8/10 - 8.5/10 depending on how i feel that day


Ever since I heard of trails I was super hyped to get into it. It sounded like everything I wanted in a game, with great characters and worldbuilding and to top it off it was a nice long running series and I’d been looking for something like that. Well, I finally got around to the first game and it was pretty much what I expected, with a few places it excelled in that I didn’t expect it to.

Combat - 7.5/10

When I saw gameplay videos of the combat I was expecting some weird mesh of srpg and trad turn based stuff and what I got was a surprisingly fleshed out battle system that plays smooth as butter when it works, but leaves you banging your head against the fucking wall when it doesnt. It’s much like chess in a way, where if you get one move wrong, you’re fucked for the rest of the fight and need to try again. At least in my experience, maybe I was underleveled or something idk. Because of this flawless(id like to make it clear there is breathing room just not a lot) execution needed, it makes you find patterns in the enemy’s movement and overall I was really happy with the battle system(when it works). Almost all of the Grand Arena fights were examples of it at its best, and by extension most special op fights as well. I absolutely loved that first fight against the special ops. It was hard as all hell, but man it was amazing figuring out a perfect execution strategy. However… when the battle system doesn’t work, it makes you want to drop the game at how obtuse the fucking difficulty was. I couldnt have been the only one who had to grind for 4+ hours(which was made bearable by a few anime binges ill add thx kaguya) to stand a chance against Mayor Dalmore, only to still need more than a few retry offsets to beat those motherfucking sabers which the whole point of grinding was to avoid taking the copout of offsets. Another battle I despised was the Reverie final boss, as well as the “this isnt even my final form” fights + Richard battle. Richard and the subfinal boss werent exactly making me bang my head against the wall, but they were way too fucking beefy. Took me like an hour each man that was some fucking bullshit. Reverie’s final form, however, was so beefy(20,000 hp where you can only take 300-1000 hp off at a time) and so fucking difficult I had to return to the title screen to turn on the retry offset which in turn forced me to fight mini reverie and richard again. At this point, I was so fed up with it that I just died over and over intentionally to cheese retry offset. I mean, I beat em both without it once and Im only fighting them again for the final boss, so I might as well take advantage of it. I enjoyed catching up on my weekly anime while eating lunch during the cheese. Once that was over, though, it still took like 30 minutes to beat the final Reverie form. I wish the bosses arent so needlessly beefy in the next games. Somebody more experienced on the series might say I wasn’t using the orbments system to the full extent, and maybe youre right, but I raise the question, “should a magic system that requires an entire in-game novel to figure out how to maximize use really be dumped on beginners in its entirety without any further explanation after the tutorial?” Well, overall my experience with the combat was fine enough. I’ll give it a 7.5/10. Oh fuck i forgot to add that I didn’t like how you were only limited to 2 party members for most of the game, and that probably didnt help the absurd difficulty spikes.


OST - 8.5/10
For the most part, the OST is nice with a few standout tracks. Grancel/Academy theme, the special ops theme, and Aureole dungeon theme(oops forgot to add that dungeon was far too big and i hated it. Added nothing) are probably the best tracks on the list. The regular battle theme is also nice. I might add though, the special ops theme was used far too often in the last tenth of the game and it lost its punch that it had whenever you heard it earlier. Pretty good shit for the most part 8.5/10





Story - 7/10 characters -8.5/10 Worldbuilding -10/10

The worldbuilding is incredible and in every nook and cranny you can tell they paid an immense amount of detail to crafting something of this calliber. Nothing in the world or what you’re told feels out of place and it all feels natural. While I didn’t really talk to many NPCs, the attention to detail when I did was really cool. Liberl feels real, and that's what all worlds should try to accomplish.

The characters were pretty average but the charm of them comes from the chemistry. I chuckled a lot of times throughout the game, and their interactions also felt real. Whenever Oliver was there, he stole the show. Definitely my favorite character. Joshua and Kloe were also cool. I had suspected something of Joshua ever since the beginning, but the reveal at the end blew my mind. I thought he’d be from Erebonia and Lorence was his brother or something. I was wrong though, afaik lol I havent played SC or the third. Dont spoil it for me pls. Also I never got the romance vibe between Joshua and Estelle. It felt like incest bait everytime I thought about it. Even though they arent related by blood. Kloe best girl

The story was nothing special until the end. It gets the job done, and I know I was in for a slow start, and I appreciate the writers for having the balls to take an entire game worth to set the stage, but at the end of the day it was just average. It’ll probably get really good in the next game.



At any rate, I’m sold on the rest of the franchise and will slowly be making my way through. Can’t wait to see what else is in store. I find it fascinating how they made a game of such caliber, scale, quality, and passion work on a psp.