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This review contains spoilers

Hoo boy. Easily my favorite Trails game yet. I loved the characters of the Sky trilogy but damn something about the Special Support Section really just hit for me. The characters are great and everything feels a bit more tailored to them perhaps because they're the only main characters to play as, so there's no half-assing a bunch of different combinations of dialogue lines. Crossbell itself is a great setting. Liberl is cool and really does a good job of nailing the "JRPG adventure" feeling, but getting to know Crossbell and the people who live there for the entirety of the game reminded me a bit of Persona 4 Golden with Inaba. It helps that the SSS is varied in their backgrounds (with only two of the four even being from Crossbell) so there's always a different take on a situation or place. I also like how Crossbell is a front runner for showing us how technology is advancing in Zemuria, with cellphone capabilities, cars, and even a very local (for now) internet.

The combat is slightly improved with the ability to hit enemies in the overworld in an attempt to daze them and get a maximum advantage or even just bump into them from behind for a slight advantage. Other games have done this before and many have done it since, but it's still a welcome addition. We also have "Team Rush" now which is basically an all-out attack from Persona except you actually get to see them attack the enemy instead of just silhouettes or a dust cloud. Besides these new additions and the new orbments (always a new orbment. The Epstein Foundation never stops making money by coming out with a new model, I swear), the combat is essentially the same. Not bad, not amazing, just there.

The music is fantastic, my god. I don't get how they keep just making better and better tracks but I guess I shouldn't be surprised. It IS Falcom after all, one of the biggest names in pushing the boundaries of video game OSTs. On top of this, we finally have game settings INSIDE of the game and not in a launcher. It shows that this is the latest game to be released (being a remaster and western localization) with both this small mercy as well as some fantastic looking visuals on any size display.

I loved this story, it was great. It definitely benefited from the fan localization team, Geofront, working on this game in my opinion. Joshua and Estelle came back, doing their own thing on the side to find Renne, which I loved. But I didn't love the game because they were back (with new snazzy art); they were just the icing on top. The SSS and the lower stakes story (until the end maybe) really got me. I'm always a sucker for street level stuff and I ate all of it up here. Some twists were expected but some actually got me. The Japanese voice acting being retained for this release was also a plus. I obviously don't understand any of it, but I get the feeling for who people are and how they feel and that's just as important (when I have the English text to know what's going on too of course).

This game made me want to jump straight into Trails into Azure just a couple of hours after rolling credits, and I don't even regret it. It's gonna be tight though, finishing it before Persona 3 Reload in February. No regrets. I can't end with the open-ended questions now. I must finish this duology so that when I come back, I can jump right into Trails of Cold Steel.

This review contains spoilers

Man fuck the D&G cult, all my homies hate the D&G Cult

pretty good once I got past the biggest portrait downgrade in the history of sequels