LoH:Trails in the Sky has been one of the most immersive games I have ever played, It has been a long time since I have been so engrossed with a games world. The combat is turnbased on a grid. On your turn you can move, attack, use a craft (special skills unique to each character), cast a spell or run. Their are status effects which can be imposed on your characters or on enemies like blind which lowers chances to hit. Different spells have different elemental values with some monsters being weak to certain elements and strong against others. I've seen plenty of people bashing this game for its use of anime tropes which I think might lead to some misunderstandings, so to clarify that if you hate anime cliches however well their handled this game will frustrate you, however these tropes are executed rather well, Joshua especially surprised me by how much I liked him given that his character type is one I usually loathe. When it comes to the story elements, plotwise I don't wanna give much away even though it was slightly generic I enjoyed how relatively grounded it was, the characters and world building is where this game truly shines. The characters while not all of them are incredibly complex most behave believably and are quite endearing Estelle especially is a fun and upbeat protagonist which truly feels like a teenager unlike many other jrpg protagonists. The worldbuilding is this games biggest strength, there are no npcs with generic lines they are all unique with their own stuff going on and they have new dialogue after almost every story event, finding and reading every line of text in this game can get exhausting but can be very rewarding, throughout your adventures you will learn about this worlds technology, history, geography, factions, culture and more. Also the soundtrack is incredible, I especially like the op it really sells the sense of adventure. I cannot recommend this game enough to fans of story driven JRPGS.
