The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky

Combat system is simple, but full of tactics. Very interesting story, many side quests, great music.

... seems to be the grand theme of the storyline progression in this game. Hawk52 gives a grand review, to which I have precious little to add. He correctly states that to enjoy the story you have to backtrack a lot... which is true, but actually even worse: In fact, in order to complete all sidequests in order to reach your highest guild rank, you either - have to consult a guide in order not to miss anything - or go anywhere but your story target. Seriously, once you enter a new area and the chars tell you to head for city X, visit any and all other villages/hamlets/lighthouses/whatever in order to trigger a quest which might otherwise vanish because you inadvertently progressed the story. (Of course, once you later visit said village/hamlet/etc. for the official storyline, the party goes "ooh, seeing this for the first time, how pretty.") Many people praise the great character development... for me, Estelle started out as a dunce and stayed that way. Josh started as an annoying know-it-all even without the decency to be arrogant about it and stayed that way. And his secret is not revealed step by step thru the story, but at the very very very end after the final boss battle. So, no, cannot agree on that. My low score is definitively not deserved, the game is by no means bad. It's just not so great as most people make it out to be, either. So someone has to lower the average rating to an acceptable degree... so sue me!

Never before have I fallen so in love with a jrpg so fast. And this comes from someone who is a fan of the genre.

This should not even have that it supports Windows 8 or above on this. With a default installation under Windows 8/8.1 there are no movies and no sound by default. There are workarounds but for almost 20.00 this should not be the case. This has received its first set of patches and still the Out of Box experience is no movies and no sound even after running the built-in configuration app to set the settings. There are workarounds to this but it seems apparent that the publisher nor GOG tested this on 8/8.1 before putting this up for sale. The flip-side is that if you have Windows 7, then this works perfectly. I have close to 100 games that I have purchased on GOG and this is the first one that I have experienced that just plain did not work on install. If you have Windows 8/8.1 steer clear until the publisher gets their act together.

Holy hell. The gameplay itself is pretty generic everyday JRPG. Nothing new to add. But the story is where I was cringing the much of the time. This game is clearly made for young teenagers. If you like teen romance and thin story underneath, all yours.