1. Pokémon Moon - 3DS2. Tony Hawk's Underground - GCN3. Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War II: Chaos Rising - PC4. Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War II: Retribution - PC5. Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness - PSP6. X-Wing: Imperial Pursuit - PC7. Star Wars Republic Commando - PC8. X-Wing: B-Wing - PC9. Blazing Lazers - TG-1610. Tales of Xillia 2 - PS311. Shining Force CD: Shining Force Gaiden - Sega CD12. MUSHA - Genesis13. Sonic CD - Sega CD14. Final Fantasy Legend III - GB15. Tales of Zestiria - PS316. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Switch17. Horizon Zero Dawn - PS418. Tales of Berseria - PS419. Battlefield 1 - PC20. Turok 2: Seeds of Evil - PC21. Mass Effect Andromeda - PC22. Starflight 2 - PC23. Armored Hunter Gunhound EX - PC24. Space Megaforce - SNES25. Persona 5 - PS426. Torment: Tides of Numenera - PC27. Cosmic Star Heroine - PC28. Prey - PC29. Strafe - PC30. Mystic Origins - NES31. Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia - 3DS32. Ultra Street Fighter II - Switch33. The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky - PCI decided to spend the summer playing the trilogy since the last entry got localized this year. About 30ish hours later I'm finished with the first part. This game took a long time to grow on me; hell, it still hasn't fully grown on me but I'm feeling more bullish about the second based on where the first left me off. So let's get into some details.
Trails in the Sky is a JRPG set in a world undergoing a magitek revolution. About 50 years prior to the game's events an energy known as orbments was discovered and revolutionized the world. These spheres of concentrated energy can be tuned to do pretty much anything as required by the story, so they power lights, elevators, cars, airships, and magic. You spend the game in the small country of Liberl; sandwiched between a large Empire (which had attacked them 10 years ago) and a large Republic with Eastern elements you have a technologically advanced society split up into five regions. You spend the game's five chapters exploring each region, one per chapter. Since this is a world with monsters in it (as any self respecting RPG has) an organization has arisen to help protect the citizenry; the Bracer Guild. Effectively troubleshooters for hire they do things like escort people, hunt down monsters, and locate missing items. Your main characters are Estelle and Joshua, the children of famed Bracer Cassius who are about to start on their journey to become full fledged Bracers themselves.
Now, in terms of mechanics the game has some interesting things going on that get a bit overshadowed by some balance issues. Combat is grid based and turn based with a ticker tape of the turn order on the left. On your turn you can move, attack, use magic, use a technique, or use an item. Moving lets you reposition yourself, which can be critical to get into range (or get out of range). Attack comes with move stapled on, though unlike move you can't choose your exact square; instead you take a shortest path to your target (which again, might not be advantageous). Magic does what it sounds like, and the important thing to note is that all magic has a cast time to it. It does tend to do more damage than a basic attack though. Techniques are unique abilities for each character which might do damage or inflict status effects. Many magics and techniques have an area of effect to them, so battlefield positioning is critical. Finally, there's a system where you gain a resource by dealing and receiving damage. This resource is used for techniques, but it can also be used to cut in line in the turn order and use a special, high damage technique.
The magic is fueled through a materia-esque system. Each character has an equip screen with six slots in it that are connected by lines. You can insert quartz orbs into these slots, and each quartz gives one or more of a particular color of energy. Basic spells only require one unit of energy while more advanced require several and frequently multiple types of energy. All quartz on a particular line have their energies summed up to give you a final profile of what spells you can use. This, naturally, makes some setups better than others; one character has all six in a single unbroken line while another has three lines coming off of a single central slot, with the other lines having two, two, and one quartz in them. The latter character is much less able to get high level magic as a result. This is the first of the game's balance problems; by mid game you will stop using basic attacks entirely because magic hits more enemies at a time and for more damage than a basic attack, but someone with a quartz grid like I described is only suited for basic attacks.
The second major balance problem is that the magic itself is not very well balanced. A spell can be single target, aoe enemy targeted, or aoe ground targeted. The latter is far better than the other two due to how enemies tend to move around, so those spells are automatically more appealing. But even ignoring that part, a large portion of the spell list is overcosted and underdamaging. I found Fire magic to be entirely worthless, while Earth was only worth using for an overpowered support ability that lets me give my team a single use damage shield (which trivialized the last boss's nasty attacks). There's not enough pulling you to explore the variety in the system.
But the gameplay balance issues aren't nearly as bad as the script issues. Put simply, you could cut the game's script in half without losing any important content. Anything that could be said in an SNES Final Fantasy game in a single dialog box gets done in four here. The game does lots of character building, but you could still excise a huge amount without losing any of that character building; it ends up being a bunch of either reinforcing things you already knew from hours ago about a character's personality or dialog of "I'm also part of this conversation!"
The other part that bothered me about the story, which was probably a consequence of the above, is that the game serves as a prologue for the main story that's going to be told in the next game. The first three chapters are already very filler-feeling; you get one or two quick hints as to the main plot but otherwise it's all just "look at the young Bracers grow". Then in chapter four the main plot finally starts to show itself; you could consider the first three chapters to be the opening of Final Fantasy VI until Locke saves Terra in the army battle. The fourth chapter is sort of like when Terra and Locke get to Figaro Castle. But at least now you've got an idea of there being a big bad and a proper sinister plot, and not just some incidents local to an area. The fifth chapter brings the plot you've seen to a conclusion, but immediately goes "but this was just a prologue to the REAL evil scheme". Compare to Golden Sun, another well known JRPG that has its story split between two games. In Golden Sun you know the villains' plan and you keep trying to stop them (though always too late). Then in Golden Sun 2 you learn more details about the plan and realize that maybe it wasn't quite as evil as you thought; it was just being handled in a not-nice way. But the main plot is there from the get-go. Not so here.
And it was these issues that really made me struggle to play more than a little at a time. The first half of the game's combat was really a slog because it took so long without any real tactical depth, but then midway through I got sufficient AOE that it took a 180 and became far too easy; I ended up dodging around every single random encounter in the second half of the game and never felt underleveled (except against that Penguin boss with his massive self heal, but I think that was just a shitty balance job). But on top of that was the fact that I knew I'd get into a ton of dialog for every five minutes of gameplay. Now, I'm not opposed to a dialog heavy game; look at my review of Torment: Tides of Numenera. But the problem here is the dialog is just so needlessly padded.
So there you go; not the greatest start to the trilogy. But I can't say I hated it. So I'm going to pick up game two and see how things go from there. The way things were starting to pick up at the end of this game I have hopes for game two; I don't expect them to really fix the padded dialog but at least I'll be driving towards that main plot, rather than the faffing about that comprised much of the first game (and that makes padded dialog feel so much worse).