Posted on: November 9, 2024
maxav
Games: 423 Reviews: 7
New Country, New Style
Trails Through Daybreak, like Cold Steel before it, represents a drastic shift in gameplay style, with a simplification of mechanics to make it more easy accessible to people who are new to the series or RPGs in general. This has been a trend followed by many RPGs in the last few years, but, unlike the recent entries in the Final Fantasy series, which have been simplified to a degree that can make combat feel more dumbed-down than streamlined, the new style of combat in Daybreak is more geared towards keeping dungeons flowing quickly once the player feels they've done enough leveling. If you think fighting a low level enemy would take too long for the rewards it would give, just attack it on the overworld a few times to make it go away. If things get too tough, just press one button and fights shift over to turn-based style so you can plan ahead and use spells/crafts. I've heard a few complaints that this can make the game a bit too easy at times, which can be true, but I've played enough Trails games to know that the first entry in a new arc tends to ease players into the flow of combat before ramping up difficulty in the sequel. As for the writing, Daybreak has a cast that made a much more positive first impression on me that any previous cast has, even going back to the very first Trails in the Sky game. Toneally, it is much more serious than the Cold Steel arc which, while very good, especially towards the end of CS4, tended to be a bit more cutesy than I would like out of a fairly serious political drama. Instead, the style of writing is much more in line with the Crossbell arc, with much more parallels to current real-world issues presented with more gravitas. Again, to contrast with Cold Steel, there is no fascism monster that makes people magically turn into nationalists and stops when you hit it with a sword. Now, it's just people and systems being flawed and the characters trapped in those systems doing their best to deal with it. Great entry in the series
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