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

I finallyyy hit the final chapter last night. When I was playing through it previously, over a year ago, I was a couple of hours from finishing chapter 3, but got busy or whatever and then too much time had passed to just pick it back up.

I still haven't tried out the demo for the remake. I've got one of the special boxes pre-ordered and I should get the game at release, but I don't think I'm going to play it for a while. I've got new Pokemon, new Katamari, and the Tales of Xillia remaster within three weeks in October, and with the added stuff for the Trails remake, I don't want to tackle it without a guide.

Right now I'm in the middle of a major grind relatively early into this last chapter, trying to get 3000 of each type of sepith for an achievement. I'm likely going to get all of the other achievements just by playing through the game, so it feels dumb to leave just one off. I don't know if I'm going to grind it all now before proceeding since I do still have a whole chapter to get through, but there are a couple of quartz that I still need to pick up from the orbment shop and using that sepith now would mean having to restart this grind.

folks they made a good game. i like this one. i really liked the way they handled joshua where he's such a nice and polite young man but when you look at his crafts all being called stuff like 'sever' and 'murder' and 'slit throat' it's clear that this dude has an ice cold past. so when the plot gets there, it's not a shock... you're just along for the ride. that's sort of the way that the plot goes throughout this whole thing. even the plot structure of the game being a tour through the kingdom gets you a sense of how things are and just when you think it's a tour with a small mystery, real shit keeps happening around the margins until you're in the soup. i just really dug this game. the grid stuff reminds me of tactical rpgs kinda but not that much. which is good, i don't like those.

i have a feeling that the gang at falcom can do better so i'm playing the next one now.

I finally finished this. It was only a 58.5 hour playthrough but it took me ages because of divided attention.

Falcom really does make some great RPGs. I really appreciate the fact this very clearly designed to be only the first of at least a few. It's one of those games that very intentionally leaves you with more questions than answers when it's all over.

I'm also a fan of the effort they put into making the world alive. NPC dialogue changes constantly depending on where you are in the story. I certainly didn't take the time to talk to all the NPCs multiple times, but it's clear how much love they put into the world building and game.

I'll miss you until next time Scherazard.

Finally got back to this two nights ago after like three months.

No particular reason that I set it down for so long, other than that I've been really busy and devoting the time and energy to a JRPG just hasn't been feasible. Just been sticking to stuff like Dreamlight Valley and other casuals mostly.

I'm still super busy, and about to head into state testing season, but I really wanted to get back to this.

I didn't get to play for a couple of days, but I got back to this yesterday. (And now my winter break has ended. :c )

I have just started Chapter 2 and am at around 30 hours. I don't think this is generally touted as an especially long JRPG, but the prologue took me about 16 hours. There might have been an hour or two of idle time in there just from me getting distracted by whatever on several occasions, and I did do a bit of early grinding to build up my S-Craft to take out this one particular monster that dropped a lot of EXP and sepith a few times.

Overall, I'm having a great time with this. I'm glad I pushed past my usual disdain for grid/strategy because that's such a minor part of battles most of the time. The combat is fun, and the Orbment system adds some nice layers to your personalization of characters/combat.

The music is great, the story thus far has been interesting, and I like the characters for the most part. I think the writing is really solid, as dialogue doesn't feel corny or stilted, and often reads like natural conversation.

The map rotation is still frustrating, and many sections of a given area are so similar that you can get turned around if you aren't paying attention before a battle/using a guide that said to go whichever direction. That's really my only complaint.

I've wanted to get into these games for a while. I believe I have the first two on Steam (I know I played like half an hour of this first one on there before), but anyone here who knows me at all knows I just...don't like sitting at my PC to game. I realized that I could get the PSP version from the PS store on my Vita, so I grabbed this first one and started it up after finishing XC3 (review still to come).

I'm having a good time so far. I haven't seen much story because I've spent most of the few hours I've put into it grinding a bit to level and get sepith. The characters are likeable enough and I actually like the combat. I'm not a fan of grid/strategy generally but that aspect is pretty minimal so far, and the S-Breaks are cool.

The game looks good, too. I don't love the way the area rotates when you exit a building/section of a map, as it's a little disorienting. You can set the mini-map to not rotate but I might need to look back at the settings to see if I can adjust the screen rotation itself.

I think I figured out what I'd change about this game. It has this sort of strategy-RPG-lite combat on a grid, not to the point where it's a true strategy game, but more than just classic turn-based. The combat is fun in a vacuum but its kinda methodical feel gets repetitive during longer dungeons or outdoor areas. I think it would be better if they committed to slightly more complex/longer battles, but just had less battles overall per section and a smaller overworld. There isn't really grinding in this game, but I'd rather just remove most of the basic enemies from the game and have bigger event battles like a Fire Emblem game that feel like they mean more. Or, if there are going to be this many battles, I'd rather the system be streamlined and feel more like Suikoden, or battles themselves be shortened by reducing enemy HP/damage output. As-is, it sits in this weird spot pacing-wise where I still enjoy fighting but want to skip half of the encounters.

On a positive note, I really like the story, and it's getting better and better.

I may have bitten off more than I can chew with this game. The battle system is kicking my ass! Am I supposed to be spending money on gear upgrades? I barely have enough to purchase 2 upgrades in 3 hours of gameplay (EDIT: by this I mean, I haven't bought new gear in 3+ hours of play and it's starting to become evident), and enemies are demolishing me in 3-4 hits.

I'm 8 hours in, basically just finished 2 hours of non-stop dialogue after getting to Bose, talked to the General and got information about the plane crash. I tried doing some of the side quests (which at this point are literally all "go here kill x", and when I attempt to do just that, I get ripped in half.

If I grind trash mobs, I get like 2-3xp per enemy which is clearly telling me "you are wasting your time doing thing", so again I'll ask, am I expected to sell things and buy gear upgrades? I am terrible at this game.

For reasons unknown, I decided I needed to get into the Legend of Heroes series, after casting it aside for years due to the sheer presumed depth of it. I'm craving an RPG at the moment and since Trials of Mana HD doesn't come out till the end of the month (!) I decided to start on a different title.

I played a few different high-ranked RPGs on my PSP (Persona 3 and Star Ocean) and they really weren't working for me for various reasons.Then I tried Trails in the Sky and 3 hours just flew by - really excellent writing in this!

I especially appreciate the special moments of dialogue, that are irrelevant to the task at hand. People talk to each other like actual human beings and the goofy tropes aren't present, it all feels real and natural. In particular, I was doing the early quest on the farm, and the farmer started asking the protagonist about her relationship with her adopted "brother". It came out of nowhere, but it reminded me of Final Fantasy VII with all the chunks of time (especially in the early game) where it would spend a few minutes developing characters, going more in-depth as to their motivations, etc. I hope this trend continues - from reading reviews of Trails games, this is par for the course. For that, I am excited.

I will say I'm playing on the original PSP version and the combat is sort of ehhh, I really don't like turn-based combat (and REALLY don't like tactical grid-based RPGs), but everything else about the game is overshadowing this for the time being. Hopefully it doesn't grind (heh) on me. This is in stark contrast to the Trials of Mana demo where combat is the absolute highlight for me; action-based battle systems are my favorite, and they made the combat really fluid and satisfying in this remake.

Once Trials of Mana gets here on the 24th I'll probably jump back and fourth. Of course, that means...

...yup, I'll be playing Trails and Trials. That won't get confusing, ever! :D