The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky the 3rd

Overall the game is more straight forward than the other two. It has a ton of lore for most loose ends and you can tell difference in the difficulty from the since you start playing the game. Let´s go over the positives - You got a really amazing cast, most of the primary characters are playable in this game, you will have a difficult time setting up your party members. - Is a nice closure, hinting future plotlines in the other arcs. - There are many minigames some really fun to play that offer a nice break in all the dungeon crawling. Now the Negatives: -Like I say before the game feels more like a dungeon crawler there isn't more field exploration like in the previous games. If you aren't up for this type of challenges the game is going to feel more like a chore. - There are different type of doors that depending on the type of door offers you minigames, lore about a certain character, challenges to get new abilities. I want to focus on the lore type doors a lot of them offer you some very good background for the characters and there are some very interesting, but there are others that are really boring to watch because in this doors there's zero gameplay and just sitting thourgh a door for a character you don't care is going to be longest 30 minutes or more. -If you are first playing this first Arc because you first play the Crosbell or Erebonia arc, the lack of map in the dungeons can be really frustrating, I would recomend using a no spoilers guide from neozeker to be able to hit all those dungeons more easly. - Because you are in an alternative dimension in this game all the elements that doesen't exist in the real world are present here. That means you got plenty of nasty status ailments and you have to be extra focus on your turn order because one enemy can get and insta kill on that character that already had 200 CP fill, so be wary of that. In the end it's up to you to play this game, I'm having a good time with it.

It is a great JRPG, part of one of the best JRPG series (Trails in the Sky), it has really good story, lot of content and it is really fun!

Great closeout to the trilogy.

Despite reading unfavorable reviews about this game and being a bit dismissive about it based on others' opinions, this became my favorite game in the Sky Arc and as of this review, the best Trails game I've played (All Sky games and Cold Steel I and II). The parts of the story are more densely packed together than the other Trails games I've played. Despite the "dungeon crawler" aspect, the dungeon/map exploration parts don't feel drawn out or too long before getting to another story point, which I really like. However, there are fights, especially some optional ones, that really challenged how I prepared for them and strategized. I do have to give credit to the first 2 Sky games for giving a great build up to this game even though pacing was slow at times for them. I like to play as a completionist, so not having to talk to all NPCs with every new town or event change to check it off my list was a welcome break. The main part of the game is focused on Kevin's story, which was done very well. However, the other characters got the attention they deserved to wrap up the Sky arc and set them up well to appear again in future arcs. The soundtrack was also the best I've heard overall in a Trails game. No game is perfect, so there are a few things that I didn't like about the game. Some of the story cutscenes can be quite long (~1 hr) without warning and the option save during them. There are monsters that can create a shadow clone of one of your characters and does so at random, which each shadow clone having its own bestiary entry can be quite annoying to fill. There are also two special quartz that you can only get one of with each playthrough by fulfilling special hidden conditions, but you most likely won't reach either in one playthrough if playing without a guide. Despite those flaws, this game has become my favorite in the Trails series so far and one of the best games I've played in my life.

As someone who has played from Trails in the Sky First Chapter through Trails into Reverie, I think this is the weakest entry in the entire franchise. It has the lowest density of impactful content, and it is largely an epilogue to the Trails in the Sky story arc with some additional information about the Septian Church. It is still worth playing (be sure to hit every door!), and you will miss out on some very important details about the world and character backstories/relationships if you skip it, but I think it's the weakest link so far. If that is what I have to say, why did I give it 5 stars? That's just how good the The Legend of Heroes is. Even if they are few and far between, the peaks are Sky High.