"My Estelle...you shine like the sun"

JRPG is my favorite videogame genre, but the big thing that gets me down about them in general is that:

Most of them present the mechanics and almost everything that you will see during the game in terms of gameplay in the first hours, and proceed to abuse everything to the limit, presenting few new elements.

And most of all, they lack consistency. I'm not even talking about pace, but that often the best passages are given in the first hours or halfway through, and the quality declines as the game progresses. And this is something even more serious when it's a genre where you can easily find games with more than 50 hours of main story alone.

Fortunately, Trails in the Sky SC goes against the grain of these things, being not only one of the most consistent I've played but having perhaps the best second half I've experienced in any game.

The plot improves with each passage of the game, the characters' arcs are all closed in a satisfactory way, the bosses and events of the final stretch are very memorable and the elements of customizing your party and combat progressively evolve over time. It really fails to use the exact same map as the previous game, which is kind of bland and diminishes the potential of what could have been the experience.

Truly a great game and an example of how to make a direct sequel.