The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie

I rly love Hajimari (Reverie) till i played it lastyear. Not only it gives very nice closures of the previous arcs, no it also has the largest character number (and my beloved art caster too x) ) it also has a postgame for the very 1. time in the series with a nice little story and a lot of memory-doors like trails in the sky 3 had too. The immersion was very very nice, the music, the gameplay..its just super! Can only recommend this very very hard :)

TL;DR: Good combat, meh music. Trash writing for 2/3rds of the game. A SLOG to get through. Decent game, mechanically speaking. Fun combat system that gets dragged down by Falcom not knowing how to balance any encounter - you'll either decimate the opponents in 2 turns or get insta-killed, especially noticeable if you play on Nightmare or Abyss modes (to be fair, you are warned about getting deleted occasionally if you choose Abyss). I played on Nightmare. There are also way too many characters. It's cool if you're into the finer details of the combat system, but for anyone else it's simply an annoyance. Too much choice can paralyse a player. These are problems inherited from CS3/4 but made worse in this title. Soundtrack is... mediocre. There is drama concerning a certain composer, but he's ironically the least offensive part in this title. Regarding the story and writing, the crux of this franchise: This game has the worst main plot and writing in the franchise so far. It does nothing to advance the overarching storyline, and sloppily ties up a few old plot points. It's an extremely confusing experience for the most part. For a good 2/3rds of the game you'll be doing nothing but retreading old ground with tired old characters, and not a single ounce of quality or joy can be extracted from the slog that those particular sections are. The most vexing thing is, the remaining third of the game - which, in case you're wondering, is the C "route" - showcases what is arguably this series' peak. Extremely good pacing, interesting combat encounters, compelling characters and equally compelling character arcs. Even then, it's not enough to rescue the slow-motion car crash that is the rest of the game. This is the first time I forced myself to finish a game. Perhaps my expectations were too high after 3 years of wait. But I left this game extremely disappointed, so much so that it marks the end of this franchise (and Falcom games in general) for me.