Trails In The Sky 1st Chapter Review - A Brilliant Return To Form For Legendary JRPG Series

All great and epic adventures begin with a magical yet compelling story that captivates audiences for years to come. This narrative is certainly applicable to Falcom's epic fantasy JRPG, The Legend of Heroes VI: Trails in the Sky, which, after a 21-year-long wait, fans and new players alike can experience in this game's remake, Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter.

Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter has been remade from scratch on its more advanced game engine for modern audiences and hardware, but it never loses its fantastic story with a few new additions and optimizations for a more complete experience. Suffice to say, revisiting its original game and playing the remake demo before delving into the full game made reviewing Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter a more rewarding and worthwhile experience long after the credits roll.

Trails In The Sky 1st Chapter Review - Starting At The Beginning Again

Video game remakes and remasters have become quite prominent in recent years as they attract both returning players for yet another magical in-game experience, while welcoming new audiences to their world. While at times, most of the game's remake remains the same from its story, intriguing characters, and gameplay systems, much of its upgrades boil down to updated modern graphics, introducing new quality-of-life improvements to enhance our gaming experiences, fix mistakes that weren't possible, and implement a few new tweaks for a more complete offering.

This sentiment is quite true for developer Falcom, as they've finally brought a more polished and complete offering of Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter, a remake of the Trails series' first entry, The Legend of Heroes VI: Trails in the Sky, 21 years after its initial release. Admittedly, not having the pleasure nor distinction of being introduced to this legendary JRPG series, the journey and moments experienced with its remake became more profound after first experiencing the original release on PC and then the remake's demo before immersing oneself in what can be viewed as one of the most faithful remakes in quite some time.

Granted, time was not on one's side when experiencing both The Legend of Heroes VI: Trails in the Sky and Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter, but this little side adventure exploring its original release before revisiting the kingdom of Liberl became a good choice to make consciously. The story of Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter remains the same as its original release, albeit with a few new quality-of-life improvements, balance changes, and other new content reimagined for modern hardware.

Welcome Back Home, Bracers!

As with all great stories, we start at the beginning with one of our protagonists, Estelle Bright, a doting yet energetic young girl awaiting the arrival of her father, Cassius, and following his return, her father introduced her to a young, injured boy of the same age as Estelle. The game's events officially begin with its Prologue Chapter, now set five years later, and both Estelle and the young, injured boy named Joshua are now 16 years old and training to become bracers, a "peacekeeping guild" tasked with serving all the people across its world by assisting with various jobs, much like their father.

However, Cassius had some news to share with his children as he got called out to a pressing matter to attend to, departing Rolent aboard an orbal ship which mysteriously goes missing along with its passengers some time later. This stressful news prompted Estelle, Joshua, and Scherazard to begin and lead a separate investigation into its disappearance in a neighboring city, where the strings slowly start to unravel.

The siblings learns of a conspiracy that threatens the peace of this kingdom, and the discoveries Estelle and Joshua uncover could ultimately change their lives forever. Through game progression, Estelle and Joshua will have opportunities to explore the remaining regions, and as such, meet new acquaintances, accept more jobs, gain more in-field experience as bracers, acquire recommendations, and unravel mysteries surrounding their father.

New improvements, balance changes, and optimizations were included in Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter; however, one new improvement made was to the localization, an issue many players had with the original game leading up to the remake's release. However, having played through the game with English voiceovers, they will be happy to learn that this isn't an issue, especially having played The Legend of Heroes VI: Trails in the Sky before jumping into the remake and boasting a talented voice cast that provides incredible performances and yes, evoke a myriad of emotions or make you even more annoyed with them.

The game's mini-map also saw some notable tweaks that make it easier for players to track quest markers, pinpoint Treasure Chests, and indicate enemies within their vicinity. The world map also received much-needed changes by adding more Points of Interest, such as city locales, quest events, and side quests, which are clearly displayed in both the mini-map and world map changes, improving navigation as a whole, and not making it an annoyance to bear.

Combat Is An Orbment Of Time (And Fun)

Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter offers players a more seamless approach to combat as they can opt between turn-based and real-time combat, and can be finetuned by choosing their preferred difficulty on how they wish to engage with the story and combat. Real-time combat is best utilized against single and common enemies, especially while traveling in the overworld, without ever entering into turn-based combat, and regarding the latter, this is more prevalent during the main story and side quests or against larger and imposing enemies.

As with most turn-based games, once entering the turn-based combat mode, a timeline will appear on-screen which gives information on the turns of each party member and enemy, which can be altered thanks to a myriad of abilities, buffs, and debuffs inflicted. For example, specific attacks that apply the Delay effect prevent enemies from attacking on their turn, which is present in tactical abilities, S-Crafts, and Quartz equipped for certain characters like Joshua and his Flicker ability, thus manipulating the timeline and giving the party an advantage over their enemies.

Now, one key component to the remake's combat is the Orbment system, which was introduced when playing the original game and was somewhat confusing to understand at first, despite the original game doing its best to explain Orbments. Nevertheless, an Orbment is a mechanical device that allows players to equip Sepith and later Quartz to empty slots and imbue them with orbal energy, and once activated, it grants the particular character to utilize unique orbal abilities, acquire bonus stats, and passive effects that can be useful in combat.

As every party member will get their base level increase through progression and gain increased stats, equipment pieces like armor and accessory items also provide this, like increased defense and arts defense. Similarly, weapons and their upgrades increase the equipped character's strength and arts strength stats to deal more physical and non-physical/magical damage, which can contribute to building their party members.

For example, Agate can be built to deal more physical damage and can absorb incoming enemy attacks, so building him with the best synergistic orbments to provide increased physical damage, and adding some defense to make him a tanky character. In comparison, Joshua is very agile in combat, so he'll require orbments and equipment pieces to buff his speed to inflict damage and debuffs onto enemies very quickly.

Trails In The Sky 1st Chapter Review | Final Thoughts

21 years is quite certainly a wait for the first entry in the Trails series to receive a massive update, and during the review process, there was very little to nitpick about Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter aside from the occasional latency bugs in cutscenes, which one that occured was in Chapter 1 before speaking with General Morgan and again in another cutscene when Olivier sang his tune both at the at Haken Gate location. Likewise, as faithfully recreated as Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter is, and adding new voicelines, gameplay improvements, and balance changes, it doesn't add new quests for returning players to explore, which is rather unfortunate.

But regardless of a few things to nitpick about, Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter is significantly longer than the original game, according to a report from Japanese publication Gamer. In fact, this is due to the addition of more exploration, as players will spend more time exploring areas, completing all the main story, event, and side quests, as well as paying attention to the voiceover lines, which helped eliminate some text bloating from the original game.

However, the time spent with both the original game and its remake was a worthwhile experience, as the remake was well-executed in being a more polished and enjoyable entry in the Trails series and a great choice to introduce new players. It's obvious just how much love went into developing Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter, as there's something for everyone to enjoy, and the end product is a brilliant remake that wears its heart on its sleeve and is truly earnest in its origins in the best way possible.

Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter was reviewed on PC via Steam for 35 hours with a key provided by the publisher. All screenshots were taken during the course of the review.