Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter: Demo

I’ve finally wrapped up the Trails demo! What a game! Sometimes I feel disqualified for talking about turn-based RPGs because I’ve played so few of them. I’ve played through a handful of hours of Dragon Warrior (Dragon Quest) on NES, I got out of Midgard in FF7, Chrono Trigger on the DS and I beat it but don’t remember ANYTHING about it most recently (in the last 5 years or so) I’ve finished Octopath Traveler 1 and given up on Octopath Traveler 2. So when I play this game and see that it has a hybrid Turn-Based X Hack & Slash combat system that melds those two styles together seemlessly it feels fresh, it feels new. I feel like maybe some of the Tales games have done similar? I seem to remember Tales of Symphonia on the Gamecube having some kind of hybrid battle system. Look, I get it, its not new! But it feels so well designed that it just feels fresh.

I was surprised by how long the demo was. It takes you through the entire first section of the game. You move through the brace training, graduate and start doing missions. I like the core loop of the game. Get assigned a big mission and pick up smaller fetch-quest-esque missions along the way. You can bounce around the map talking with NPCs or listening to them talk to each other. There are small stories going on in the town, NPCs feel like they are living out a full life, making changes and interacting with each other. It’s cute and subtle but really does a lot to enhance the vibes of the game.

One thing to note, the sexual tension between the “siblings” is noticeable and weird. Like I understand Joshua was taken into this family when he was tweening and considering every other woman in his life is highly sexualized, I guess it makes sense but I don’t have to like it. Or maybe I don’t have to condone it. Am I rooting for him? Sure thing, bud, have at it, I guess. But I think his dad should have tried to put a stop to it years ago or at least stop calling them siblings. If they had stuck with something more traditional like calling Joshua his ward than this wouldn’t be so fucking weird. Other than the incest stuff the story is interesting and I really do like the world.

The battle system is very cool and I like the way Orbaments work. If I play through the full game I will need to dig a little deeper into how they work. Right now I don’t fully understand how you know what spells you will get from equipping quartz in the Orbment slot, all of that feels a big vague, but the way the game was balanced I never felt like i was under leveled. I died a few times, including during the last fight, but a lot of this came down to me not properly healing.

SPEAKING OF THE FINAL BATTLE I LOVE JOSETTE. She’s great and I hope she will eventually join my team. She’s my favorite of the extended cast, which is crazy because there is also a mousy master photographer lady whom I also very much like. What I’m getting at here is the cast of characters are GREAT and this is now a Josette fan-website. www dot cyberjosette dot party. I like how they the personality of each characters is put straight into their special actions, it really lets them shine. For instance Scherazard is a sex-crazed freak and when she performs her special she talks about “whipping all the bad boys” and .. it really helps you get invested in the world.

I’m happy I played through this, I’m going to pick up the full version of the game at some point. If the last few months have taught me anything its that Falcom games tend to hit the clearance bin at some point and in the interest of saving a few bucks I’m going to wait until the physical Switch 1 version comes down in price a bit.