An extremely slow starting point for the Trails series. Fortunately, it does eventually get more interesting... it just takes the entire damn game to get to that point. It feels like Trails in the Sky Second Chapter is the JRPG I thought this game was going to be while Trails in the Sky First Chapter is a pretty uneventful but necessary prequel. The first game is mostly familiarizing yourself with the setting of Trails and giving a shallow introduction to characters who turn out to be a lot more fleshed out in future games. The second game is where the actual adventure takes place - or at least the adventure that's most relevant to Estelle and Joshua as characters.

Did they really need two games to tell the initial story of Estelle and Joshua? I suppose they probably did. I can't really think of a graceful way to fit the events of Trails 1 and Trails 2 in one game. But I do think the story of Trails 1 is just a bit on the boring side for most of the campaign. Maybe it had to be that way. After all, you can't continuously elevate the stakes of a story if you start at maximum intensity.

I don't think the combat system in Trails 1 plays to its strengths well due to only making interesting use of the grid system near the end of the game, but future games make up for this. My major complaint with the combat system is the same as with all of the games in the Sky trilogy: it's too damn slow.

I think this game desperately needs a remake. Not because I think remaking the game would elevate it to masterpiece status - far from it. But if Falcom is telling new players to start with this game then they need it to make as good of a first impression as possible. And let me tell you, it definitely does NOT make a good first impression. Increasing the production values and adding voice acting for every line could go a long way toward making the game more approachable. They would definitely need to increase the speed of the combat as well. And personally I think some skillful remixes could make the soundtrack feel a lot less generic.

This definitely isn't the masterpiece JRPG that some claim it is, but it's the starting point for a long line of JRPGs that are much more impressive. Trails in the Sky was a game that I forced myself to play through while not massively enjoying it, but I'd say it was definitely worth it because I got to a point with future games where I was playing for the sheer enjoyment rather than forcing myself to play it so I could see why other people liked the games.

Trails in the Sky is a part of huge legend of heroes JRPG series and a often recommended starting point to the series. I had started it already from Trails of cold steel before this but I can understand why people would recommend this to be played before. The plotlines are very similar and connect to part of the bigger storyline but nothing in a way that you would require to know one before another. The battle system is also same kind of traditional turn based JRPG, with the unique twists being the slightly tactical battlefield where you also move around a bit. I feel that a bit the battle system in cold steel builds on it so that would be a good reason to play this first, but also this feels easier and more fair since I was rather frustrated by difficulty spikes in cold steel where here the progress was more even and natural. There are also several quality of life improvements in the later series that make getting back here a bit jarring, like fast forward and not needing to spin the camera manually so much. Last but not least, while the plot is one of the main reasons for me to play legends of heroes, there are few cringy bits that I find hard to overlook, not the least that the only / main romance in the story is kind of underaged sister-brother thing, I might be getting more prude at my old age but I cannot find anything sweet or cute in that anymore.

A fantastic classic true JRPG and the start of the Trails series which is my personal favorite JRPG series. This arc follows the story of Estelle and Joshua whom are seeking to become full fledged 'Bracers' a occupation similar but much more complicated then mercenaries or guardians.. (You'll just have to play the game to understand what I mean.) The plot of course has way more to it down the road as it unravels..

I will say that the world building, writing, and story here are unapparelled. The amount of dialogue is insane and EVERY NPC is not only named, but has an entire ongoing storyline with them. Talk to them twice and after any major event happens and you will see.

The characters are all well fleshed out and have great personality and chemistry with one another. My only contention; a seemingly unavoidable flaw with any prologue game to the arcs in Trails is that at times can be a bit of a slog. You have to be into reading the lore. But the payoff is huge and well worth it! You will get hooked and the next game scores much higher but this is 100% necessary and recommended to enjoy the following games.

In typical fashion, we're gonna pro/con this. I suck at writing reviews normally.

Pros
- Estelle Bright
- The setting is really interesting. Country and society shortly after a magitek discovery seems to have led to a peaceful time.
- The plot in general was pretty engaging, with each chapter's issue feeding back into the core throughline.
- Estelle Bright
- I really like games where you equip stuff for magic. The Orbment system letting you mix and match the Quartz that give you passives like "10% blind chance" or "HP + 15%", and then getting spells based on how many points in each element you have? Oooh baby. And then with some sockets being on a line, so they only count with other ones on the line so you have to reconfigure and reshuffle the same quartz for the spell list you want.
- The final cutscenes have both the feelings of triumphant culminations, and gutpunching revelations.
- Had some lines that made me laugh out of nowhere that were also very in character.
- I liked a lot of the characters and each of the major party members' arcs felt good. Agate's could have maybe used a bit more stuff to do, but no real complaints as it is. And I guess I need to wait for a later game to figure out Olivier's whole deal
- Estelle Bright

Cons
- You run out of Orbment spots early if you do some grinding. Each character can only equip like, 6, and (usually) 1 or 2 are tied to that character's element so you can't put an HP 3 (Water element) into a Fire Only slot.
- The fucking cliffhanger ending lmao.
- Combat attempts to split the difference between a Tactical RPG and a traditional Turn Based RPG. When you attack a target, if it's not next to you, it takes the most direct path to the enemy, so you have less control over positioning unless you spend your entire turn to Move. It uses a turn order system where you can see who's acting when, and there are some abilities to interrupt but I never felt like I had many that worked? Maybe it was due to my magic setup idk. This is a minor minor minor gripe, I just needed something else in this section.

The more I think about this one, the worse it gets honestly.
I don't think something this calm should've been the start for such a long running series as Trails, specially when people will become interested via other later games.
Nice begginings can be good, but the problem with this one is how long it takes to have any ounce of interesting things happen.
Estelle and Joshua banter alone can't make the convos funny, and story is a snorefest for a while.
Olivier helps remediate it when he joins, but leaving as soon as the chapter is done is HORRIBLE, specially with Schera too, as the game shoots itself on the foot by removing the 2 characters that were fun to hear until story picked up more.
And the first half of CH2 is horribly painful in how boring it is.
Half of it is boring and barely feels engaging.
And its gaameplay isn't much better.
Level scaling at first is a MESS.
You don't have 4 party members much, which sucks for a game designed for 4 of these characters.
The ending IS very exciting and leaves a mark, and the second half is engaging, but getting there is such a struggle.
And people say this is actually amazing?
Yeah, I just don't see it.
Maybe if this was the start of another arc other than the very first, it would'be been better as a way to calm after lots of shit happened.
But a beggining so boring for a long series like this is prone to bite it in the ass more than help, specially when its not even engaging in any way for such a long time.

You have to accept that things are going to take some times with this game, with this entire series if i trust the JRPG community.

I love a lot of things about this game : it rewards the player's willingness to search for details and take parts in the universe in a great way, the gameplay, while tedious, is interesting and can be very fun at times, the constant works toward getting better is an integral part of the story, same for the sidequest which are included in a good way, easy for the writters to create them and satisfying for the players to play through them. They're not always interesting, but this works for the universe of the games.

The graphics are pretty, and there is a tons of extra sprites to represent the characters, it implements the world well.

The slow story reminisced me of those 90's RPG and also made a game where the creators didn't fear making those slow and emotional moments. Making the game world breath through the players, never trying to go too fast and telling what is overall a pretty sweet story.

this critic was written fast, sorry

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.

oh my god what even is this game i literally just finished it minutes ago. when starting it i thought it was gonna be a hard one to get through due to being old, i know nothing about trails other than that's other xenoblade fans i've seen on twitter say it's peak and i thought sky fc was gonna be a slow start but whatever, it's a long ass series i gotta start it to get to the peaks.

how wrong i was, i'm fucking shook man. i got invested in the story SO FAST, like way too fast, more than i'm used to. last game that made me care about the characters this hard was xenoblade 3. the discomfort i felt for mio throughout the whole story there is the same discomfort i felt for estelle and joshua. i'm feeling that heart wrenching feeling of "oh my god i need to see these motherfuckers happy RIGHT NOW" and i'm gonna IMMEDIATELY hop on SC because i can't stand the absolute gut punch that ending was

this shit is so fucking peak man i can't wait to see what comes next. holy shit. i wanna fucking cry right now JOSHUA 😭😭😭😭 ESTELLE 😭😭😭😭