The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky SC

yay peak very nice game I love it

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I grew up on JRPGs, so I like to delve into the heavy hitters from time to time. Most are duds, but I'll occasionally stumble on a good one. The Sky trilogy is not part of that club. The main plot moves too slowly to ever maintain momentum, the characters are one-dimensional, the side quests are largely a snooze fest, and the battles are heavily repetitive. The writing has it's moments, but dialogue tends to go on and on for no reason, repeating the same plot points or simply throwing in unnecessary "Good idea", "Okay, cool", "See you later"," and the like. It literally feels like they hired a main writer who knew how to write, then a secondary writer whose sole purpose was to drive the word count up. There are a few good auxiliary elements like the soundtrack and minor NPCs who respond to the major events, making it seem like the world doesn't revolve just around you. But those are there to support the gameplay and the story, which at their core, are largely mediocre. A few years ago I forced myself to finish Sky FC (which is a significantly worse game). I gave SC a try because of all of the hoopla about how it made the dismal Sky FC worth it. While SC is a decent game, I regret buying it...but I won't regret finishing it, because after 20 hours I'm done. I just don't have the time anymore to waste on mediocre games.

I've now probably played through half of this game's story but it just doesn't radiate the same kind of magic the first one did. The first game was pure awesome whereas this just feels boring. You'll be revisiting the same locations you've already scoured in the first game. Despite being promoted to senior status, you'll still be taking on the silliest of tasks. There is one task where you have to run around a factory to retrieve some technomarbles an incompetent factory worker had lost while he was playing with a cat... Why couldn't he find them himself? In his own words - it was too much of a chore so he had to call seasoned fighters from the Bracer guild. The tasks are inconsistent with the main story to say the least. The story itself is faily straightforward and predictable. You're up against a sinister organization as soon as you start playing. Every chapter I've played so far introduces you with one of their members, which all happen to look like a bunch of snotty teenagers going through their too-sexy-for-my-shirt rebel period. Discovering their secret plan loses its appeal right after the first encounter. The more I play this game the more I feel like I'm doing it solely out of courtesy to its predecessor. Oh btw, the soundtrack is the same as in the first game and is best left muted - most of it is just generic elevator music (it is kind of strange I didn't notice this while playing the first game)