The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky

It's a well crafted JRPG, with a long winded story that starts veeeeeeery slowly. The world is well designed and full of little details that make it feel alive. The battle system is quite streamlined and refined, and features an automatic difficulty rescaling of battles you have lost, if you immediately hit "Retry" (this is also quite necessary, because battles vary wildly and unpredictably in difficulty). TL;DR: Solid JRPG, nothing special, impatient players should keep away.

I won't be able to add anything to the reviews that got me to try this in the first place, but here goes: I went into the game not expecting much; I've never been into JRPGs and then this comes along looking all cute and generic. The combat is simple, but workable, the graphics are outdated, the controls are ... let's say serviceable. But the game has atmosphere. As others have said, it's about the exploration; Every major quest, all the NPCs have new dialogue, the music transfers emotion, and the if you get even slightly invested in the world or the characters (which are genuinely likeable), chances are you'll be interested in the next chapter after this one.

LoH:Trails in the Sky has been one of the most immersive games I have ever played, It has been a long time since I have been so engrossed with a games world. The combat is turnbased on a grid. On your turn you can move, attack, use a craft (special skills unique to each character), cast a spell or run. Their are status effects which can be imposed on your characters or on enemies like blind which lowers chances to hit. Different spells have different elemental values with some monsters being weak to certain elements and strong against others. I've seen plenty of people bashing this game for its use of anime tropes which I think might lead to some misunderstandings, so to clarify that if you hate anime cliches however well their handled this game will frustrate you, however these tropes are executed rather well, Joshua especially surprised me by how much I liked him given that his character type is one I usually loathe. When it comes to the story elements, plotwise I don't wanna give much away even though it was slightly generic I enjoyed how relatively grounded it was, the characters and world building is where this game truly shines. The characters while not all of them are incredibly complex most behave believably and are quite endearing Estelle especially is a fun and upbeat protagonist which truly feels like a teenager unlike many other jrpg protagonists. The worldbuilding is this games biggest strength, there are no npcs with generic lines they are all unique with their own stuff going on and they have new dialogue after almost every story event, finding and reading every line of text in this game can get exhausting but can be very rewarding, throughout your adventures you will learn about this worlds technology, history, geography, factions, culture and more. Also the soundtrack is incredible, I especially like the op it really sells the sense of adventure. I cannot recommend this game enough to fans of story driven JRPGS.

One of my favourite jrpgs, love the characters, they are all really interesting and the constant changing of party members through the the story is nice.. Love the world and all the details, there is so many little scenes that I feel would have been skipped in other games, but that breath so much more life into the world and it's characters, especially Estelle and Joshua. Llove the story too, it's slow paced, but does a nice job setting up the world. Trails in the Sky is a great game if you don't mind doing a lot of reading.

Trails in the Sky is beginning of quite excellent JRPG Saga. Similarly to Persona, it became its own thing from the main series. These wonderful JRPGs have the old school charm and if you like your characters, you'll surely enjoy this one! The combat can be a bit clunky, but Orbal system is really nice for those that enjoyed FF7 Materia system. If you are looking for a good JRPG series to really sink your teeth into, you should try out the whole series! With evolving and growing narrative, you get to see the world and characters change and adapt through the times.