The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky

This game pulled from a lot of common JRPG elements and was very reminiscent of the early "Tales Of" games, which sounds great! I mean, it's pulling from solid roots, it's pretty to look at, the battle system shows promise to develop across the game. Awesome! 10 hours later. ... grind.. grind...grind... grind... do our characters even have motivation? I mean, I know where this paper-thin plot is going and where my next objective is.. but does ANYONE have ANY personality beyond being a hollow cliché? grind... grind.. grind... Disgaea grinds less than this. In the end, I put 20 hours into this game. I got partially into chapter 2. For a game that took more than 10 hours to get through chapter one, there was less than 30 minutes of plot. It's an RPG where you play no character because the characters have no character. Your choices are virtually nonexistent. Your ability to customize your party is severely limited by each battle having such a small amount of exp that you never feel progress. I don't even want my money back, just my time.

Despite its positive qualities, it's difficult to recommend the first chapter of The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky in the modern era. The combat and story are relatively simple and straightforward, with the script being written with a young adolescent audience in mind; meaning that the target demographic has either grown beyond this title or are young and observing newer products. Because this chapter has to serve as an introduction to the world, its characters, and its story, it must fall short of its potential. In order to preserve its secrets and revelations made in later instalments it must withhold information presently, meaning until the concluding portions much of the story must remain simple and often advances due to the chronic impetuousness of any and all characters, which grows wearisome pretty quickly. The characters being an expansion of one or two traits doesn't help matters. They simply cannot act any other way. For an apt portrayal, see Gene Wilder's Wonka as myself and Mike TeaVee as many characters, "don't, stop, come back." The combat system is also relatively simple, without too much hidden depth. For example, I liked the principle of having a battlefield, as opposed to a static menu of units, until I realised that it does little and you prepare and play as if it weren't even present. With this assessment in mind, the strongest point of Trails in the Sky is the depth of its world construction, that each NPC has a unique line of frequently changing dialogue that reflects the actions of the player and the story's progression, which drastically enhances the plot and gives the illusion that the world and story are more nuanced. Many similar titles fail in this capacity, and their worlds appear more hollow and shallow for it. There is also some tertiary enhancements; additional Japanese voice acting and portraits. Without the turbo combat button and not advancing the dialogue rapidly, it would have been tedious, so I don't recommend them.

So far I've played the game approximately 8-10 hours. After a rather slow start, the game seem to gradually pick up pace and more side quests open up. The game's narrative is rather linear, but you're not restricted from exploring areas that are not related to the main story line. The games biggest strengths are it's strong characters and well-written dialogue. Music is generally well-composed. The game's graphics are nothing to write home about, but they don't get in the way of immersion either. The game's turn-based combat easy to get into, but it also introduces some depth in the form of quartz magic, which is somewhat reminiscent of Final Fantasy 7's materia magic system. Much like in FF7 the characters also have "limit breaks" that they can activate after battling enemies for some time. The first 8-10 hours you'll be mostly journeying with only two party members, but occasionally you have to escort helpless civilians to safety - they will also take part in the combat, although you can't control them and they mostly just run away from enemies. The biggest complaint I have about the game so far is it's lack of optional content. The world is rich in lore and very open for exploration - there's a lot of houses and isolated forest areas to go explore, but these optional areas don't have any chests to loot or any unique enemies to fight. Exploring towns is relatively meaningless, since the only thing you're going to find are NPCs that might have interesting stories to tell - they never offer quests or give you rewards. All the questing in the game are done through an adventurer's hall, where you can search for new missions and collect your reward afterwards. This has been clearly done to make keeping track of quests easier, but unfortunately it also makes exploration less enjoyable. To sum up, The Trails in The Sky is an enjoyable RPG with an interesting story and character, enjoyable combat and a truly open world to explore. I warmly recommend it to everyone.

pretty good

Otherwise fun