The Legend of Heroes: Trails beyond the Horizon

Please stop with the cliffhanger endings, I'm already 13 games into the series, I'm not going to stop now

I just finished the game and I'm feeling upset. I have to give a thumbs down to a Trails game for the first time ever. I'm deeply unsatisfied with the writing and pacing of Horizon, and recently touching the Sky 1st Remake has reminded me of how much worse these games have gotten. It took me 120 hours doing mostly everything possible in one playthrough (on Normal, sue me). Of this 120 hours, like 100 of them were padding and 20 were meaningful. The padding involves repeatedly visiting the same areas seen in the two previous games doing mostly irrelevant tasks (at this point f*** Edith). In the final hours are a tsunami of plot points, which are half "yeah I figured that out a two games ago" and half "wtf? why are we fighting? why are we here? what's even happening (derogatory)???" It has some badass cutscenes in the end, I'll give it that. I hated Grim Garten. What a mind numbing waste of time getting all the S ranks. It's the worst dungeon mechanic they've made. You're forced to do about half of it in the main quest, and the rest has fairly essential story elements that I'm sure more people will want to see. It's also not accessible in post game (there is no post game). I generally like all the characters in Trails but it seems like all character development has been frozen in time. A bit happens in Connection Events, but since they're optional they're completely neglected in the main quest and therefore contribute nothing. [spoiler]The girls are really hot.[/spoiler] The return of Rean contributes very little other than fan service, which can be fine, but his group is also doing the same padded side quests. His story just kinda stops when it finally starts. Kevin's group is... rough. Swin and Nadia just suck to play, but I don't mind their characterization too much. Rufus is good. I like Rufus. Lapis is very cute, but WHY ISN'T SHE PLAYABLE? Ugh. Kevin's plot, especially in the third act, involves more "why are we fighting?" fights and then just ends without a satisfactory conclusion. Well, the entire game ends without a satisfactory conclusion. Which leads me to the ending. Just wtf man? A huge cliffhanger and no sequel even announced yet. Frankly the events of the ending should've been in the MIDDLE of this game so we could then play out the aftermath and conclude everything in this game. It could've been a very interesting adventure due to [spoiler]timey wimey[/spoiler] reasons. But nope, have to continue to drag it on, and on, and on. More questions, fewer answers. I am also VERY tired of the Trails trope of characters constantly talking AROUND plot points and characters. "Oh...I bet you mean HIM!", "ah...what if it's THAT?", "is that...the THING???" Stop it. We know, you know, you know that we know, and if we don't know then it's just infuriating. The Olympics needs to add a platinum medal for this degree of verbal gymnastics. And oh my goddess SHUT UP ABOUT FOOD. I swear half the dialog in this game is about food! The localization is getting worse with every game. Ulrika is just... ugh. Stop, please. Anyway I had to get this off my chest. I could rant for hours about this game (and DB1&2 for that matter, which I actually enjoyed more), but that's enough. Please don't let this rant stop you from playing Trails in the Sky. It's very awesome and concludes its main story arc properly in 2nd Chapter.

First off, Kai no Kiseki is my personal least favorite Kiseki game yet. And I did not like Kuro no Kiseki 1 and 2 very much. I love this series too much to not 100% this godforsaken game and, up top, I can only hope the next one is better. Tbh, one of the biggest reasons I found I have disliked the Kuro+Kai arc as a whole is the fact that the acts and gameplay loops feel so focused in the cities that they appear in. Particularly what I mean by that is that the exploration of the regions of the cities we explore is practically nonexistent. For each city, you get to explore the cityscape and like one highway/route connected to it and then a dungeon at the end of the act. That's it. And a lot of the times the dungeon ending the act is a underground basement facility that seems cooked up in a lab to engineer creating less assets. Like I know making games is hard and expensive and it's art but like I can't help but be disappointed by this. Graphical fidelity is up but my experience is worse. Could be rose-tinted glasses for Sora/Crossbell/Sen but I definitely feel like exploration has taken a backstep in these most recent games. Also it must be mentioned it feels like basically nothing significant has happened yet in the Kuro+Kai arc. Kai no Kiseki takes place over 3 DAYS. I did find Aaron to be a more likable character here than in Kuro no Kiseki 1 and 2. And I do feel like this game has okay character writing overall, expect regarding basically all writing and lore pertaining to exactly one character: (HUGE SPOILER INCOMING WARNING) ---------------- ---------------- ---------------- ---------------- ---------------- Agnès is the worst character in over 20 years of Kiseki history. She is the most special girl in the world based on nothing other than who her ADOPTIVE great grand-father is and his legacy. And the fact that she was Van's first assistant maybe??? Maybe later games will explain why, but as of now, I can't see it. And the Van-Agnès shipping in this game is catastrophic. ... It is so forced it leans into absurdity, Van is a 25 year-old man in this game and he cannot tell a 16 year-old Agnès in no uncertain terms that he cannot see her as a woman. All of the characters act like this is totally cool because they don't want to step on Agnès's shoes and deny her school-girl crush. There's multiple scenes where everyone knows this 16 year-old is crushing on this 25 year-old man and he knows it too and everyone encourages it. I find this to character-assassinating on a large scale because I like every other party member here but they all lean into this bit. None of this can be organic. The Van-Agnès shipping must be so forced so that the shocking reveal in the ending can be like being slapped by a piece of sliced bread you have soaked in water for at least 5 minutes. (SUPER MEGA BIG SPOILERS AHEAD) ---------------- ---------------- ---------------- ---------------- ---------------- The ending of this game could be the worst of any game I will ever play. Like other people have said the time-rewinding mechanic is overused and lame and takes any stakes there might be out -- I have heard Kiseki series be described as having Saturday-morning-cartoon-style stakes and I believe this to be apt, But this ending involves Agnès and more importantly, ***her adoptive-great-grandfather's legacy*** and the secret plot she has been cooking up with some other big players and it's supposed to be tragic because time has to be reset before anyone knows how special Agnès is and Van especially will no longer remember how special Agnès is. And I just cannot be ♥♥♥♥♥♥ enough to care. None of this feels earned. Mostly because I do not find Agnès to be a compelling character. And Rean and his homies and Kevin and his crew are here just for fun lmao. This series that I really care about had me, in the final moments of this game, exclaiming, "Are we serious?" and "No ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ way (this is so stupid)" like 10 times between the two of them. I can only hope the subsequent installments will tie this whole arc in a nice bow. I do not have that much hope that it will be close to 10/10, but if it could be 5/10 on my personal scale, that would be lovely.

A good game that butchered by absolute retarded localizer. To be honest i really hate pick localized one up since i have no literally ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ in jesus name idea on what even the character talk about. It just idiom and reddit loser talking in this game. Even rewrite while at it. Only 10% word i can understand but the rest of 90% of turd gen z language, unnecessary line, idiom are so retarded like the incompetent localizer. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ass man. One guy with MTL in non localized version done better than this crap with easier to understand and no rewrite. It just self absorbed idiot doing this job. It all Slang ape gen z ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Go ♥♥♥♥ yourself localizer. Useless ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ffs.

I think this was my last straw. Having played all the games up to Horizon I would have believed that the playerbase would be treated a bit better in regards to where the series is headed in terms of writing. Suprisingly I didn't dislike Daybreak 2 as much as some others did but with each game its becoming significantly more obvious that some things about the way these games are written will not change. While the gameplay has been slowly improving with each release in the Kiseki legacy, sadly the writing has taken the complete opposite approach. Not that I think that the writing in those older games was any perfect either. I am gonna be frank. it feels to me like the games are starting to become time wasters. First of all, each chapter feels the same, to the point that I dread finishing one, because I know I will have to do the whole loop of Sidequests -> Grim Garten -> Main Story Mystery -> Main Story Boss. Just when things start getting somewhat interesting, things get put on hold because either the bad guy is done "performing his experiment", teleports away, or some stupid deus ex machina happens. This is a flaw that the series has sadly carried over from the later Cold Steel entries. The intermissions end up always being my favorite chapters in these games because the main story in them feels like its trying to at least move in *some* direction. The finales sadly have not been hitting hard in a while (with the exception of Reverie). They often feel like they are written with the sole purpose of sequel baiting or trying to recreate that shock that players felt back in the Sky 1st ending. If the transition from Cold Steel 3 to Cold Steel 4 is anything to go by, even if this game ends with some crazy twist, it just takes 1 game to completely nuke all the tension and buildup from existance. Most Trails games main story can be told by just retelling 1st chapter, intermission chapter and final chapter plot points. Removing all the artificial padding in the dialogue, these games are 40 hour experiences at best. And while the length of a game does not matter what *does* matter is the fact that I am spending the other 40 hours of my life listening to people introduce themselves for the 5th time, with their full title, relationship and affiliation statuses as if I am reading a DnD lorebook. Then there is the god awful constant chatters about food and saunas. Why does the game have like a 3 paragraph dialogue box where the characters just praise tiramisu ? I really do not mind seeing the day to day of these characters. The Trails games have always been slow burns, but sometimes too much is too much. And how does seeing the day to day of these characters mean practicaly anything when there is 20+ of them ? There is no way to connect with that many, and there is not enough scenes that you can connect with only some of them in meaningful ways either. The main characters are feeling like reactionary NPC's, and they have een like that for a while. To not just list the negatives, there are some genuine things this game in particular does right: - Sidequests in the whole Calvard arc have been genuinely really good, and the addition of the new topic quests where you are given multiple choices on what to talk about is a nice change. - Connection events being unmissable is great, especially since the games have decided they are going to drop most of the character development from the main story to said connection events. - Animations are very beautiful to look at. - The boost gauge put the combat in a much healtheir state in terms of balance, while still letting you do crazy stuff if you utilize the system right. - The more mature tone on the series and the lack of normalizing sexual absue unlike Cold Steel has made me more comfortable playing these games. Tho the weird "everyone is in love with the main character" is still somewhat present. - Horizon has slowly started moving towards bosses with interesting mechanics rather than just walls of HP (Though those are still plenty present here) I could ramble on and on but I think the series has left such a bitter taste in my mouth after all the effort I put into it that I don't think I can believe the writers will be ever able to write a genuine enjoyable 60 hour experience with deep characters and an interesting story that doesn't revolve around some magical MacGuffin. Even less so now that Falcom has announced they will be trying to ship two games a year. With that kind of development cycle not only will the developers be feeling more pressure, they will also undoubtably have no time to do any sort of meaningful revisions on the dialogue. I am still glad I went through this journey. There will never anything quite like Trails in the videogame sphere for a while, but what the series has become greately saddens me.

I played the entire series back to back starting last December. Its now August. It took me 996.4 hours in total. All I have to say is.... I cant wait for the next game.

ノーコメント *thousand-yard stare* certified "imma not big fan of government" moment of cycled history...

Однозначно одна из самых интересных игровых вселенных! А эта часть однозначно одна из лучших среди всех треилсов! Концовка конечно дерзкая, что будет дальше - неизвестно. 100% жду продолжение. Ну и конечно же жду ремейк второго ская в сентябре! Если вы не фанат jRPG (как и я, по большей части), всё равно советую к ознакомлению с этой прекрасной игровой серии игр.

[h1]Лучшая игра серии[/h1] Третья глава это тот момент, когда арка Кальварда начинается по-настоящему. Ружья, возводимые сценаристами на протяжении предыдущих глав, начинают стрелять. Основной мотив игры – космическая программа, намёки о которой мы слышали ещё начиная с [i]Reverie[/i]. Теперь она официально представлена народу Земурии – уже в прологе нам показывают запуск первого спутника и анонсируют скорый первый полет человека в космос. Весь континент охватила настоящая космомания. Авторы настолько хорошо передали эту атмосферу, что игрок и сам начинает предвкушать этот исторический момент. [h3]The Legend of Heroes: Trails beyond the Horizon[/h3] Игра возвращает систему рутов из [i]Reverie[/i], а к роли главных героев разветвлённой истории возвращаются Ван Аркрайд ([i]Daybreak[/i]), Кевин Грэм ([i]Sky the 3rd[/i]) и Рин Шварцер ([i]Cold Steel[/i]). Если первый продолжает работать спригганом, расследуя деятельность загадочного нового культа в столице, то двое других посещают Кальвард с [i]определёнными[/i] целями. Септианская церковь поручает Кевину расследовать деятельность профессора Хамильтон – её подозревают в ереси. Кевин, известный в прошлом как [i]Heretic Hunter[/i], должен найти доказательство её вины, а затем разыскать саму учёную для исполнения приговора. Рин же получает приглашение от армии Кальварда и прибывает в Базель, чтобы поучаствовать в тренировке первого космонавта. Однако сюжет даёт понять, что у него есть и другие мотивы, в том числе долгожданная встреча с его своенравным мастером. По мере развития восьмидесятичасового сюжета авторы постепенно раскрывают новые детали, шаг за шагом превращая предвкушение полёта к звёздам в напряжённый саспенс. Перед началом последней главы я уже ловил себя на мысли, мол дайте мне ещё пожить в моей уютной зоне комфорта! Но нет – авторы двигают как сюжет арки, так и весь лор вселенной вперёд и выдают самую загадочную концовку в истории серии. Концовку, которую поклонники разбирают уже два года. Тем томительнее ожидание финальной главы арки, которая на момент написания обзора ещё даже не анонсирована. Это огромное художественное наслаждение, взращённое на двадцатилетнем фундаменте серии. [h3]Геймплей[/h3] Геймплей в целом получил лишь небольшие дополнения. Рин привёз с собой старые Brave Orders из [i]Cold Steel III[/i], появились новые механики как для пошаговой, так и для экшен боевых систем, последняя теперь ощущается практически самодостаточной. Разработчики, видимо, сочли свой неуклюжий эксперимент с Märchen Garten из [i]Daybreak II [/i] перспективным, поэтому он вновь с нами, но уже под названием Grim Garten, стилизованный под готику в соответствии со вкусами одного эксцентричного Enforcer'а. И теперь я могу назвать его действительно хорошим данжем: стильным, модным, удобным для фарма и с обилием новых возможностей. Впрочем, некоторые из этих новых возможностей – на самом деле хорошо забытые старые. Впервые со времён [i]Azure[/i] в серию возвращаются покер и блэкджек, и впервые со времён [i]Sky the 3rd[/i] игроки вновь могут бросить вызов самим [spoiler]Джеку и Халл[/spoiler], хотя обыграть их – задача далеко не тривиальная. Также (привет [i]Sky the 3rd[/i] и [i]Reverie[/i]) в игру вернулись сферы с воспоминаниями, которые можно просматривать в лобби Grim Garten'a. Как и в предыдущих частях, эта активность формально необязательна, но даёт богатую пищу для любителей сюжетных теорий. Ещё одна функция «омута памяти» – возможность просматривать пропущенные Connection Events за валюту Grim Garten`a, при этом Connection Points также начисляются! Благодаря этому игра стала первой в серии, где достижение «Maxing All Bonds» можно получить за одно прохождение. Отдельно хочу отметить расширенный набор саундтреков для данжа. И моя особая благодарность за то, что господин рандом (он ли?) при каждом заходе на последний этаж включал Aria of the Saintess. Это было незабываемо и, надо сказать, куда лучше соответствовало атмосфере, чем оригинальный саундтрек. [h3]Почему Horizon лучшая игра в серии?[/h3] Недавно я прошёл ремейк первой части и задумался над тем, какой огромный путь прошла серия Trails. Молодые авторы, когда-то создавшие небольшую пилотную RPG, отражавшую их уникальное видение жанра, за двадцать лет набрались опыта и развили идеи. Это особенно заметно, когда играешь в первую и крайнюю игры серии. Сюжет, работа с персонажами и NPC, графика, дизайн локаций, геймплей – всё это достигло своей вершины в Horizon. И впервые в серии всё это соединилось в одной игре. Дальше – только космос. [spoiler]И то, что лежит за ним[/spoiler]