Ah the beginning of beginnings. This game was originally recommended to me by a friend back when I had no idea this series existed. I had played around halfway through it before getting distracted, as I frequently do. It wasn’t until I randomly dropped Persona 5 in its opening hours and made my return to finish it off that I sent myself on this feverishly paced journey that has led me to some of my favorite gaming experiences.
For those unaware, Trails in the Sky (Sometimes called FC, meaning first chapter, and what I’ll be calling the game from now on) is the first of three Trails in the Sky games and one of oh so many Trails games. It’s a long series if you want to get into it but that hardly matters for where we are right now, and you can probably get away with only playing this one and its sequel if you’re particularly averse to commitments. The game was originally released on PC in June 2004, but I played the PC version off of Steam. What’s left with this kind of thing? Oh right, the game was developed by Nihon Falcom.
Now that the background details are done with let just get straight to the point. How do I feel about this game? Good. Really good. To be honest I don’t think I’ll be writing many game reviews for things I don’t like. I don’t have time for bad games, much less bad JRPGs. A lot of the things I like about it are core element of what make the whole series for me so, in the future, when I eventually get around to writing reviews for the rest of the games, you can look back here for reference. Many of my opinions will likely be based on how things deviate from what I want to talk about here. So, what do I want to talk about? Just a few things you know. Namely the core gameplay, side quests, the charming retro style, and the difficulty. I’m sure you’re surprised that story isn’t up there but you’ll have to be patient, I’m saving that talk for SC (that stand for second chapter wink). Anyways, last to first as they say. Or something like that.
I don’t want to harp on too long about difficulty cause I know not everyone is looking to get their head kicked in but if you’re looking for a challenge this will do. Hard mode was perfect for me. The combat is very tactical and it was refreshing to see how well the difficulty played into that. In the harder fights of the game, I really felt pushed to my limits to make the right choices and right moves to close out the fight. There’s a little luck here and there but most of the time you win or lose on your own merits. I lost a lot too. I have no idea what the exact numbers are but I’m sure I got KO’d at least 10 times to some wanted monster before I killed it. I enjoyed overcoming those challenges though, and it was especially sweet when my joy of beating a tough fight against the odds lined up with that of the story and characters.
I guess part of that was about gameplay, so I’ll take care of that next, order be damned. Do me a quick favor actually. Go look up some video or whatever showcasing the combat. Great, thanks, I’ll wait here for you, don’t worry. Hmmmmmm… uhhhhhhh… OK, now that you’ve seen that, I love SBreaks and in general how you can manipulate the turn order. Its super great. Whew, just saved myself like 50 lines of text. More than anything there’s just a lot of depth to the combat in FC. each character gets so many options on any given turn and even before you get into a fight.
The orbment system for managing Arts (spells) is particularly noteworthy. It’s way too complicated to explain here but basically the arts you have access to are based on the value of the different quartz you put in the orbment slots. If, for example, I wanted to cast an AOE healing spell, I would need to have the right quarts in my orbment to reach the threshold of 2 water and 1 space (the yellow one), making the art La Tear available. With 7 elements to work with and a lot of different spells you could spend forever trying out different combinations. I certainly spent so much time and had so much fun rearranging my orbment slots hat I’m sure it added an extra 10 hours or so to my playtime. This also leaves a lot of room for player expression as you have a ton of options on how to build a character. Speaking of characters, all of them feel very unique and fun to play with. Their abilities make then stand out from eachother really well and help create the perfect sandbox for my mad scientist party building tendencies. I did mention that I spent way too long messing around with this stuff, right? Cause I seriously think I happily spent half the game in menus. Wait, wait, I swear you don’t half to do things like that if you don’t want too. Please, don’t stop reading!
So, I wanted to preface the next section by saying that, normally, I hate side quests. I hate how the breakup the story when I’m getting into it, I hate how boring and tedious they can be, I hate it when you get behind on levels cause you didn’t do the side quests. Not that any of that matters though cause this game’s side quests have none of those problems. Like its actually unreal how much I got into the side quests in this game (or “these games” as I’m definitely talking about the whole series here). Naturally I started out skipping some side quests and such but by then end I was almost religiously completing them. The wanted monster quests were obviously fun with them being stray boss fights and all but even the most basic ones were great. They clearly had a lot of work put into them to flesh out the world and characters more by showing how they interact. Even the structure of how they are handed out was naturally stitched into the world and story, it just made them all feel more meaningful. I think that’s all I really needed to become a hardcore side quester, and it may have led me down the path to spending 3 hours on a fishing minigame later but that’s apparently a sacrifice I’m willing to make.
If you made it this far, you’re either really into my writing (Thanks, I’m great, I know), or you’re interested in this game. Assuming it’s the second (I know it’s the first though), I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk about the retroness of the game. If retroness is a word that is… retro style maybe? The point is that it’s an older game and you can kinda feel it. The graphics are nothing to write home about, there’s no auto save, that kinda thing. Personally, I think it all adds to the charm of the game and playing it in the more modern gaming era (as much as I hate getting burned by forgetting to save, I guess I have some nostalgic memories behind it). The little chibi characters that are out there in the overworld and during combat are cute and their animations are great. To back that up they have the classic character portraits with dialogue boxes that I love so much. It overcomes all the downside of playing an older game so easily I don’t even know why I bothered to mention it at the start of this section. Like I said, it’s just charming. So charming in fact that, while I’m excited for the modern 3d remake it’s getting soon, I’d still happily play the original version over again. If I ever get the time that is
Ah, I think I’ve talked about most of the thing I wanted to cover in this review. It really is a great start to a great series and, if you couldn’t tell by how much I wrote here, I really, really want you to play it. Seriously, original or remake (when it comes out), either version. Just give it a try, for me. In the meantime, I should get started on the review for the second game. Hopefully that doesn’t take me as long to write as it too me to beat the game itself.
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