Trails in the Sky: A love letter

I just finished Trails in the Sky, and I'm both sad and elated. Sad because that amazing game is over, and elated because I relished every single minute of the 45 hours I spent playing it. Now I can scream it out loud: I ADORED that game. I adored it so much that I want to play every Legend of Heroes entry as well as every Nihon Falcom game ever released. Now that's a nice mission to appoint myself, yes precious.

The fact that I loved Trails in the Sky so much is still a bit of a mystery to me, to be honest. By all accounts, I should have hated it: story-driven RPGs are not my forte, and I usually tend to experience some serious storyline fatigue around the 25 hours-mark. So how come I could keep going for 45 hours and still want more when all was said and done? Well, maybe because Trails in the Sky is not really a story-driven RPG after all, at least not in the modern acception of the word. The game's approach to all things narrative is pretty much an old-fashioned one: the story is here to provide milestones and general directions but doesn't push the player around like cattle. There are ample amounts of freedom to be enjoyed and vast expanses of land to be roamed at one's own pace, be it to fulfill sidequests or just for the sheer pleasure of it. I would be tempted to describe Trails in the Sky as an atmospheric RPG rather than a story-driven one: it is a game in which gratification is derived from immersing oneself in the game world and letting the whole atmosphere soak in. The story is but a mere detail here—all the more so as it's entirely told in medias res, with characters constantly referring to past events and elements of the game world's mythology as though they're common knowledge. The player is basically expected to jump on board, take the settings in and enjoy the trip to the fullest—which I certainly did. And talking about jumping on board and trips, I certainly didn't expect the title to actually refer to airliners and the trails they leave in the sky. Isn't that a bit... mundane? Oh, well. It's still evocative enough, I guess, and no one prevents me from reading figurative meanings as well in this title. 

The last 30 hours of my playthrough were just as good as the first 15, maybe even better. I particularly enjoyed the fact that the core of my party was made of Estelle and Joshua up until the very end; I loved this arrangement from the get-go and half-feared that the game would force me to go full party as some point, but these fears were unfounded. I also lapped up the grindy crawl in the last dungeon, which was a nice and unexpected bite of classic dungeon crawling. By that time, I had discovered the ultimate trick to wrap up boss fights quickly, namely to fill up everyone's S-Break gauge before the fight and to start said fight by unleashing a slew of devastating S-Break attacks that allowed me to gain an overwhelming edge—if not victory altogether. I used that trick to harvest the overpowered pieces of gear hidden all around the last dungeon, gaining a couple of levels in the process. And all that grinding paid off a million times during the final showdown, indeed. I still don't know if I should commend or blame Nihon Falcom for having had the audacity of stacking up four final boss fights in a row, without any opportunities to save or refurbish in between. Sure, the fourth and last fight is but a mere formality; but it still took me nearly one hour to polish off that formidable meal of a final boss fight. I was lucky enough not to die in the process, which I attribute entirely to my dutiful grinding and to my patient collecting of overpowered equipment. For the record, my final party was made of Joshua, Estelle, Zane and Agate: only powerhouses with close-range weapons, true to my bull-like fighting style in RPGs. I guess one never truly recovers from starting their RPG career with Action-RPGs, indeed.

Last but not least, one word for the ending. It was quite long, just as I like my RPG endings to be, and it was also quite bittersweet, something that I had come to expect over the course of the game. I wanted some relationship drama and the game was more than happy to indulge me. I'm extremely glad I played Trails in the Sky in 2016, when the sequel has been localized and made available through the PSN, because playing it at the time of its release and being left with that cliffhanger ending would have been a nasty blow that could have retrospectively tainted my whole run. Fortunately, said sequel is safely tucked away on one of my Vita memory cards, and I can play it right away if the suspense regarding Estelle and Joshua's endeavours becomes too unbearable. As a matter of fact, I'm seriously considering doing just that.

While I'm still pondering the matter, I ordered copies of all the PSP Legend of Heroes entries that I didn't own yet—namely Ao no Kiseki, Zero no Kiseki, Sora no Kiseki the 3rd and Sora no Kiseki SC, just for the sake of owning a physical copy. My mission is to play them, along with any other Nihon Falcom game, and confirm whether the series can indeed become one of my favourite RPG series of all times and Nihon Falcom one of my favourite developers of all times. Only time—and play—will tell! Until then, thanks for reading, and be my guest anytime!