The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky (2004)

[Played on Steam Deck]

Started: August 1, 2025

Finished: September 4, 2025

Play time: 90 hours

Completion Level: 92%, 25/27 achievements (UGH. More on this toward the end.)

My reviews are usually pretty extensive/detailed because I write them for my memory’s sake, in case I want to look back at my thoughts later. I don’t usually include any major plot points or spoilers, but I did mark my thoughts on the final chapter as a spoiler just because I talk about elements of the final dungeon/fight and how pissed off they made me. Some people might consider things like that a spoiler so I just did it to be safe. There are NO plot spoilers, though.

I’M DONE. Finished the game at nearly 1am and then went to bed. I had most of this review ready to go, but cleaned it up and added my thoughts on the final chapter before posting.

I previously got to near the end of the second-to-last chapter/chapter 3 in 2023 on Vita, but didn’t finish the game at that time. Had also done part of the prologue probably twice before that. Despite the fact that this was technically the fourth time I’ve started this game, I truly did enjoy it. The few complaints that I have with it are vastly outweighed by everything that is done incredibly well. I also laugh every time I abbreviate the title because, well, TitS. Haha.

A note about my playtime: I’m slow with my JRPGs. I goof around, grind when it’s probably unnecessary, take a lot of time exploring and talking to people, etc. There are probably also a good 8-10 hours of idle time here, though, as the Deck doesn’t pause your game even if you pull up Home, so every time I got distracted by messages, got up to go to the bathroom, deal with cat stuff, make food, etc., it was just racking up time. I also spent at least 3.5 hours on ONE instance of grinding in the final chapter (more on that later), and probably 2 in the prologue. The prologue alone was probably 15 hours of playtime.

I used a guide as I went through this game. I didn’t want to miss things, and I intended to get all of the achievements because it was totally possible to do so just playing through the game. But I fucked up…

Story:

I’ve read complaints about how slow the story progression is, and I can concur that it’s a slow burn, but it’s so worth it! The beginning is a bit of a slog in that Estelle and Joshua are becoming junior bracers, taking on little quests and errands and otherwise following a “we’re just doing normal training stuff” path. (Plus, I’ve done part or all of the prologue four times at this point and am sick of it. It’s LONG.) But then things open up and the plot thickens little by little. That said, the entire game feels like a prologue in itself, leading into the real meat of the story that’s to come. That’s not a bad thing, but it makes me think of how this series could have tanked early on with so many unresolved plot elements or stories yet untold. Really glad that that’s not the case. I’ve read that the series is apparently coming to its conclusion soon, too, so it’s a good time to dive into it.

The dialogue in this game is so well done. The conversations all feel real—including any goofiness or Estelle outbursts. It doesn’t have the stilted or dramatic feel of some RPG dialogue. Rather, it truly reads as if characters are conversing like normal people, expressing their personalities and relationships with each other. NPCs also have new things to say quite often—like, most of a given town’s residents will have updated dialogue after even the most minor story events. Much of the story is focused on the game world’s history, politics, and people, so the fact that NPCs seem to respond to current events makes it feel very lived-in.

The aforementioned politics certainly become a major aspect of the plot, gradually, but it’s never overwhelming or confusing. The entire game takes place in one kingdom, but we’re given a fair amount of backstory about the war with the neighboring empire from ten years prior, and the tenuous but peaceful relationship with the empire now. The game truly strikes a perfect balance with the way Estelle and Joshua start their journey as junior bracers, slowly become more and more involved in deeper plots, and meet important characters along the way.

Characters:

Overall, a truly lovable cast of characters who have distinct personalities, strengths, and weaknesses. Estelle’s archetype is not one of my favorites; I don’t hate the ditzy-and-headstrong, attack-without-thinking types, but I generally don’t find it cute or appealing, especially in a main character. Her lack of attention to detail or knowledge of how things in her world work just serves as a vehicle for other characters to explain things to the player—in the beginning, anyway. There are a number of times when she does make really good observations or suggestions, though, so everyone treating her like an oblivious idiot was sometimes annoying. She’s a good girl and she’s all about doing the right thing and helping others, so I like her well enough. Doesn’t hurt that she’s a beast with her staff. I like that the teenaged characters are actually portrayed as such for the most part, rather than the typical “here’s a group of 16-year-olds saving the world and being totally competent and emotionally prepared.” Joshua’s maturity and smarts balance out Estelle’s traits well, but then there are also older and more experienced characters who provide further guidance and lessons.

I loved Kloe and Tita, and really enjoyed a number of supporting characters/NPCs, like Nial, Colonel Richard, the Capuas, and Matron Teresa, to name a few. Agate is another who embodies a character type that I’m not fond of—the harsh, disagreeable loner who feels the need to call you useless and dumb constantly. He gets better, as they usually do, but I have such an aversion to that archetype that it always takes me a while to warm up to them.

By the end of the game, there are still major characters who we know next to nothing about, so I’m looking forward to the supposed dive into their backstories in Second Chapter.

Combat:

I’m really not a fan of grid-based or tactical combat, so going into this series knowing the battles are on a grid was a bit of a leap of faith. However, it turned out to be a pretty basic version of the system, and I didn’t mind it. I don’t want to spend a bunch of time in every little fight figuring out placement and movements, etc., but it wasn’t really necessary most of the time. Since there is no “defend” command, early on I would sometimes move a character around while trying to build up CP with other characters or to conserve EP, but often range itself was not a problem outside of boss fights.

The way that EXP is awarded basically discourages grinding, but I did occasionally do so to build up CP for S-Crafts (Super Crafts) before boss fights, or to fight the occasional monsters that dropped big EXP and sepith but usually run before you can pull off normal attacks (Shining Poms). Because I was using a guide to make sure I didn’t miss hidden jobs, extra Bracer points from jobs, or specific items, I was usually over-leveled and would get like 2 exp per fight before leaving to the next major area. Even then, I rarely felt like I could just fight a normal monster group and one-shot everything, even with upgraded equipment, being at the perceived appropriate level or higher, and with carefully-constructed orbment setups. That’s not to say that the fights were particularly difficult at that point, but it’s not a game where I ever felt totally safe just because I had done some grinding. Monsters hit pretty hard unless you’re really over-leveled for the area, at which point they just do a flat 0. You also have party members coming and going quite often, and it got frustrating dropping back to just two characters all the time and limiting my available quartz.

The animations for arts and skills are impressive. I really liked that aspect of the battles. One minor issue I have with the combat is that you can’t back out if you accidentally select a character’s S-Craft by moving left or right instead of up/down (surprisingly easy to do quite often with a joystick) on the battle menu and hit A because you were just going through the motions of selecting normal attack. When you’ve spent time grinding and building up CP for these specials, it can be incredibly frustrating to be forced to use it.

There are also fun turn bonuses which can boost your earned sepith, give you a crit or strength boost, heal your HP or EP, etc. These appear to the right of the turn order bar, and they shift up every turn. You can strategize with this by taking out certain enemies to steal the bonus that would have triggered on their turn, giving one of your characters that bonus instead.

There is definitely more depth to the combat, turn order, bonuses, etc., but my overall thoughts are that it’s an enjoyable enough system and didn’t feel like a chore.

Exploration/Maps:

My main complaint for this game is with the maps/navigating dungeons or any of the areas surrounding a town. There is a mini-map, which is generally a helpful tool in a game, but the screen itself rotates when you exit buildings or a fight, and you can see very little of the area on the mini map (as it’s super zoomed in). Because every screen for a given area looks basically the same (for example, you could go through three screen-shifts for any given road, but the road and backgrounds are all super similar), it’s easy to get turned around. You might have been going east, but exit a battle and your camera is facing the other way now, and then find you’ve been going west since that fight because the screen rotated. I did turn off the mini-map rotation because that was an option (but not of the screen), and it made it a bit easier to keep track of which way I was actually going, but overall, this was a continuously annoying thing to deal with in areas that are just endless screens of the same, with many, many forks.

You do a lot of backtracking through areas for quests, and it’s just generally not super fun to navigate roads between dungeons and towns in this game. There is a world map as well, but it’s really plain with city names, showing you where all of the major places are in respect to one another. Some dungeons also have no mini map at all, just a compass, and those were always hell, even with the guide.

Music:

Not a whole lot to say here other than that the music is fantastic. The battle track is fun and jazzy, and if your whole party is low on HP, it changes to a more dire-sounding track. If you recover HP, it reverts back to the original. I really loved the theme for the city of Zeiss.

Other:

There’s…a lot here, haha.

Two of the game's achievements are for collecting/buying all issues of the Liberl News and all chapters of the Carnelia story. The news one isn't so bad, as long as you think to check the general store multiple times in a given chapter. Annoying and tedious, but not so bad. The Carnelia chapters, however, are typically given to you by absolutely random NPCs who you might have to backtrack to in a limited window of time before leaving an area forever. One example is, before leaving Zeiss at the start of the final chapter, you have to go all the way back through the tunnels between the Zeiss and the previous border gate, go on top of the border wall, and down like three screens to talk to a soldier who will give it to you. This is the shit that I already hate about JRPGs, but it's also completely nonsensical and over the top here. Who the fuck would ever go back that far and specifically up to that NPC?

You don’t earn money from combat—just experience and sepith. Sepith are little fragments of elemental material called septium. This is refined into quartz, which are then placed into orbments (this world’s equivalent of electronic and fuel-powered devices) for a variety of uses. In the player’s case, you use your sepith to “buy” (refine) quartz to add to your combat orbment, which then provides you with a variety of what is essentially this game’s form of magic. You also need sepith to unlock your characters’ orbment slots to place those quartz in.

To earn money, you’ve got to complete Bracer Guild jobs. The only other way is to sell stuff, namely food. As you go through the game, you’ll buy food items from stalls, bars, inns, and grocers, and once you eat a food item, you learn the recipe. There are a couple that are good for making a bit of profit. The best one (apple ice cream) is available to you in chapter 1, but it’s a bit of a pain to do at that point because you have to buy ingredients from two different shops. In subsequent chapters, it’s all in one shop that you can buy the ingredients from, cook 99, sell 99, repeat. It’s a 4k profit, so not a LOT, but it’s all but necessary to be able to afford new equipment, because there’s an end to every area’s Guild jobs. (Note: You can also trade sepith for money, but considering your need for said sepith, it’s not something I ever did other than early on in the prologue when I had an excess.)

Shortly after starting the final chapter, I had to do a sepith grind. I’m not normally a die-hard trophy/achievement hunter outside of 100%ing visual novels, but since I WAS using a guide, and because I was going to get every other achievement in this playthrough, I decided to tackle the one that was going to be most tedious: have 3000 of every type of sepith (7). It has to be at the same time, not just over the course of the game. Considering the fact that getting 20 of a single element in one fight is on the higher end outside of boss or Shining Pom fights, and the fact that you’re using sepith regularly to open slots or buy quartz, 3000 is…a shitton.

As I mentioned, there is an enemy called Shining Pom, this series’ version of a metal slime or cactuar. Only one can be found in a specific area in each chapter (so five total, and defeating one in each chapter earns you an achievement), but you can farm it because it does respawn when you leave the screen and come back. Normal attacks rarely connect and do minimal damage, and the Poms are immune to spells. There are always three individual Poms in that single encounter, but they almost always immediately run on their turns. So, you have to make sure you get a preemptive attack, and use your S-Crafts to skip to the top of the turn order and hopefully take one out between your available characters. Killing one nets you a good chunk of experience, and 40 of each type of sepith. If you kill two, or all three, you get a max of 70 of each type of sepith. I fought the one in the prologue several times, as it was a good time to grind and I wanted to open up my orbment slots as soon as possible. In the final chapter, most available characters have a new S-Craft that will hit all enemies, but you still need to be several levels higher than when you arrived in the area before you can take Shining Poms out in one hit. Unleeeeess you equip one of your new party members with accessories to boost his already-high attack, and then make sure to get a turn bonus critical. Then you can one-shot all three. This means saving, sneaking up behind the pom, seeing if the crit bonus is on the board, using “move” on your characters until that bonus is up top, and then triggering that character’s S-Craft to jump the turn order and use said craft. If the crit bonus isn’t there, he’ll still do a lot to all three poms, but then you’ll need to use your other character’s crafts to finish them off, and that would just be much more time-consuming in the long run. Because you need your CP maxed to 200 for this to be effective, that means a lot of grinding on enemies in the area to rebuild it before taking on another pom, or doing an extensive run of cooking apple ice cream to sell, to then buy a new food in the area that gives 25 CP each time. It’s about 69k to max them in your inventory, and you’d need 8 for a single character without any other battles. I would typically use that character’s S-Craft to kill three, respawn the Pom, and use the other three characters’ S-Crafts to kill another batch of three without reloading for a crit bonus. Then I’d do some normal fights and mix in a few meals, repeat. So a variety of ways to tackle this task, but it’s an hours-long process either way.

See below for my victory picture of when I achieved this after probably 3-4 hours (two of my sepith types were veryyy low when I started):

There were a couple of achievements that I had to save scum for (having all weapons, because in the final chapter you only get either Estelle’s or Joshua’s) and two that are related to choosing your party in the final area. For the weapon one, I just saved before picking and made a separate file for the weapon I wasn’t going with. Apparently the achievement just reads across your save files once you get the remaining weapons in the final area. For the party one, I had to get the first one and then reload to before the fight I’d just done, and redo it. You can alternatively play through NG+ but it’s not something I’m planning to do, considering I have many more games in this series alone to tackle and a remake to play.

And all of this leads to my thoughts on the Final Chapter. Whew.

I dropped a star from my rating solely because of how much of the final chapter was just straight ass. An extensive stealth segment (which you have to do perfectly for all bonus BP), the Shining Pom grind that was several hours of my life, a final dungeon where 90% OF THE CHESTS WERE MONSTER CHESTS WITH SUPER ANNOYING MONSTERS, SO IT TOOK AN ETERNITY, and the final boss fight(s) which were absolute garbage because it was TWO HOURS of just chipping away in FOUR SEPARATE FIGHTS. I couldn’t use S-Crafts because of an achievement, but I doubt they would have made that much of a difference.

The worst of it all—and this isn’t really the fault of the final chapter—is that there’s an achievement for opening every single chest in the game, AND examining it a second time for a little line calling you greedy or saying treasure doesn’t respawn or whatever. I got to the final chest in the game, and the achievement didn’t pop. I checked the achievement itself and I was at 159/163. I know I got every chest, but somewhere along the way, I didn’t re-examine four of them. So I fucked up my 100% playthrough by not getting that achievement or the one for getting all of the other achievements. I really should have kept track of the chests each chapter, but I thought I was being really diligent about checking them all a second time. I had a few more rooms in the final dungeon when this happened, and I was already super pissed about all of the monster chests. I HATE when a game disrespects my time like the final dungeon and boss, so this whole thing left me in a really sour mood. I never would have spent so much time on the Shining Pom grind or some of the other achievements otherwise, and only did it because it was possible to do everything in one playthrough and there weren’t any achievements related to post-game bullshit that I never do in JRPGs. It’s my own fuck-up, but mannnn, was I doubly angry during the final boss.

(Example of one of the chest "lines." My disapproval was not silent.)

Plot-wise, the final chapter was great. A lot of things are starting to come together, and the writing was still solid.

I do still really want to continue with the series, but it’s going to be a while. I’ve got Pokémon Legends: Z-A, the new Katamari, and the Tales of Xillia remaster coming out back to back to back next month, and I just really need a JRPG break before then. I have one of the Trails Remake limited boxes preordered and will get the game this month, but I still want to play through it with a guide if there’s updated content, so I’m holding off.

Trails in the Sky hooked me from minute one. It feels like that 90s adventure anime you loved. For those unfamiliar with Trails, this is the first entry in the Trails in the Sky trilogy, which at the same time takes place in a broader storyline of several games.

Regardless of its retro JRPG aesthetics the world is very much alive, every NPC character has something going on, or has something to share in regards to what they think, or what is happening around them.

What I liked the most in this game was the level of detail that made everything seem so deep.

Said that, the game does play with some classic anime-ish tropes that are not for everyone. You have your silly hero with a big heart, you have not-Sasuke (sorry Joshua), you have the beautiful mystical lady, the mechanical loligirl, the guy who can’t resist ladies, and so on…

I also would like to add, it burns… but very slowly. It takes its time to everything. We could say the whole game is a prologue to the actual second game. So, if you are riding this train, you should know: it’s gonna be a long trip.

The battle mechanics are quite clear, you are not over-explained how they work, some tutorials here and there and you are ready to go. I can’t say if the game is grinding, or I enjoyed grinding on it, so it really depends on your taste.

The music is a yes, of course.

Differently to other series, you could play the other Trails game, but most of each individual sub-series follows the pattern of having a long first introductory game as a big prologue, and then moves on into a main plot, that after a while connects to ongoing threads from previous entries. Therefore, I strongly recommend this to be your place to start.

If you think reading is boring this is not a game for you.

I definitely recommend this for 90s anime fans, JRPGs fans, retrorpg style gamers, and overall people who enjoy detailed RPG worlds.

First off, the gameplay. The combat is a middle ground between traditional turn-based JRPGs & strategy RPGs like Fire Emblem. Like Fire Emblem, Trails in the Sky uses a grid system which controls where your characters can move. But like a traditional turn-based JRPG, you have an overworld and are teleported to a separate dimension for battles (at least that’s how it feels). I will say that, as someone who hasn’t played many turn-based JRPGs & didn’t enjoy a more traditional one like Dragon Quest XI, I actually did enjoy this battle system at times. I say at times because random encounters with standard monsters got old after a while.

The story on the other hand is pretty good & has plenty of charm. It starts out as a pretty low-stakes affair, with Estelle & Joshua travelling from one city to another, being contracted to deal with whatever local crisis the citizens are dealing with and getting the assistance of a colourful cast of characters along the way. But as they get closer & closer to their goal of becoming senior Bracers, the stakes get higher & higher, building towards a heart-breaking cliffhanger ending that will leave you eager to start Second Chapter (the game’s direct sequel) but nevertheless wraps up most of the game’s overarching plotlines.

The amazing thing is that, even though this game & Second Chapter were supposed to be a single game, but got split into two games to make its targeted release date, it feels like this story was always meant to be a two-parter! Either that’s a testament to how good of an idea the two-parter angle was or Falcom did an excellent job making the split work. Either way, multi-game arcs are seemingly the standard going forward, so it’ll be interesting to see if I feel the same way about the Crossbell & Cold Steel arcs. It’s definitely a very JRPG trope-heavy plot, but that’s not a bad thing so long as the plot itself is engaging, which this one is.

As for the technical aspects, the visuals hold up pretty well for an almost 20-year-old game (perhaps this is due to the 2D sprite art used for the characters just inherently aging better than 3D rendering), although the environments (which do seem to be rendered in 3D) haven’t aged as gracefully, but still fare better than most games from this time period that aimed for a more realistic art-style. And the music! Oh, boy is the music great! Created in-house by Falcom’s Sound Team jdk, the OST of Trails in the Sky is full of bangers & I’ve already added quite a few of them to my liked songs on Spotify!

Conclusion Despite it’s age, Trails in the Sky is a pretty good RPG with a fun & captivating story that balances telling a self-contained story & kicking off the ongoing narrative that defines the Trails series to this day, paired with gameplay that, while far from perfect, estabilshes a decent foundation to build on in future games. I just hope that the rest of the saga can at least live up to the standard this opening chapter has set in my mind…

Ratings

Creative score (story, gameplay, voice acting, art direction): 8/10

Technical score (graphics, audio, performance)): 7.5/10

Business Practices score: 8/10 (Nothing egregiously bad, but Falcom’s hesitation regarding releasing the PC version in the West when it was clear that the PSP’s struggles here were a key contributor to the initial release failing commercially does knock off a few points, but I’ll save the details of that for when I finish & review Second Chapter)

Overall score (my thoughts on a game’s overall quality, does not consider the business practices unless they are detrimental to the experience): 8.5/10

To be honest I hated this game at first. The story took awhile to pick up and I was trying to grind not realizing the game only lets you grind so much and relies more on skill and ability rather than the FF style press attack to con-win-ue. It's got a really deep skill system, that's a little bit FF7 - materia style but different in a good way. The story gets more interesting after getting out of the first area, and I'm enjoying the side questing as well. I definitely want to keep playing once the "now playing" list dies down some.

4 years later and I'm still chipping away at this. Just got to the farm... at the beginning...