanted this too... it's my favorite scene in the game. Colonel Richard, the lying puppetmaster who engineered a coup d'etat for the sake of an artifact that might not even exist, is little more than a naive child with misguided priorities.

Damn. A powerful message, told through engaging politics, resulting in good fighting, yet all of it could have been done with much fewer words.
An ending note for my review fitting of FC itself, no?