The main story and skits were both extreme highs, and I'd recommend the game on sale on those merits alone. Main characters are great most of the time, lots of chemistry and laughs all around.

Combat was not as great. There's a lot of combos and team strategies on paper, but most encounters boiled down to using Velvet's special to stun-lock, self-heal, and get the fight over with as quickly as possible. Equipment management was more of a headache than anything.

Lastly, costumes and accessories are very important. Let the emotional cutscenes play out between Rin Shibuya, a high school science teacher, and their team of restaurant wait staff. Cowboy hats are optional but strongly recommended.

Right off the heels of Trails in the Sky FC, Second Chapter is as direct as you can get from a sequel. The story picks up right where they left off and the combat skills have been scaled and rebalanced to match the new level cap. The combat changes aren't totally for the better - it's rare to find a boss fight where you can even hit the mooks with status effects - but the mandatory fights are fair enough that you should be able to charge on with your favourites and take in the story.

The story, on that note, really starts to shine from the setup in FC. Some characters I had absolutely no interest in ended up becoming my favourites, and some of the new characters have a lot of punch despite their late introduction.

The main things I took issue with were the side quest bosses, which almost always had a difficulty spike that made the following story boss feel like a cakewalk, and a later section of the game where you do a lot of walking. Like, a LOT of walking. So much walking I had to set my map turbo to 6x speed and I still felt my sanity slipping away. If you walked all the way through FC, though, you can surely walk a bit more for SC. Even with all the padding, it's worth it.

our men are running from the battlefield

shameful display

My favourite Total War game in terms of setting, land and naval combat, and responsiveness on potato PCs. Realm divide isn't my favourite but it's definitely a challenge. The now spun off expansion, Fall of the Samurai, is a great change of pace and does 1800s combat better than Napoleon Total War.

The story is long and not particularly intense, but it's all to set up for the sequels. The random NPCs, minute to minute story dialogue, and even the empty chest messages are always a fun read. My eyes were glued to the screen whenever Olivier was on it.

Even on normal, the combat starts off brutal. Enemies will ambush you if you're careless (or using 3x turbo) and two-shot either of your party members. This sets the bar for the rest of the game, and it felt rewarding to kit out my party until I had a winning combination.

I did play Trails of Cold Steel first, so my engagement with the story was coloured by already being hooked into the world. I'm not sure I would have powered through without it, but it gives away a lot of twists that aren't even revealed in this game as a consequence of being the 6th game in the series.