Lloyd soon realized that being a cop is useless, it’s time to be more like a bracer.

So after playing a bunch of awful otome games, I’m back on the JRPG bus and continuing my adventure in the “Trail” series once again. We’re playing Trail from Zero now, but I hate Trail’s combat system, so as always, I’ve included a New Game + save file that a kind soul uploaded. This allowed me to fight my way through tedious battles without wasting 10-12 hours on grinding trash mobs.

It took me a while to get used to Estelle’s new portrait, but that voice and attitude was everything I knew and loved about Estelle.

I’m not worried about completing it 100%, but having a pre-made save saves me a lot of hassle, as there are so many random elements like “talk to everyone every day in case they tell you differently” to complete collectibles and side quests.

System

It’s the same as Trails in the Sky, so let’s start with the system. There’s not much to say about it other than kill stuff, fill up your bar, do your special move, and repeat the whole thing. You can also run away from enemies, and depending on what you use it can make it easier to avoid them. I didn’t have any cloak quartz this time around, so I would occasionally run into enemies, but luckily they usually died in a few hits. The only times enemies challenged me to actually attack were during the final two dungeons of the game and some of the bosses. However, if you don’t have the NG+ file, you’re basically out of luck, well… you have to start from scratch and keep going until the enemy wipes out your entire party. Some people prefer this, but I don’t have the patience so I take NG+.

, lol, honestly, it’s okay. This is so much better than the typical “fire enemies are weak to water” JRPG combat. It’s not that much since you spend most of your time in town rather than wandering dungeons. They also improved the way the side quests work in this game by basically configuring each batch to run before doing the MSQ segment for that day. This way you don’t get the issues that occurred in Trails in the Sky where you start a quest and it expires before you can complete it.

Story

I hate Trails’ combat system, but I generally enjoy the story. It just took me so long to get into it compared to Trails. My main problem with the game is that it reminds me too much of New York City: corrupt government, corrupt mayoral election, ineffective police, and awful public transportation with constant delays. (Though in the bus driver’s defense, he was attacked by a monster, not some stupid kids holding the train door open or some idiots acting crazy until someone pulls the emergency brake.) So I thought, oh my god, that was it, everything was like that. This place is awful, too real! How do you get from a fantasy village game like Sky to here? Luckily, after our misdemeanor investigation, the story finally got going and started to feel like a fantasy JRPG. What was disappointing was that it took about 30 hours to get to this point, which meant a very slow start. It didn’t help that I didn’t really get into the characters for a while.

Trails in the Sky also took a very long time to start, but that was because it had to reveal all of the setting. It felt like I was fulfilling some random N00b request for way too long before I had a clue what the “real” story was about, even if it was just one city. But it’s still better than Sky SC. The game starts immediately after the cliffhanger ending of Sky FC, but then you’re like “Okay, but before that, you’ve got to do all the random bracer jobs everyone else throws at you, and then *you’re* done, can I start looking for Joshua?”

Characters

The pacing was very poor in this game, so I struggled with the characters. It took me a long time to understand all the characters’ backgrounds, and once I finally got to know them a little better, they finally became interesting. Ellie, for example, was basically a cardboard cutout until we found out she was a rich young lady and the mayor’s granddaughter. There were a lot of reveals about Randy and Theo that made me like them even more. The second half of the game told the truth about Rennes, and Joshua and Estelle showed up and things got exciting again. Before all this happened, the game was really boring for the first few hours because we didn’t get to “get to know” the cast and the crime solving was boring. But now that I’ve finished the game, how is it? I love her. Of course, for me they couldn’t beat Joshua and Estelle, but they had their own charm. I look forward to seeing her again in the next Trails game, and I’m glad I was able to stay long enough to see her shine. I also liked all the cameos from the previous Trails series, like Joshua, Estelle, Renne, and Kirika, so it’s nice to see a “sequel” in the Trails universe as a whole. That’s something we haven’t seen in the Final Fantasy series.

I said Sky starts out really long, and one of the things it does, during that long opening world-building phase, is introduce all the party members, like Joshua and Estelle, and let us know that there’s obviously something hidden here. I’m excited to find out what they’re up to. But here, they don’t even hint at anything about the party members during the initial setup until they finally show up much later in the story.

Final Thoughts

So, overall I liked the game and the story despite the very slow start and I’m looking forward to further adventures in Trails of the Blue Sky. Unfortunately, it was a bit disappointing when it came to romance/shipping, but at least Lloyd and Ellie have a sweet scene at the end when you give her two gifts in her room and choose her as a party member when she is gifted. It’s your chance to choose something you can do. Apparently Lloyd’s confession doesn’t appear until one of the Cold Steel games, so we’ll have to wait for the slow romance as well as the game itself. 😂

To be honest, the reason Lloyd never gets Ellie’s hints is because his typical comparison is all the o-neesan telling him “Ara-ara, come here O-to-kun, I’ll give you a 4P puff puff.”