A fantastic slow-burn first installment to an incredibly lush world that takes its time fleshing out individual characters and towns to an immensely charming degree.
Graphics havent aged spectacularly, largely due to it originally being a PSP title; and combat moves at a spectacularly slow pace by default. Luckily the PC version lets you fast forward this x4.
Gonna take a bit of a break, but am certainly on the hook for the second chapter.
Still ver
Graphics havent aged spectacularly, largely due to it originally being a PSP title; and combat moves at a spectacularly slow pace by default. Luckily the PC version lets you fast forward this x4.
Gonna take a bit of a break, but am certainly on the hook for the second chapter.
Still ver
The ending cliffhanger is still pretty tight
Drama, amoríos, amistad, viajes, personajes oligofrénicos, aventuras, sostenido en todo momento con un diseño artístico del copón para ser un JRPG isométrico de 2004 hecho con cuatro perras.
Estelle Bright pretty goated no lie
the problem is that even if you can get past the weird "incest played straight" shit in it, it's just a mediocre JRPG. the characters feel less developed and fleshed out than i would expect from a 30 hour JRPG, and i still have the same problems with the battle system that i had with cold steel's, except they're arguably more damning here (quartz management is much worse and less transparent). i enjoyed it ever so slightly more than i didn't, but i really struggle to see why this was as hyped up by the internet as much as it was.
A neatish 6/10 game that seems to be setting up 9/10 sequels.
Homophobia.
brabissimo
i love long scripts in my animu games
pretty weak game, the start is not good plot wise and gameplay wise and while it eventually picks itself back up around the halfway point it starts where it ends and feels incomplete
the last like 15 minutes are the only part i felt was actually good and even then i didnt care that much
the last like 15 minutes are the only part i felt was actually good and even then i didnt care that much
For the first game in a long running series, this was a really great introduction. The outdated graphics didn’t really turn me off like it did to others and has its own charm to it. Of course this game is a slow burn as it has to introduce the setting and characters.
One of the downsides for me was it did take a while for the story to get going but when it did, it was amazing. The ending of the game had me scrambling to buy SC right away on Steam.
One of the downsides for me was it did take a while for the story to get going but when it did, it was amazing. The ending of the game had me scrambling to buy SC right away on Steam.
keep walkin, nothing to see here
A really well made jrpg, has a bit of a slow start, and the final dungeon/boss drag quite a bit. Otherwise, it's a stellar example of world building and story telling. You'll have to resist starting the next game immediately
Beginning of my favorite single player game series of all time. The series does start very slow and can lose a lot of players in the beginning, but the game really begins to pick up towards the end of the 2nd chapter.
First time playing. Great characters, great story, great combat. Estelle is bae
yes yes yes
wassup stepbro lets fuck in liberal kingdom
slow burn but really good
The beginning of homophobia.
can kinda tell that it's half of what was supposed to be a whole game but like holy fuck there's a lotta content to this game and it's great fun and a great beginning to the story
I grew to like this game as it went, especially finding the character sprites charming, and I ended up liking the main duo. The time sensitive side quests felt somewhat obtuse in what qualified as the available window to complete them, requiring almost immediate action instead of allowing the player to naturally travel to the side quest location while on the main questline sometimes. Also, the game has a pretty slow beginning that makes it hard to pull through, but from halfway into Bose on the game picks up steam. I look forward to the next chapter in this series, SC.
Super charming aesthetic, not so great game
It's a 7/10 elevated by 11/10 writing and I can't wait to play the sequels.
Última vez que le hago caso a Twitter otaco.
The indisputable thing about Trails in the Sky is that no matter where you are or how thought of a battle you are facing, it never gives up its light-heartiness. It may sound ridiculous considering some twists and events undeniably dramatic, but overall the charm it displays comes from a deep sense of familiarity you perceive from the world and its characters. Being the first chapter in a trilogy of the Legend of Heroes series you start having little to no clue regarding who is who, what is what, how things work and what kind of monster will come at you in every dungeon. But here’s the thing, all of the answers to these points are either pretty standard fare or predictable: you have kind of slimes, kind of insectoids, kind of monster birds, and the whole grid combat system and quartz equipment are pretty easy to catch up and recognize after few tries. The characters are the kind of broody gary stu, the kind of energetic female lead, the kind of cute little girl, the kind of uptight aristocratic, the kind of funny pervert, the kind of reliable jokester and so on.
From what I’ve been saying up to now it may sound as if I am dissing the game for being boring and uninspired, which is undeniable for me considering the average JRPG, and initially this was a big point behind the disappointment in my first playthrough. Yet there was something charming about the game, something not really flashy or amazing or memorable, but it just drew me in it again, and in its sequels. What it was, was the familiarity.
Playing Trails in the sky is returning to a game you have always played when turning on a JRPG: it makes the players discover a world where there are problems and stuff to solve (after all it would be an Atelier game otherwise, wouldn’t it) but rarely puts them are put into a spot where there isn’t a handful of warm, good feelings, where the people living in this world won’t smile and help the characters, give some nice trivia, or just crack a light, unfunny joke. All of these set up the mood for the heroes to feel the need to save the day and beat the bad guys, because they are concretely showed what is so important to protect, not just generically preventing the world to burn but an everyday worth of living made of significant people and hopes and dreams and children and all the kind of saccharine stuff edgy guy won’t relate to. To me, at least, this is a remarkable achievement.
Albeit, one may argue that this is by no mean something new, something unique, something that make the game stand out from many other similar JRPGs. I won’t deny this because I think so as well, I just think it’s more a part of Trails in the Sky’s charm than of its let-downs. Then again, if one wants still to immerse in an enthralling and challenging game you could always crank up the difficulty and let Lorence obliterate you time and time again without a specific quartz build to counter his one-hit kill attacks. Not that it will really matter if one spends just the tiniest amount of time exploring, looting and levelling up, strategizing is very intuitive and easy to master. Moreover, the grind in this game is really light and I’ve never been put into a spot where I wouldn’t be able to collect all the weapons and abilities compared to other games. Or, you could also just spam Joshua’s black fang and make every random encounter trivial.
If one just came for the story though, what they’ll get is a classic reinvention of the “the princess is in another castle” formula, where the player is given an episodic format of reaching a new city, meeting new people, investigating their own matters and finishing involved in something else entirely to solve. The nice thing about ending a chapter and leaving everything that the player explored or met behind is this is the kind of game that won’t forget to make everyone come back and fulfil their roles by the endgame, so that not one major quest will ever feel unnecessary or too gratuitous to alienate the player from the main objective. The game also ends on a quite nice cliff-hanger, which was subtlety built and hinted to thorough the whole story, but without leaving anything relevant presented up to that point unresolved: the bad guys are defeated, the princess was indeed in one castle, the world is save (for now), everything noteworthy was achieved, you are just presented the prologue to the next story in the epilogue to build the will to keep on playing the series. And admittedly, it works like a charm.
I wouldn’t recommend this game if one was searching for an innovative game, or a game which takes stereotypes and does something completely new and inspired with them (if you want a better “princess in another castle” game just go to The Witcher 3), rather Trails in the Sky was made for those people who unconditionally love JRPGs for the feeling the genre mastered, the feel of live inside a warm fable.
From what I’ve been saying up to now it may sound as if I am dissing the game for being boring and uninspired, which is undeniable for me considering the average JRPG, and initially this was a big point behind the disappointment in my first playthrough. Yet there was something charming about the game, something not really flashy or amazing or memorable, but it just drew me in it again, and in its sequels. What it was, was the familiarity.
Playing Trails in the sky is returning to a game you have always played when turning on a JRPG: it makes the players discover a world where there are problems and stuff to solve (after all it would be an Atelier game otherwise, wouldn’t it) but rarely puts them are put into a spot where there isn’t a handful of warm, good feelings, where the people living in this world won’t smile and help the characters, give some nice trivia, or just crack a light, unfunny joke. All of these set up the mood for the heroes to feel the need to save the day and beat the bad guys, because they are concretely showed what is so important to protect, not just generically preventing the world to burn but an everyday worth of living made of significant people and hopes and dreams and children and all the kind of saccharine stuff edgy guy won’t relate to. To me, at least, this is a remarkable achievement.
Albeit, one may argue that this is by no mean something new, something unique, something that make the game stand out from many other similar JRPGs. I won’t deny this because I think so as well, I just think it’s more a part of Trails in the Sky’s charm than of its let-downs. Then again, if one wants still to immerse in an enthralling and challenging game you could always crank up the difficulty and let Lorence obliterate you time and time again without a specific quartz build to counter his one-hit kill attacks. Not that it will really matter if one spends just the tiniest amount of time exploring, looting and levelling up, strategizing is very intuitive and easy to master. Moreover, the grind in this game is really light and I’ve never been put into a spot where I wouldn’t be able to collect all the weapons and abilities compared to other games. Or, you could also just spam Joshua’s black fang and make every random encounter trivial.
If one just came for the story though, what they’ll get is a classic reinvention of the “the princess is in another castle” formula, where the player is given an episodic format of reaching a new city, meeting new people, investigating their own matters and finishing involved in something else entirely to solve. The nice thing about ending a chapter and leaving everything that the player explored or met behind is this is the kind of game that won’t forget to make everyone come back and fulfil their roles by the endgame, so that not one major quest will ever feel unnecessary or too gratuitous to alienate the player from the main objective. The game also ends on a quite nice cliff-hanger, which was subtlety built and hinted to thorough the whole story, but without leaving anything relevant presented up to that point unresolved: the bad guys are defeated, the princess was indeed in one castle, the world is save (for now), everything noteworthy was achieved, you are just presented the prologue to the next story in the epilogue to build the will to keep on playing the series. And admittedly, it works like a charm.
I wouldn’t recommend this game if one was searching for an innovative game, or a game which takes stereotypes and does something completely new and inspired with them (if you want a better “princess in another castle” game just go to The Witcher 3), rather Trails in the Sky was made for those people who unconditionally love JRPGs for the feeling the genre mastered, the feel of live inside a warm fable.
good game
this really does feel like the "first chapter" of something much larger. i wouldnt call this an amazing work all on its own but im VERY excited to see where the rest of the series goes. it starts out pretty slow and doesnt really pick up until halfway through but i absolutely dont mind it when it means getting to know the characters acting normally. i will now protect estelle bright with my life. also MAN THE CLIFFHANGER AT THE END GOT ME SO FUCKED UP
The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky stood as a 40+ hour tour de force that remains one of the genre's most ambitious attempts at world-building. A work that's densely packed with narrative details, side-stories, and entertaining dialogue. No character felt wasted, in fact - most were given far more personality and detail than your typical JRPG. Trails' 'reactive' towns (reminiscent of both Suikoden and Grandia) alter the mood and dialogue of their denizens as the game progresses, no matter how significant the story moment. Each NPC - major or minor, carry their own response to the changing world around them, with some even boasting miniature-stories with their own structure and progression, all to craft villages that were more alive than the usual pit stops and quest-givers other JRPG towns tend to be. However, gameplay was a little stale. Combat felt pointless in several ways, a surprise given how mechanically overcrowded it is. Despite the sheer amount of systems and details, battler customization was fairly limited, and skillsets were especially samey. Story-wise, the journey of one of the best written duos in recent memory was a well-balanced collection of enjoyable character interactions and humor with intense and poignant scenes, building up to powerful, emotional moments. Altogether, Trails set new story crafting standards in its genre - rarely has a JRPG ever felt so narratively complete.
I like the parts where Estelle is feral.
This review contains spoilers
This is going to be a bit of a rant, maybe more than FC deserves. It's difficult for me to do otherwise though, considering the cultural recognition Trails in the Sky now has in its diehard Falcom community. Really it's just unavoidable now, as any conversation I could have about Trails in the Sky will inadvertently be tied back to the reverent fanbase. I don't think that's what the general public who play this game will experience, but when you're about as online as I am, it won't come as a surprise that a lot of what I COULD'VE talked about when it came to this game was quickly dismissed.
I don't hold that against the people who love this series, but it was very interesting to me when I came out the end of this game quite positive after the first runthrough. Specifically that any and all talk I could make about the specifics of this game were weirdly shouted down as "this game is just setup for the entire series and it should not be judged without that retrospection in mind." So you know what, I kept my mouth shut. It's not a terrible enough point to consider, even though I thought then as I do now that it's certainly a weak excuse. So I kept going, I went ahead and immersed myself in a fat load of Trails discourse and ended up surrounded by it, being spoiled on several things before I even thought to finally pick up SC. I may not be an expert on Trails in the Sky at this point, but I do feel a lot more informed about the series and FC's place in it as a whole. And it is sorely not the conclusion I think those people really hoped I would come to.
FC is not just a setup of Trails in the Sky's series narrative that leads to interesting payoff, it is a setup of Trails in the Sky's criminal flaws and trends. It's literally a walking simulacra of what the series stands for in its biggest moments, from its biggest positives to its awful issues. I'll start on what I still reminisce fondly, which is FC's sense of character. After a pretty dogshit poorly paced intro, there's more moments than I can effectively count where the cast of FC ends up bouncing in my head with their sense of heart and strong humanization. Dialogue is very reflective and strongly well written for each of their characters, and it all contributes to comfy vibes that define the midgame, which I'd say is where FC certainly peaks. Worldbuilding is no slouch to get you into the setting either, with a pretty grounded dialogue and well setup stakes for adventure that feel refreshing. The story keeps that idea in mind, which makes the endgame feel rather deserved even when the stakes are still pretty fate of the nation-heavy.
The story, however, is also when the cracks really start to show. FC is really quick to show its hand that a lot of the characters it puts at you are effectively tools, motivations that are nice setting dressing but completely thrown out when it's suitable. To make it clearer what I'm talking about, FC establishes a villain who is fighting for a past idea of his nation in absence of someone he respected. They then literally, and I cannot stress this enough, throw this out that his motivations and his choices were brainwashed by some other guy we don't fucking know at all from the get go. Even if I were to pretend that didn't happen, FC really does not explore this theme much if at all, or this backstory to an even genuinely sympathetic level.
This is the clinching issue with Trails stories, the setup politics that points at interesting themes are wallpaper, torn asunder right in front of you at every turn you could get. The villain I quote here is really not the first time that the inner themes of a nation you visit are hamstrung for a big bad that is neither emblematic of the themes to be a good metaphor or interesting in their own right. There's even more stuff I can get ranting about, but talking about the ramifications of moral motivations and how quickly they are side-stepped was already a poor errand for me to rag on when this game pushes that incest is fine, actually.
The combat is about as disappointing, but has more to do with the base mechanics that Trails seems to care about rather than its potential. Early-midgame is a bit interesting initially, where the grid-like structure and the meter management of arts ends up forcing you to take encounters by the skin of the teeth while you're trying to figure out your strategy. Immediately after this, it falls apart as you begin to realize that Trails could not give less of a shit about the action economy it makes, never going beyond "lose a turn" or "gain a turn" in terms of time. Positioning, while sometimes tested with genuinely solid superbosses, also ends up turning into dominant strategies of doing the same thing ad nauseum. I highlight the endgame for this especially, where p much all enemy fights are weakly put a massive fucking AOE to encapsulate as much as you can, and then repeat. Were it not for the customization and good user experience for figuring out the combat systems on your own with solid feedback, I would say this combat is average.
And I'd like to say that my issues here are FC-only still, I really would. I really would like to believe the narrative that keeps getting wrapped in front of me that this is at worst just a middling setup that then gets into the real kino shit that is the series and fixes all of this crap. But no, it's not. Trails does get better at its strengths from here as it goes on. The character writing continues to be good, and gets great and even excellent often. The vibes do get stronger, especially in terms of the soundtrack that gets outright legendary. But the poor foundation in story, general thematic writing, and combat is what you see here on full display. It's so vastly the embodiment of Trails that it's stunning how much talk about the series now feels like gaslighting to me.
Trails in the Sky FC is not a good game, and though I still lean positively on it, I would not recommend it to most. Worth a try at least, if you can get past the awful pacing in the first arc or two and end up enjoying yourself a ton then you absolutely will love the rest of the series. Is it worth trudging through if you don't enjoy it superbly to get to the rest of the series? I'm still not really sure about that.
I don't hold that against the people who love this series, but it was very interesting to me when I came out the end of this game quite positive after the first runthrough. Specifically that any and all talk I could make about the specifics of this game were weirdly shouted down as "this game is just setup for the entire series and it should not be judged without that retrospection in mind." So you know what, I kept my mouth shut. It's not a terrible enough point to consider, even though I thought then as I do now that it's certainly a weak excuse. So I kept going, I went ahead and immersed myself in a fat load of Trails discourse and ended up surrounded by it, being spoiled on several things before I even thought to finally pick up SC. I may not be an expert on Trails in the Sky at this point, but I do feel a lot more informed about the series and FC's place in it as a whole. And it is sorely not the conclusion I think those people really hoped I would come to.
FC is not just a setup of Trails in the Sky's series narrative that leads to interesting payoff, it is a setup of Trails in the Sky's criminal flaws and trends. It's literally a walking simulacra of what the series stands for in its biggest moments, from its biggest positives to its awful issues. I'll start on what I still reminisce fondly, which is FC's sense of character. After a pretty dogshit poorly paced intro, there's more moments than I can effectively count where the cast of FC ends up bouncing in my head with their sense of heart and strong humanization. Dialogue is very reflective and strongly well written for each of their characters, and it all contributes to comfy vibes that define the midgame, which I'd say is where FC certainly peaks. Worldbuilding is no slouch to get you into the setting either, with a pretty grounded dialogue and well setup stakes for adventure that feel refreshing. The story keeps that idea in mind, which makes the endgame feel rather deserved even when the stakes are still pretty fate of the nation-heavy.
The story, however, is also when the cracks really start to show. FC is really quick to show its hand that a lot of the characters it puts at you are effectively tools, motivations that are nice setting dressing but completely thrown out when it's suitable. To make it clearer what I'm talking about, FC establishes a villain who is fighting for a past idea of his nation in absence of someone he respected. They then literally, and I cannot stress this enough, throw this out that his motivations and his choices were brainwashed by some other guy we don't fucking know at all from the get go. Even if I were to pretend that didn't happen, FC really does not explore this theme much if at all, or this backstory to an even genuinely sympathetic level.
This is the clinching issue with Trails stories, the setup politics that points at interesting themes are wallpaper, torn asunder right in front of you at every turn you could get. The villain I quote here is really not the first time that the inner themes of a nation you visit are hamstrung for a big bad that is neither emblematic of the themes to be a good metaphor or interesting in their own right. There's even more stuff I can get ranting about, but talking about the ramifications of moral motivations and how quickly they are side-stepped was already a poor errand for me to rag on when this game pushes that incest is fine, actually.
The combat is about as disappointing, but has more to do with the base mechanics that Trails seems to care about rather than its potential. Early-midgame is a bit interesting initially, where the grid-like structure and the meter management of arts ends up forcing you to take encounters by the skin of the teeth while you're trying to figure out your strategy. Immediately after this, it falls apart as you begin to realize that Trails could not give less of a shit about the action economy it makes, never going beyond "lose a turn" or "gain a turn" in terms of time. Positioning, while sometimes tested with genuinely solid superbosses, also ends up turning into dominant strategies of doing the same thing ad nauseum. I highlight the endgame for this especially, where p much all enemy fights are weakly put a massive fucking AOE to encapsulate as much as you can, and then repeat. Were it not for the customization and good user experience for figuring out the combat systems on your own with solid feedback, I would say this combat is average.
And I'd like to say that my issues here are FC-only still, I really would. I really would like to believe the narrative that keeps getting wrapped in front of me that this is at worst just a middling setup that then gets into the real kino shit that is the series and fixes all of this crap. But no, it's not. Trails does get better at its strengths from here as it goes on. The character writing continues to be good, and gets great and even excellent often. The vibes do get stronger, especially in terms of the soundtrack that gets outright legendary. But the poor foundation in story, general thematic writing, and combat is what you see here on full display. It's so vastly the embodiment of Trails that it's stunning how much talk about the series now feels like gaslighting to me.
Trails in the Sky FC is not a good game, and though I still lean positively on it, I would not recommend it to most. Worth a try at least, if you can get past the awful pacing in the first arc or two and end up enjoying yourself a ton then you absolutely will love the rest of the series. Is it worth trudging through if you don't enjoy it superbly to get to the rest of the series? I'm still not really sure about that.