Trails in the Sky SC is an improvement from FC. Gameplay was much less restrictive and you had a full party of interchangeable characters that can help play and fulfill roles with the right quartz setups. Liberl was still fun to explore the second time and doing the sidequest were still mostly fun as ever. The game has excellent character moments in all the chapters and all the main party members all get their moments to shine. For the story, it was still mostly well - done though the great character moments, though I felt the stakes were barely higher than FC and it only got really interesting until the second half. Pacing was also weird as while I felt it was fine in revisiting all the cities, it felt disjointed once you begin Chapter 6. It begins fine enough through Ch. 6 and 7, though slowdowns unnecessarily in Ch. 8. The momentum that was set up messed the momentum for the final chapter in which I personally wanted the journey to end. Another thing to note, even though I still enjoyed doing the sidequests, I felt they were the weakest in the series (no thanks to the unneeded amount of Blueblanc quests). Despite my problems with the pacing in the second half and the sidequests, Sky SC is still a solid game that succeeded all of FC's setups and ran a good marathon full of great character - moments. 4/5.