Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter Review
I’m going to gush a little about RPG storytelling, game design, and evoking emotions via character investment in this review — if you’re here strictly for the magical number, here it is: Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter remake is a 10/10. What’s more, it’s the easiest 10/10 I’ve ever given. There’s a web of reasons and a variety of factors that led to this decision. Let’s talk about why Trails is so goddamn cool.
Trails in the Sky: 1st Chapter is a remake of The Legend of Heroes VI: Trails in the Sky FC, a game originally released in 2004. The game has received a few ports in the past, but largely remained unchanged until this remake. I've never played a single game in the Trails series before, and this is my introduction to the franchise. I have a healthy amount of friends who are big Trails fans— the series is thirteen games long, approximately 1000 hours, not counting for spinoffs or earlier Legend of Heroes games. For a continuous, interlocking story, that is an incredible amount of time to dedicate to one property. For the longest time, I didn’t think it’d be “worth it”, regardless of what my friends said. After playing the Trails 1st remake, I can safely say: I was wrong.
The story here, for those of you who are brand new to the series like me, begins with Estelle and Joshua Bright, daughter and adopted son of legendary hero Cassius Bright, embarking on their journey to become Bracers (community problem-solvers-for-hire, more or less.) Along the way, they meet an incredible cast of interesting characters, uncover sinister plots, share endearing moments, and ultimately save their home from evil forces. While this sounds like standard RPG fare, the way the narrative unfolds, and the way the world is built, is a mastercraft level of storytelling.
The easiest comparison I can make is: it feels kind of like a Dragon Quest game (this is a massive compliment, coming from me). Not necessarily in tone, although it is similar, but more in the spirit of adventure. The Bright kids aren’t “chosen ones” tasked with saving the world, they’re kids setting off on a journey to become better Bracers. Sure, some secondary motivation does pop up from time to time — the mystery behind the disappearing airliner, their father vanishing from the public eye for seemingly no reason, and so on — but the primary driving force is always to “walk the lands they’re meant to protect with their own two feet.”
Aside from the headstrong Estelle and stoic Joshua, there exists a trove of wonderful supporting cast members, from the ornery Agate to the irksome Olivier. Each character has their own motivations for helping (or hampering) the Brights, but they are, each and every one, woven into the main story expertly. Party members come and go as the story dictates, giving other characters equal opportunities to shine. It’s the first time in a long time where I haven’t once thought “dang, I wish there was less of this character.”
The way the the cast interlock with each other is incredible, even beyond their story mandate. Characters like Kloe and Zin, who do not really interact with each other much until the final dungeon, share battle quips and comments as if they were long-lost friends. Olivier naturally fits well with Scherazard (and the ever-present spectre of The Evil Drinking Buddy, Aina), but also can chat it up with Agate. It solidifies the supporting cast as a group that works well together, despite their different priorities and personalities. And that's not even touching the game's many memorable NPCs you'll encounter throughout Liberl.
The game takes great pains to give you a lot to do in-between main missions — side quests and activities pop up on your map every so often via green and blue checkmarks as you progress through the game. These quests can sometimes be pretty simple fetch or kill quests, but every now and then you get one that acts like a bonus story for your characters. For example, helping Tita make (and refine) a new invention to send to her overseas parents. The exciting mixes with the mundane, which is part of being a Bracer, after all.
The game also rewards you for being particular about back-tracking and talking to NPCs. After every major game event, NPCs around the world seem to get new dialogue reflecting the updated world state. This goes a long way towards making the world feel alive, and while the NPC dialogue may not necessarily always be ground-breaking, it still shows a level of care in world-craft that you rarely see.
From there, it’s impossible to discuss the story and world without tapping into spoilers. I went into the remake as unfamiliar and as blind as I reasonably could, and I don't want to lessen the experience for anyone considering jumping into the game as fresh as I did. So, I’ll shift gears to the combat. Part of my prepwork for Trails included playing through the Prologue on the original Trails FC game, to get a feel for the combat and progression systems at play and see how Falcom updated them for the remake. In short, pretty damn good.
There’s two types of combat in the remake: Quick and Tactical. Quick is very standard action game combat (you have a light attack, a heavy attack, dodge variants of both, and your Burst Attack) and was designed from the ground up to make smaller, common enemies easier to take down without entering Tactical mode.
Tactical, or your more standard turn-based combat, is typically reserved for medium enemies and big-boy bosses. You have a timeline showing who goes next in battle, and the ability to manipulate the timeline with abilities (Delay effects, Clock Up EX, etc.) similar to how Final Fantasy X’s timeline worked. There’s elemental affinities, status effects, buffs, debuffs — you don’t need me to describe how RPGs work, it’s all there. What makes it interesting, however, is how the rhythm of combat affects timeline manipulation.
Let me use an example. I have one of my characters use a Craft that generates a lot of stun meter. The attack lands, but doesn’t quite stun the monster, who is about to finish casting a very deadly spell. However, that attack did manage to generate just enough Craft Points to allow that character to use their S-Crafts (high-power abilities, which require 100+ CP to use). Selecting the S-Craft from the quick menu (also known as an S-Break) immediately sends the character from the bottom of the timeline to the top, delaying the enemy’s turn. After using the S-Craft, the stun meter is maxed out, stunning the enemy and canceling that deadly spell from firing. From there, I can chain attacks into automatic critical hits, whittling away the last bit of health and winning the fight.
It’s not enough to stockpile meters and dump it on bosses (although it does help), but instead you really need to engage with the timeline & effects that can reorganize it in your favor. That’s not to say anything of the Bonus system, which randomly assigns buffs to the timeline (for both your party and the enemies). There are abilities that explicitly “steal” bonuses and adds them to that character’s next turn, so keeping an eagle eye on that timeline and stealing when able allows you to compile some insane power. By the end of a boss fight, I felt like a master tactician when I used effective timeline and bonus manipulating abilities — few experiences match stealing and stacking bonuses and spending them with a well-placed Art to decimate a horde of enemies.
Another factor to keep in mind is battlefield positioning of allies and enemies. Some attacks have flanking bonuses if you approach from a certain direction, and many of your abilities will target a certain area of effect. It's possible for spells to whiff and miss the enemy entirely if you are not careful.
A big part of making the combat work as well as it does is Orbments. Fans will already be very familiar with this game mechanic, but for those new to Trails, it's not too dissimilar to Final Fantasy VII‘s Materia system. You have six slots to place Orbments in, and each one you slot both grants bonus stats (HP percent increases, or attack percent increases, etc.), effects (additional chance to be targeted or chance to inflict status with attacks, etc.) and spells (the more orbments of a specific element you add, the stronger tier spells become available to that character).
The limited slots force you to really think about what you need on which character — my Estelle ended up being a primarily strength-based character, so I loaded her up with orbments like Attack 3, Hit 3, Critical 3, and so on. Meanwhile, Joshua always seemed like a more flexible character due to his high speed, so he became more of a generalist (some healing spells, some status affecting spells, etc.) Each character has unique passives that ultimately dictate what role they’d be better suited towards, but you can still be a little flexible with each character, which is nice. Agate, as an example, is primarily a strength-based heavy hitter, but he can also tank somewhat effectively if you add the right orbments.
In addition to buying orbments or finding them in the world, you can also upgrade older orbments by fusing them together with a rare material. This allows you to recycle weaker orbments so you don’t need to spend Sepith to purchase the new ones (effectively reducing any grinding you may have needed to do to near zero). While I have no basis for how this works compared to the original game, I like this system — it allowed me to more effectively choose what to spend Sepith on and removed any semblence of grinding.
An even nicer quality-of-life feature, however, is as a party member leaves the group, their orbments and gear automatically returns to your inventory. There are instances in the game where you effectively control two parties where, despite not having certain party members in your group, you can still swap out gear pieces and orbments between them. This is in contrast to Trails FC, where you couldn't adjust gear or orbments from characters not in your party — and would have definitely been a pain point for a newer player should they not be able to clear the boss.
Your RPG progression systems in the game stem from a few different sources that connect to each other extremely fluidly — as your base level increases you’ll get bonus stats (by the end of your first playthrough, you’ll be around level 50), you have equipment slots (including two accessory slots that are extremely flexible), you can earn “droplets”, one-time use items that raise a stat permanently, and by cooking meals for the first time you can also earn permanent stats. This flows naturally into what every player does when they reach a new town: hit up the stores, buy new gear, adjust and upgrade when possible, and check for new recipes. You’re being rewarded for being thorough, and it feels great.
The music and voice acting in the game is top-notch, and there is only one complaint on my end. Estelle and Joshua are teenagers and sound appropriate (well, Joshua is extremely...capable, for a teenager, but Johnny Yong Bosch manages to capture both his serious moments and his silly moments effectively). The music, remixed versions of the original tracks from Trails FC, sounded fantastic, although I wish there was a little more variety. By the end of the game, exploring the Grancel region and getting the same field music as the beginning of the game felt a little annoying. But it was made up for by having some of the dungeon tracks be extremely exciting and energetic.
Finally, I cannot complete this review without gushing about the cutscene direction. To go off on a bit of a tangent, there is a specific scene in my brain that whenever I think of cool video game cutscenes, it jumps to the forefront. In Dragon Quest X Version 2: The Sleeping Hero and the Guiding Ally, there’s a scene where Anlucia duels her missing brother. The camera tracks Anlucia’s body as she circles her opponent, striking and deflecting blows, showing some truly impressive camera work (for a nearly 15 year old video game). I bring that up, because there are several cutscenes in this game that evoke that same sense of direction — namely, the sword fight between Kloe and Estelle during the stage play in Chapter 2. I had to sit for a minute and catch my breath afterwards, because I had been holding it in the entire scene.
Trails 1st is the type of RPG I can definitively point towards and say “This is a must play.” It’s up there with Dragon Quest XI as a fantastic entry into RPGs for newcomers, as well as a master-class in RPG design for genre veterans. The world, the characters, the progression — everything just flows extremely well. It’s not often that developers get a second crack at an existing game, and remakes can sometimes miss the mark, but I feel more than satisfied as a new player with the game, and am eager to see what comes next. Now begins the long (but not too long) wait for the Trails 2nd remake. Maybe I’ll check out some of the older Legend of Heroes games while I wait...