11. The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky & Trails in the Sky SC
(SC Opening to set the mood):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGmnOxHKbSUSometimes it hard to pin point exactly what makes a game deserving of this list. There is no such question with Trails in the Sky (and by extension the other Trails games). Trails is all about narrative and especially worldbuilding, and have massive scripts to to prove it. Trails in the Sky starts out as a relatively conventional Japanese-rpg, albeit an unusually verbose one. If you are the sort of person who skims dialog in games to get back to the gameplay these games are not for you, because the dialog and narrative is the best part about them. If you are willing to be patient and take it all in though, you start to notice just how much detail there is to the world, be it the protagonist's country, it’s relationships with other countries, the technology, even seemingly nondescript npcs have personalities, problems, and moods that will change after story events. There’s just so much texture to world that it comes alive in a way few games do.
And yes I’m sort of cheating by picking two games for this spot, though in this case that feel like a technicality. The fact is Trails in the Sky entered development with the intention of being one game, but the creators eventually realized that the story they wanted to tell would result in a ridiculously long game, so they cut it in two. While the first game actually feels reasonable complete (ending stinger notwithstanding), upon starting the second game it soon becomes apparent that entire first game was ultimately just a first act setup for SC (which stands of Second Chapter). The first game is 40 hours long. The sequel is over twice that. Oh, and Trails in the Sky is just the first arc of an ongoing saga that is over a decade in the making as of right now. Yeah, that’s the scale these games are operating on. And the biggest hook is seeing all of the plot threads being woven into one enormous tapestry. The lead writer was asked after the Japanese release of the lastest game how far they were into the overall story. His reply was 'about halfway.' There’s been
seven games in the series so far. It’s easy to roll your eyes at such proclamations like “yeah sure, and George Lucas had all nine episodes of Star Wars mapped out in ’76.” But then you play the games and see there actually are clear plot points being hit in every one, and there does seem to be an endgame the series is moving towards. It is
ridiculously ambitious and
AWESOME. Only time will tell if they can stick the landing but considering how good they are at calling their shots I can’t imagine they will completely flub it.
The premise of the world of Trails is that until recently people lived in a medieval kingdoms and had knights in armor levels of technology. Then Orbment technology (a fantasy clean energy source) was discovered and unleash a hyper fast technological revolution, and society has gone from medieval kingdoms to approximately early 20th century technology in the span of a single lifetime. As such, while there are some republics, a lot of countries still have powerful monarchies, some constitutional, others more autocratic. Of course, this technology has actually been rediscovered, as there was a technological advance society that spanned the entire continent in the past, but mysteriously vanished seemingly overnight with only a few remnants as record. What happened is one of the central mysteries going on in the background. All these leaps in technology leads to geopolitical volatility, with smaller states having to constantly watch from being squashed by larger powers, as having technological edge tend to be fleeting, or even give aggressors more reason to fear them as much as it protects.
Now that’s a great premise, but what’s really impressive is how coherently individual characters reflect their social conditions. For example, the Erebonian Empire is the big bad militaristic country in the game that historically causes grief for everyone else. But it’s not like they're a bunch of evil dudes: most of the Erebonians you meet a good, decent people. But you can also see how they’re shaped by a culture that put a lot of emphasis on honor, emphasizes strength and masculinity, as well as just the cultural momentum of expansionist policies to juice up their economy, on top of the fact that their society has a lot more rigorous class system then most other countries, you can see how they would tend to be jingoistic assholes to neighbors. And most this is conveyed through little details here and there rather than exposition dumps.
And I haven’t even gotten into how grounded the setting feels compared to most ‘jrpgs.’ While it
is the type of world where heroes with swords beat nameless guys with guns, it’s also the type of world where leaders worry about rising unemployment numbers, or might freeze foreign assets to destabilize a neighbor’s economy. It’s a type of world where, yes there is a throne room, but it’s mostly for ceremony: the real rule of monarchs is exercised at administration desks, and in heads of state going to economic conferences and signing trade deals. Between that and the generally more reserved fashion sense (Final Fantasy X this ain’t) and you have an rpg that feels very different than your typical Final Fantasies and Tales of games. And when more fantastical elements they seem that much more jarring and otherworldly.
You can’t be a great rpg without a good cast of characters, and Trails in the Sky is no slouch in that department. Most of characters leave a strong impression, especially the protagonist Estelle, who is a bundle of energy and a sass-machine. Over the course of the story she does grow up and mature, but never loses her trademark sharp tongue. And I really like how coherent (yes that’s a word I keep coming back to) characters like Joshua are written, making the (melo)drama feel earned as backgrounds are slowly revealed of the course of the games. The best characters might be the antagonists though. I won’t get into much detail for the sake of leaving things unspoiled, but let’s just say they are built up very well to be dauntingly powerful and menacing, but they are not monolithic: as their multifaceted nature becomes apparent, you must reassess some of your assumptions about them, which hints at some very interesting implications. At this point I’d say they are easily my favorite cast of video game antagonists ever.
As for the gameplay itself, it’s fair standard turn-based stuff with a few twists. Turn order is laid out for you so you can see when enemies and teammates will next get an action, as well as any possible bonuses that occur that turn. You are able to move around the battle screen, so knowing when to bunch up to get buffs and healing on everyone, while spreading your party out to avoid damaging area of effects hitting everyone. It’s one of the few rpg battle systems where it’s more fun to fight larger groups of enemies, because then you have to think more about how one action affects turn order versus another. Battles are honestly a little too slow and too easy in the first game, but they are tweaked for the better in SC, which also gives more options in orbment loadout (think the materia system with more depth as which types of orbments slotted where affects what abilities you have).
It's one thing to have these elements, another to do them as well, but to juggle so many different plot threads and so many kinds of narrative threads (character development, specific plot twists and turns, and a good helping of mystery and intrigue) while also taking place in a world with as much detail and thought behind it as Zemuria? That’s something special. Add in the fact that the stories these games consistently take some unexpected turns and tend to have great endings, and it’s kind of everything I want in this sort of game. And I haven’t even touch on how good some of the music is!
Because of their modest graphical nature and because they have only recently seen a good number of them localized they haven’t gotten a lot of press coverage, but the cult following it does have is pretty ardent. It isn’t for everyone because they do move slow at times (I mean that as a descriptive, not a negative) and there is a certain amount of time investment to really get what it’s going for, but man there are few games with journeys as rewarding as Trails, especially Trails in the Sky SC. These games are easily the most exciting things I have discovered in the past couple years. It might not yet have stone-cold masterpiece to its credit (though Sky SC is knock on the door) like some of the rpgs still to appear higher on this list, but in terms of batting average and just the way the long-form serial nature of the storytelling elevates everything (and the parts are pretty great to begin with!) it could soon become my all-time favorite rpg series. And as someone who's played a good number of them that's really exciting.
Any other entries worth playing?
If you want to know why I keep referring to these games as Trails even though there’s the whole Legend of Heroes part of the title: basically, Trails is a subseries of an older Falcom rpg series. Watch this for an good overview (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioRRv4ql8iw) but outside of some mechanical and narrative stylings they have nothing to do with Trails games. Honestly they should have just released Trails as its own thing because a) the long name only deters people from jumping in, and b) The Legend of Heroes is a pretty generic name!
As for the proper Trails games there’s been three arcs so far: Trails in the Sky, the Trails of Zero/Azure duology, and Trails of Cold Steel. There’s was actually a third Trails in the Sky game, but despite the name isn’t a continuation of the first two as much as it is a separate self-contained story, though it does feature much of the same cast and locations as the first two games. It was just released here not that long ago but I’ve been putting it off for the time being. The Zero/Azure games were the second leg and unfortunately due to their native platforms (Azure was only released on PSP) and the fact that they have enormous scripts even by Trails standards they have not been localized yet. But between Falcom’s recent push to make western releases more of a priority, publisher XSEED dappling more in PC ports, and fact that there’s a fan translation project pretty far along, I think there’s a good chance of being able to play them in English someday one way or another. The Cold Steel games are the third and current arc. They have much more modern graphics and while it’s probably best to play the Sky games first, starting with them isn’t a bad option either. Cold Steel 1 in particular is great and has the best explosive cliffhanger of an ending I’ve ever seen in a video game. I have more problems with Cold Steel II, but even that has some really great twists that had me grinning, and I’m chomping at the bit for Cold Steel III whenever that makes it over here. The series has been scattered about on a few systems, but have mostly been or are soon to be consolidated on PC, which is probably the best platform to play them (unless you really want something on the Vita).
Topic: Top 25 Video Games Lists v2.0: Cable's NES Nostalgia 15 & 2 (starts pg32) (Read 83819 times)