The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak

I have to separate this one into two reviews: Story An excellent recovery after the disorganized mess of Reverie. No more branching, no more random generated dungeons or chests. The story is stronger for it, and the characters are better too. The more adult tone is also refreshing after 10 games, Falcom must know their audience aren't kids anymore. I do wish Trails would do away with the plot armor that every character seems to have, but overall this was one of the better ones for story. Gameplay Far, far, too easy, even on nightmare (not new game + even). It's just too easy to chain crafts back to back and obliterate every boss in this game. With Grendel, that goes double. Regal Beatdown is severely broken. I found myself using the Xipha far less than I'd used prior games' Orbments because strategizing which ones to tweak for each player mattered far less here. Speed is still king, as ever. The new field battle system is a good change. Overall I had fun, despite it being far too easy.

GG

Before the Sky remakes came out I would have easily recommended this as a starting point for the series. In terms of gameplay, the Xiphas are an excellent fusion of the original orbments and Cold Steel's. It's finally FUN to screw around for an hour upgrading and rearranging your quartz. Difficulty-wise I found this to be the easiest of the games so far, so much so that I ended up bumping the difficulty to hard and still breezed through the last half. In terms of story, you can really tell the series is growing up with its audience. Imagining nazis frothing at the mouth at mentions of white supremacy and queerness in this game was half the fun.

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nice

So far I am enjoying the game, albeit the new Orbment system is gonna take me a while to get used to lol It's cool to see the game sent in Calvard this time, would be cool if future games were set in Remiferia, Ored, Leman etc tbh, make the games continent wide :D