"We've had times over the years when our chances were all-but zero. But we're here now, aren't we? We defied the odds and came through every time. Because we weren't alone. Because we chose to support one another. That strength is why we can always persevere. And humanity will continue to bolster that strength for generations to come"
I would like to preface this review by saying I first got into the Trails series back in 2020 and binged through every game from Sky FC to Cold Steel IV in the span of about 6 months. The series has been my fave video game series ever since and even 3 years later that love has yet to fade in the slightest. Trails Into Reverie is a bit of a special game for me being the first Trails game I actually had to wait for to be localized and released and I'll just say that 3 year wait was more than worth it because Reverie truly reminded me why I love this series enough to call it my favorite in the first place and after putting 100+ hours into it and finishing both the main story and all the side content I'm pretty content on calling Reverie both my fave Trails game and possibly just my fave game in general.
Trails Into Reverie is many things. It's both Trails of Cold Steel V and also Trails to Azure II and even on top of that it is its own new story which introduces many new characters and exciting concepts to the world of Zemuria, but most importantly Trails Into Reverie is the culmination of nearly 15 years worth of storytelling, a stunning love letter to the Trails series up to this point and an incredible finale for the Western Zemurian Arc as a whole while setting up the beginning of the Eastern Zemurian Arc starting with the Calvard Republic. There's simply nothing else in the medium of video games like the payoff that Reverie gives you after experiencing all 9 other games before it. Truly made the hundreds of hours I spent on the series worth it.
Trails as a series has always been one of the most ambitious across the entire medium of video games, most known for holding the record for telling the longest running interconnected story across 12 separate games and the span of (so far) 7 in-game years (And almost 20 real world years) and the series world renown masterclass, novel-esque world-building focusing on the sociopolitical issues of the massive continent of Zemuria which has multiple fleshed out countries featuring their own unique governments, militaries and political relationships and struggles. Zemuria has an impressively detailed history, including its own version of the real world industrial revolution, modern technological advances, its own religion and a version of the Vatican and so much more. Alongside all this there's a more mysterious, darker and occultic side of Zemurian history few are aware of involving secret societies, magical artifacts and ancient civilizations.
So when I say that Trails Into Reverie might very well be the most ambitious Trails game to date, you know how bold of a claim that is for a series as ambitious as this, but I promise you it is true. Trails Into Reverie is the first game in the series to tell not one, but three narratives across three individual story routes with each focusing on a different protagonist and featuring their own unique casts of characters, boss fights, locations and even music, but if that wasn't ambitious enough already after the prologue Reverie let's the player experience these three routes in any way of their choosing (Aside from certain points in the story that lock you into a specific route) this is all made possible by the cleverly titled "Trails to Walk" menu system that lets you instantaneously swap between all three routes at any given time.
All three narratives are quite diverse from one another in tone and themes and being able to swap between them at will really helps keep Reverie constantly fresh and very well paced (And Trails games are notorious for being quite slow burns) making this arguably the best paced and most exciting game in the whole series and a big part of that is thanks to it being the one with the most mystery right from the very first act all the way to the end. Who's this mysterious masked man C? What's up with this lifelike doll and why does she have amnesia? What is the "Reborn Imperial Liberation Front? What's going on with Rean and why does he still have inner turmoil? What does fate have in-store for Crossbell and the SSS? These and so many more questions will be running through your mind and the answers will most likely not be as simple as you think they are because all the twists and turns in the plot are easily the best the series has to offer as far as I'm concerned and even the finale is the best in the series as well. It's rare a game tries to pull something so grandiose off and actually manages to accomplish it without feeling rushed, but once again Reverie shows why its the best in the series hands down.
The routes by themselves are all fantastic. C's route and its themes of existentialism and learning to find a purpose in life was the biggest standout for me (Crazy how this game has over 50 characters and the new ones still manage to steal the show), but both Rean and Lloyd's routes truly help give satisfying conclusions to their character arcs as well. However what impresses me more is how all these individual complex narrative threads flawlessly weave and intersect with one another slowly becoming entangled at the core and what was once three separate narratives eventually becomes one singular narrative that comes full circle. It's like hyperlink cinema, but in game format and it's just as impressive.
Despite having three separate story paths Trails Into Reverie is a surprisingly linear game especially after coming off of the almost semi-open world Trails of Cold Steel IV, but I think it was for the best and only helps tighten the pacing. There's surprisingly very few side quests, but the game more than makes up for that with the True Reverie Corridor and all the side content it holds. The True Reverie Corridor is a sort of special mystical dimensional space where all our heroes can go and train by tackling a procedural generated dungeon to earn Phantasmal Shards which allow for the purchase of many special upgrades which can be transferred to their combat prowess in Zemuria. It is separated by Stratums and only the first 2 are mandatory to complete for the main narrative, everything else is side content that you could very well ignore (However I wouldn't recommend it though because of how much you'd miss out on)
In this dimensional space you can also participate in unique combat trials, unlock captivating side stories (If you've played Sky the 3rd, think of the Star/Moon Doors in Phantasma) which much like the Doors in Phantasma help to build the world even further with stories that complete certain character's arcs, show untold pasts, fill in the blanks to things that happened in between or before the main narrative of Reverie and some that might give hints to come about the future alongside some more fun filler slice-of-life events. Besides the side stories the TRC also lets us partake in plenty of mini-games from fishing to the CS card game Vantage Masters, the Puyo-Puyo like Pom-Party or a new Magical Girl themed Bullet Hell game, but that's not all because in the TRC you can also recruit special characters that don't appear in the main story just to use while dungeon crawling in the TRC by the means of a gacha system. By the end of the game you'll have over 50 characters to choose from and experiment making your dream parties, it is easy to spend hours upon hours in the TRC alone because there's such a wealth of optional content available, it's staggering honestly.
If you've played a Trails game you already know what to expect in the gameplay department, the combat is fundamentally the same from Cold Steel IV with a couple new mechanics and additions such as United Fronts which are basically upgraded Burst attacks that let your entire party even the reserve characters off screen do a group attack on an enemy, the Dis-Orders which were introduced in CS IV are back and more prominently used as well. Aside from that it's more of the same tactical/turn-based hybrid gameplay we know and love where we can move and position our characters on a grid, attack with special skills known as Crafts, use magic known as Arts, link up with team-mates for co-op attacks, boost our abilities with Orders and find the right combination of Quartz and Master Quartz to set in our Orbments and make the most game breaking, broken build possible. Simply put, Reverie is Trails' combat style perfected including every single miniscule detail that makes the combat in this series so enjoyable and introducing a spin or two of its own on the combat. Reverie having the largest cast of playable characters in the series (And possibly in all of J-RPGs as well) to date (Over 50 btw) gives so much room for diverse parties and builds to experiment with if that's your thing as well.
I'll also mention that despite Trails being a low budget series and Falcom in general being such a low budget company, Reverie is without a doubt their best looking game to date (Keep in mind, I haven't played Kuro yet) and there is one particular scene that was a sort of "test" for the new engine that Kuro apparently runs on and both the graphical and animation qualities have such a vast improvement over anything else Falcom have done to this point that it is crazy. However even the base game looks very impressive for such a low budget company and the animation quality has seen great improvements making the action scenes better than they've ever been, it definitely makes me excited for Kuro to experience the full power of the new engine though.
Another important thing I have to mention is the OST. What would a Trails game...No, scratch that, what would a Falcom game in general be without their music? A company that has always given music such an important role in their games that they have their own touring band that does live shows. Whenever a new Falcom game comes out it also comes with one hell of an album attached to it and I can promise you that Trails Into Reverie is no different. From its anime-esque opening theme "No End No World" which blends J-Pop, prog rock and jazz all together flawlessly all the way to the final boss theme "The Perfect Steel of Zero" and its powerful, bombastic and grandiose orchestral arrangements and choir vocals and that's just two out of eighty one tracks featured in this masterpiece of an album (Err I mean game, who am I kidding? I mean both) not even mentioning neoclassical guitar shredding furious boss battle themes like "Heavy Violent Match" or "Sword of Sword" and if that isn't enough for you, there's somber and melancholic piano pieces like "Lapis" or atmospheric violin laden tracks like "Hide and Seek with Myself" I could honestly write a review about how great the soundtrack itself is alone so I'll just cut it off here saying not only is the OST incredibly diverse and musically impressive, but every single track only helps to enhance the scene it is played in, every boss battle is more intense and exciting, every mystery feels more mysterious, every emotional moment more heart-wrenching. The OST itself is so intrinsicly linked to the game that I simply couldn't picture any other music alongside these scenes because it is the perfect companion.
Trails Into Reverie is Trails at its absolute best featuring all the strengths of the series and none of its weaknesses, providing not only the best writing (And best pacing) the series has to offer and an incredibly satisfying conclusion to a story that has been ongoing for the past 15 years, but also one of Falcom's best OSTs, some of the best turn-based gameplay of the past decade, Falcom's most impressive game from a technical perspective and over 100 hours of content including a lengthy main story and nearly just as much optional side content. Trails Into Reverie is simply put, no less than a true masterwork of an RPG and storytelling in general and one hell of a sendoff for some of my favorite characters of all time. If there was ever an "Endgame" of video games, Trails Into Reverie would be it, but as far as I'm concerned, Reverie is even better. However this isn't the end for Trails, but merely the beginning because as they say, where one trail ends another begins so onward to Calvard!
I would like to preface this review by saying I first got into the Trails series back in 2020 and binged through every game from Sky FC to Cold Steel IV in the span of about 6 months. The series has been my fave video game series ever since and even 3 years later that love has yet to fade in the slightest. Trails Into Reverie is a bit of a special game for me being the first Trails game I actually had to wait for to be localized and released and I'll just say that 3 year wait was more than worth it because Reverie truly reminded me why I love this series enough to call it my favorite in the first place and after putting 100+ hours into it and finishing both the main story and all the side content I'm pretty content on calling Reverie both my fave Trails game and possibly just my fave game in general.
Trails Into Reverie is many things. It's both Trails of Cold Steel V and also Trails to Azure II and even on top of that it is its own new story which introduces many new characters and exciting concepts to the world of Zemuria, but most importantly Trails Into Reverie is the culmination of nearly 15 years worth of storytelling, a stunning love letter to the Trails series up to this point and an incredible finale for the Western Zemurian Arc as a whole while setting up the beginning of the Eastern Zemurian Arc starting with the Calvard Republic. There's simply nothing else in the medium of video games like the payoff that Reverie gives you after experiencing all 9 other games before it. Truly made the hundreds of hours I spent on the series worth it.
Trails as a series has always been one of the most ambitious across the entire medium of video games, most known for holding the record for telling the longest running interconnected story across 12 separate games and the span of (so far) 7 in-game years (And almost 20 real world years) and the series world renown masterclass, novel-esque world-building focusing on the sociopolitical issues of the massive continent of Zemuria which has multiple fleshed out countries featuring their own unique governments, militaries and political relationships and struggles. Zemuria has an impressively detailed history, including its own version of the real world industrial revolution, modern technological advances, its own religion and a version of the Vatican and so much more. Alongside all this there's a more mysterious, darker and occultic side of Zemurian history few are aware of involving secret societies, magical artifacts and ancient civilizations.
So when I say that Trails Into Reverie might very well be the most ambitious Trails game to date, you know how bold of a claim that is for a series as ambitious as this, but I promise you it is true. Trails Into Reverie is the first game in the series to tell not one, but three narratives across three individual story routes with each focusing on a different protagonist and featuring their own unique casts of characters, boss fights, locations and even music, but if that wasn't ambitious enough already after the prologue Reverie let's the player experience these three routes in any way of their choosing (Aside from certain points in the story that lock you into a specific route) this is all made possible by the cleverly titled "Trails to Walk" menu system that lets you instantaneously swap between all three routes at any given time.
All three narratives are quite diverse from one another in tone and themes and being able to swap between them at will really helps keep Reverie constantly fresh and very well paced (And Trails games are notorious for being quite slow burns) making this arguably the best paced and most exciting game in the whole series and a big part of that is thanks to it being the one with the most mystery right from the very first act all the way to the end. Who's this mysterious masked man C? What's up with this lifelike doll and why does she have amnesia? What is the "Reborn Imperial Liberation Front? What's going on with Rean and why does he still have inner turmoil? What does fate have in-store for Crossbell and the SSS? These and so many more questions will be running through your mind and the answers will most likely not be as simple as you think they are because all the twists and turns in the plot are easily the best the series has to offer as far as I'm concerned and even the finale is the best in the series as well. It's rare a game tries to pull something so grandiose off and actually manages to accomplish it without feeling rushed, but once again Reverie shows why its the best in the series hands down.
The routes by themselves are all fantastic. C's route and its themes of existentialism and learning to find a purpose in life was the biggest standout for me (Crazy how this game has over 50 characters and the new ones still manage to steal the show), but both Rean and Lloyd's routes truly help give satisfying conclusions to their character arcs as well. However what impresses me more is how all these individual complex narrative threads flawlessly weave and intersect with one another slowly becoming entangled at the core and what was once three separate narratives eventually becomes one singular narrative that comes full circle. It's like hyperlink cinema, but in game format and it's just as impressive.
Despite having three separate story paths Trails Into Reverie is a surprisingly linear game especially after coming off of the almost semi-open world Trails of Cold Steel IV, but I think it was for the best and only helps tighten the pacing. There's surprisingly very few side quests, but the game more than makes up for that with the True Reverie Corridor and all the side content it holds. The True Reverie Corridor is a sort of special mystical dimensional space where all our heroes can go and train by tackling a procedural generated dungeon to earn Phantasmal Shards which allow for the purchase of many special upgrades which can be transferred to their combat prowess in Zemuria. It is separated by Stratums and only the first 2 are mandatory to complete for the main narrative, everything else is side content that you could very well ignore (However I wouldn't recommend it though because of how much you'd miss out on)
In this dimensional space you can also participate in unique combat trials, unlock captivating side stories (If you've played Sky the 3rd, think of the Star/Moon Doors in Phantasma) which much like the Doors in Phantasma help to build the world even further with stories that complete certain character's arcs, show untold pasts, fill in the blanks to things that happened in between or before the main narrative of Reverie and some that might give hints to come about the future alongside some more fun filler slice-of-life events. Besides the side stories the TRC also lets us partake in plenty of mini-games from fishing to the CS card game Vantage Masters, the Puyo-Puyo like Pom-Party or a new Magical Girl themed Bullet Hell game, but that's not all because in the TRC you can also recruit special characters that don't appear in the main story just to use while dungeon crawling in the TRC by the means of a gacha system. By the end of the game you'll have over 50 characters to choose from and experiment making your dream parties, it is easy to spend hours upon hours in the TRC alone because there's such a wealth of optional content available, it's staggering honestly.
If you've played a Trails game you already know what to expect in the gameplay department, the combat is fundamentally the same from Cold Steel IV with a couple new mechanics and additions such as United Fronts which are basically upgraded Burst attacks that let your entire party even the reserve characters off screen do a group attack on an enemy, the Dis-Orders which were introduced in CS IV are back and more prominently used as well. Aside from that it's more of the same tactical/turn-based hybrid gameplay we know and love where we can move and position our characters on a grid, attack with special skills known as Crafts, use magic known as Arts, link up with team-mates for co-op attacks, boost our abilities with Orders and find the right combination of Quartz and Master Quartz to set in our Orbments and make the most game breaking, broken build possible. Simply put, Reverie is Trails' combat style perfected including every single miniscule detail that makes the combat in this series so enjoyable and introducing a spin or two of its own on the combat. Reverie having the largest cast of playable characters in the series (And possibly in all of J-RPGs as well) to date (Over 50 btw) gives so much room for diverse parties and builds to experiment with if that's your thing as well.
I'll also mention that despite Trails being a low budget series and Falcom in general being such a low budget company, Reverie is without a doubt their best looking game to date (Keep in mind, I haven't played Kuro yet) and there is one particular scene that was a sort of "test" for the new engine that Kuro apparently runs on and both the graphical and animation qualities have such a vast improvement over anything else Falcom have done to this point that it is crazy. However even the base game looks very impressive for such a low budget company and the animation quality has seen great improvements making the action scenes better than they've ever been, it definitely makes me excited for Kuro to experience the full power of the new engine though.
Another important thing I have to mention is the OST. What would a Trails game...No, scratch that, what would a Falcom game in general be without their music? A company that has always given music such an important role in their games that they have their own touring band that does live shows. Whenever a new Falcom game comes out it also comes with one hell of an album attached to it and I can promise you that Trails Into Reverie is no different. From its anime-esque opening theme "No End No World" which blends J-Pop, prog rock and jazz all together flawlessly all the way to the final boss theme "The Perfect Steel of Zero" and its powerful, bombastic and grandiose orchestral arrangements and choir vocals and that's just two out of eighty one tracks featured in this masterpiece of an album (Err I mean game, who am I kidding? I mean both) not even mentioning neoclassical guitar shredding furious boss battle themes like "Heavy Violent Match" or "Sword of Sword" and if that isn't enough for you, there's somber and melancholic piano pieces like "Lapis" or atmospheric violin laden tracks like "Hide and Seek with Myself" I could honestly write a review about how great the soundtrack itself is alone so I'll just cut it off here saying not only is the OST incredibly diverse and musically impressive, but every single track only helps to enhance the scene it is played in, every boss battle is more intense and exciting, every mystery feels more mysterious, every emotional moment more heart-wrenching. The OST itself is so intrinsicly linked to the game that I simply couldn't picture any other music alongside these scenes because it is the perfect companion.
Trails Into Reverie is Trails at its absolute best featuring all the strengths of the series and none of its weaknesses, providing not only the best writing (And best pacing) the series has to offer and an incredibly satisfying conclusion to a story that has been ongoing for the past 15 years, but also one of Falcom's best OSTs, some of the best turn-based gameplay of the past decade, Falcom's most impressive game from a technical perspective and over 100 hours of content including a lengthy main story and nearly just as much optional side content. Trails Into Reverie is simply put, no less than a true masterwork of an RPG and storytelling in general and one hell of a sendoff for some of my favorite characters of all time. If there was ever an "Endgame" of video games, Trails Into Reverie would be it, but as far as I'm concerned, Reverie is even better. However this isn't the end for Trails, but merely the beginning because as they say, where one trail ends another begins so onward to Calvard!