Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky is the 6th role-playing game in the unknown, Japanese gaming series, and was first released back in 2004 and is the first game in a trilogy of games. With the limited release of Japanese role-playing games this year, I decided to see what this series had to offer.
It doesn't seem you need to have played any of the older Legend of Heroes games to understand the plot of this one, but what plot is developed in this entry is shaky at best. The plot suffers from the same problem Lunar: Silver Story had in which, the plot doesn't really kick it into high gear until halfway through the game.
What's present for the first 20 hours is merely one weak, over-arching plot, in this case: your dad, Cassius Bright, going missing, and a series of meaningless subplots. Writing a plot like this can either give characters time to develop, or bore the player to tears. Unfortunately, Trails in the Sky falls into the latter category. It isn't like there aren't a lot of characters to develop, it's just none of them really evolve during that time. The weak over-arching plot of your father going missing is lightly touched on now and again, but since they build up your father as this great hero, him being missing doesn't really draw out much concern. At the beginning, your concern that something had happened to your father through some accident, but instead of building up the suspense, they shut it down by making it seem that no matter what situation your father is put in, he'll be able to handle it.
By the halfway point, the real plot finally makes it appearance, but even that gets mishandled. The villains are never properly developed, it seems half of the events happen off-screen, and only a few of the plot elements get a thorough explanation. The big issue is that the plot doesn't make the crisis seem all that urgent or that caustic. The slow pacing of the game hampers any momentum or excitement potential. So with the beginning and middle mishandled, surely this game can at least close everything out in a nice resolution. Wrong. The game has villains making uncharacteristic U-turns, convenient plot devices are deployed and everything ends on one huge cliff-hanger. Yes, the game ends on one giant cliff-hanger that involved an underlying plot involving certain main characters and villains in operation behind the scenes. All of which seemed a lot more interesting than what we were fed for 40+ hours. So what the plot did was stall out for 20 hours, didn't take the time to set anything up in a coherent manner, throws together a resolution, then has the audacity to tell us in the final minutes of the game that the real plot has yet to begin. There's an industry word we use for plots that do that, its called 'Bullshit'.
Trails in the Sky, or TitS for short, sets everything up for us to purchase a sequel to this gaming trilogy that may or may not come to the United States in a bigger douche-bag move than Golden Sun 3. A law must be written that game writers can't do this, use an entire game just to build up another game's plot. They had over 40 hours to get something done in this game, and they chose to squander it. I can understand the concept of a sequel, but at least provide something meaningful the first time, and take it somewhere else the next time. Don't just make a first game to set up the other games, otherwise you're just the dot Hack series all over again.
The characters don't do much to save this game. The two main characters Joshua and Estelle don't create a lot of memorable moments. Joshua's personality is as dry as the desert, but Estelle is decently portrayed as someone who doesn't quite think before she acts, but not in a cliche way that gets predictable or annoying. The game likes to play on the fact that Joshua isn't Estelle's real brother, so there's still room for a romance story to take place, as awkward as that may be. But that never really takes off either, as that development is cut short near the end of the game, we just get those almost-moments for most of the game. I guess it'll be another one of those things that will be featured in the next game. The rest of the cast really doesn't leave an impression, none of them really develop beyond what we're given when we first see them. Overall, the plot and characters were poorly executed and none of which created any sort of dramatic or memorable moments.
Battles are fought in a turn-based, free-roaming field similar to turn-based strategy games. Think something of a hybrid between Star Ocean and Final Fantasy X. Players can move around the battlefield, avoiding enemy spells or moving in for the kill, and turns are kept track of by a vertical list along the left-hand side. Though it's handy to see what turns are coming up, it's not as reliable as Final Fantasy X's turn count. Often times, extra turns will crop up in the list either from enemies casting spells, different special moves pushing down other participants down the list, or getting a preemptive strike.
Every now and then bonuses will appear next to spots on the turn list that offer some advantage, so having tactics to reshuffle the turn order around can play into some element of strategy. The bonuses aren't varied or that frequent, but that just means battles won't necessarily be decided by them either; which is good since it removes that fickle element of luck.
Getting into battles takes a page from Persona or similar games in that, enemies appear on screen while you're roaming around, and its up to you to either avoid them or tactically get behind them for a preemptive strike. An issue arises when it's you that's trying to avoid an enemy's advance. Your party members will follow you Chrono Trigger-style, and if you're in the middle of running away, the enemy can catch the tail end of your party and create a battle to your disadvantage.
Another issue that plagues the game is, it's too easy to accidentally run into enemies. They start off almost completely transparent until you get close to them. Until you get an orb that let's you see them in full from a distance, you're stuck either blindly running through areas, or walking for most of the game. I understand designers like to take their customizable parts and apply them to many areas of the game, but having the enemies be nearly invisible makes no sense. Is everyone in this world just near-sighted? Are enemies semi-transparent? No, they're not. It's just a clumsy way to get more involvement from orbs.
While actual combat is handled competently, the battle mechanics never really change throughout the game. The most change you'll see is from unlocking new spells through higher tier orbs or a new, character-specific special abilities. Aside from that, most battles will play out with the same basic strategy each time, which can really put a strain on the game play when the same grouping of enemies crop up repeatedly. On that note, Trails in the Sky has a few moments where they throw the exact same grouping of enemies at you constantly, mostly towards the end of the game.
The customizable part of combat comes from allocating orbs to each player. Each orb has an elemental affiliation and an effect. Effects range from a boost in statistics or added effects in battle like adding poison to your attacks or lowering spell-casting time. But there aren't enough orbs in the game to really diversify characters, so everyone's set up comes down to similar combinations of orbs. Orb elemental affiliation determines which spells you're able to cast. More fire orbs will open up more powerful fire spells. But again, since most setups will be the same, there isn't a lot of spell diversity. There's also a criminally low amount of equipment choices, and none of the accessories really provide much in battle. Gear setup follows the old tradition of 'just put on the weapons and armor with the better stats'. Experience points are handled by the modern concept of, the higher your level, the fewer and fewer experience points your character will get, which keeps people from over-leveling.
The graphics are typical, well-executed PSP-level graphics. There are a few spots where corners may have been cut, like airship propellers sticking out of octagonal engines. The character sprites actually remind me of a mesh between Super Mario RPG and Golden Sun, which is a good thing. They're animated, it's clear what they're doing, overall, the traits of each character's personality are conveyed through their sprites. The game has a habit of re-using a lot of the hallways and rooms for dungeons, the final dungeon being a big offender. I'm not kidding that the final dungeon is thrown at you with similar looking decor throughout all 4 floors and you have no map to navigate it with. You'll be traversing through this labyrinth with the feeling of constant deja vu.
Soundtrack doesn't quite match the on-screen action a lot of the times. Though it is worth noting that when a battle turns dire, the music shifts accordingly. Outside that one clever touch, the soundtrack isn't winning any awards.
And just to kick TitS while it's down, the title doesn't make much sense. Legend of Heroes, I'll take that part since it loosely fits the theme of the game, but Trails in the Sky? The sky has nothing to do with the plot, airships aren't even heavily involved like Skies of Arcadia. I'm not sure what trails in the sky has to do with this game, but I wouldn't be against launching it into orbit just so some more sky was involved.
The game does get a few key things right: one being failing a battle just means having the option to restart from the beginning of that battle, and the other is the Bracer notebook. The notebook keeps your progress in the game by jotting down what has happened and where you need to go. This minimizes any confusion from taking an extended break with the game and jumping back in.
Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky fails... in the Sky. It's just one missed opportunity after another. All it needed was a little more care and attention. Orbs could've been used and combined to create new skills or spells, more gear choices could've opened up the battle mechanics, the turn-based game play could've taken a page from Radiant History, characters could've been put through a lot more interesting scenarios instead of playing it safe, and a host of other minor tweaks could've made this game a winner. Instead, its a dud. Trails in the Sky may have a hard time getting continued support like this and will be overlooked in favor of better games in the genre, at least by me. TitS or not.
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