Story:

Have you ever wanted to play a chill game where you get to know a whole town's worth of characters? Most of which have their own little story arcs? Then this is the game for you. After each main story event, almost everyone has something new to say.

To describe Trails in the Sky's story in a few words, it's a 'slow burn'. Slow burn mystery, slow burn romance. It is a game that leaves you thinking and finding breadcrumbs. Only for things to end up turned on their head, and those clues nagging at your mind for so long to suddenly make sense.

It starts off humble and slow. No suddenly killed parent, no burnt down village or revenge, no evil authority bearing down (as a bracer, you ARE the local authority, in fact). It takes something like seven hours for the story to really get rolling. A story filled with hidden allegiances, secrets, and backroom plotting by friend and foe alike.

The most notable thing about this game, is the writing. The side-quests are very compelling, and rarely fetch-quests. Often being entirely story driven. Clues and foreshadowing are everywhere, and talking to everyone often gives rewards, besides the reward of discovery.

Combat:

There is very good enemy variety and a very fun combat system. I found myself fighting every enemy I encountered instead of avoiding them for a lot of the running time. The system makes you feel powerful in two ways: The customize-ability of your characters, and the ability to interfere with enemy turn orders.

If you like tweaking characters in RPGs, you'll love this. Managing Quartz is like an optional puzzle that is always going on in the background, re-arranging the spell lists (called Arts) of your characters on the fly, and taking advantage of elemental weaknesses of enemies with spells

You can win smaller battles without the enemy ever getting a hit in, if you know what you're doing, building up stamina (called CP), in the process. Attacks and arts can delay enemy turns, and keep them from picking up bonuses (or steal them for yourself). These bonuses are things like free healing, free mana, and a critical hit. Nothing like stealing a critical hit from a boss only to use it for your own limit break!

Sound:

The soundtrack to this game is fantastic, my favorites being the smooth, jazzy Zeiss theme, and the epic final dungeon theme.

Given the tremendous amount of dialogue, this game would of benefited from having voice acting. You can mod in Japanese voice acting, but unless you know Japanese, you'd still be left reading quite a lot. What english voice there is is good; it's a shame they got Johnny Yong Bosch who's a perfect fit for Joshua, only doing some combat quips!

Problems:

Despite how r/jrpg may make it sound, Trails in the Sky FC is not a perfect game. I'd say its 4/5ths of a great game, though. It's separated into chapters with their own fantastic build-up and climaxes. By the final chapter, some serious pacing issues emerge. Part of the fun of this game is getting to know everyone through side-quests; the Final Chapter has pretty much none. In addition, there is a lot of town dialogue with little to break it up here, so it just ends up wearing on you if you want to see what everyone has to say. The dungeons are also incredibly long in the final chapter, if you want to loot them thoroughly. I'd say some serious fatigue set in at this part, and it's only here that I started using Turbo mode to speed things up. The Final Chapter still has some amazing set-pieces, though.

In conclusion:

The feeling of Trails in the Sky, is like sinking your teeth into a good, long, fiction book. It's got a story with layers, loveable characters, and different approach to delivering an 'open world' focused more on depth than breadth.

Reviewed on PC.