At long last, the west has finally caught up with Japan and its beloved Trails series, and now more clearly than ever after 13 long entries, the end is near. Or is it?
Back to Calvard
The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon is the latest game in the Trails series and the most recent entry in its Calvard arc starring the spriggan Van Arkride, but this game is about more than just him and his “fixers” at Arkride Solutions. It’s about the fate of space and time.
Shoutout to the foodies on the Falcom and NISA staffs for flexing their appreciation of food both in writing and in the visuals
Taking place a mere three months after the end of Trails through Daybreak II, the beginning of the game wastes no time in getting into the mix of Calvard President Roy Gramheart kicking off the republic’s space program and even doing so much as moving dates up for more milestone launches. The initiative has made the citizens and businesses in Calvard space crazy, all while leaving entities like the neighboring Erebonian Empire and the always observant Septian Church wary. As you’d expect, nothing is what it seems.
Three Trails Beyond The Horizon
In addition to Van, the game also puts you in the shoes of Rean Schwarzer and Kevin Graham, two former Trails protagonists who are back in shared main roles not unlike what fans saw in Trails Into Reverie. Unlike that game, though, all the action takes place in Calvard with the three parties never converging… sort of. More on that later.
It’s not just Van’s show anymore. Separate routes from Trails Into Reverie are back, with Rean and Kevin along for the ride
Representing Thors and Erebonia as the “Divine Blade of Ash,” Rean is joined by his former student Altina Orion, his best friend Crow Armbrust, another former classmate in Fie Claussell, and his fellow instructor Towa Herschel to provide support for Calvard’s military in preparation for a top secret project for the space program.
There for more confidential reasons is the former “Heretic Hunter” and traveling priest Kevin Graham, making his first appearance in a Trails game since Trails in the Sky the 3rd. He’s joined by the self-proclaimed picnic brigade consisting of Swin Abel, Nadia Rayne, Lapis Rosenberg, and C, after hiring them to help on a dangerous covert mission that we won’t talk about.
Classic Case of Trails
The game’s structure is separated by three acts, each containing sections where you’ll be using the groups led by Van, Rean, and Kevin. Most of Van’s sections take place in the capital (with the exception of Anchorville, where Judith/Grimcat is from), while both Rean and Kevin’s sections take place in areas explored in the first Trails through Daybreak. With that, the gameplay loop is very much like each of the last two games. Something big happens, do a few a “optional” sidequests as you explore and shop around, and then move on to a dungeon with some bosses. The sidequests are still “4SPGs,” as both Rean and Kevin’s parties act as extensions of Arkride Solutions with Van’s permission.
When in Calvard, the Thors alumni spend their time watching orbal movies featuring the same two actresses by themselves.
I put “optional” in quotes, because every Trails fan knows the sidequests are never optional. World building has always been central to the series, and this latest entry is no exception. To mix things up a little bit more and add a more cerebral feel to its sidequests, they now have a deeper focus on discussion topics. Some of these sidequests require you to talk to more people than you’re otherwise used to, which might feel like more fluff, but they also serve as a good way to see if you’re paying attention at the cost of SP, which are used to grade your performance in every chapter. NPCs with topics you encounter have an orange indicator on the map, but cannot be seen when fast traveling from different areas in the town you’re in. It takes a little bit of work, but this is arguably better than the secret sidequests that the series seems to have gotten rid of in the Calvard arc.
Oh no, not the Garten again
While the questing has been retooled a bit, so has the newest iteration of a feature I was hung up on in Trails through Daybreak II. The Marchen Garten, now called the Grim Garten after Ouroboros hacked it, makes a return. Gone are the colorful and lush gardens and oases, as they’ve all been replaced by dark and bleak environments to make up its randomly-generated nature. From a gameplay perspective, the purpose of the Grim Garten is to level up your characters and collect all kinds of loot–and we mean all kinds of loot. As you finish each generated room or floor in the Grim Garten, you can exchange the currency you get accomplishing various tasks off the Garten checklist for things like quartz, battle items, costumes, equipment, and more. Like the Marchen Garten before it, it gives the game a uselessly gacha feel found in mobile games. Luckily though, Falcom at least made it less time-consuming to open your pulls by allowing you to buy up to 100 at a time assuming you have the currency.
The gacha-like grindfest that is the Marchen Garten is back, taken over by the Society of Ouroboros and now called Grim Garten
Eventually, though, it becomes more than just a grindfest. When you get to Act 2, Van, Rean, and Kevin’s groups all end up merging into the same Grim Garten turning it into a sort of central VR hub world, which conveniently makes it the perfect place for both fan service and more world building. Instead of just mindlessly fighting your way through floors, the Grim Garten can be a place to fish, play blackjack, spend currency to watch connection events that you couldn’t do during the main campaign, and even watch events to learn even things that happened in Zemuria that didn’t fit the main plot.
Ulrika the Influencer, Ouroboros Enforcer No. XVIII is easily one of the best written characters in the game and the highlight of the Grim Garten.
The Grim Garten did pretty much everything it could do to be an improvement over the Marchen Garten, especially from a quality of life perspective, but every time I dropped in (and you’ll do it over 10 times), it felt like filler. All the canonical filler is great, well written, and informative, but the time spent in these places really build up in what’s already a long game to begin with. Ulrika is dope though.
Shards, Awakenings, ZOCs–it’s all still fun combat
Combat in Trails Beyond the Horizon is more or less the same as what it was in the last two games. The hybrid system combining both action and turn-based battles are back with some nice wrinkles to mix things up.
In field battles (action-based), you have the ability to use assigned Arts. This way, you don’t have to switch to a character like Agnès to user her orbal staff, and you can spend more time in field battles without having to switch to command-based fights. There’s also something called ZOC activation, which stops time so you can get even more hits to fill up your charge attack more quickly. Finally, some characters have access to “Awakening” abilities you can activate by pressing both sticks down to bring out to temporarily “awaken” their hidden abilities and cause more havoc on the battlefield. Examples of characters with these abilities include the protagonists (Van has the Grendel, Rean has the ogre, and Kevin has the stigma), Judith who can transform into the Phantom Thief Grimcat, and more we don’t want to spoil.
We finally get Father Kevin in 3D!
With command battles (turn-based), S-Crafts are back to only needing one boost, though the cooldown period is there. EX-Chains are less powerful because enemies can recover after getting hit by them a number of times, but there’s a new BLTZ system which has support characters not in the active party attack when using a boost on a stunned enemy. ZOC activation also exists in command battles by giving a character an additional turn, while Brave Orders (now called Shard Commands) from Cold Steel III and IV make a return and are more aggressively used.
One of the game’s dungeons has enemies that throw an interesting twist at you–they have the ability to start a turn-based battle as you’re attacking them in real time, and they also can flip the action from turn-based to action-based. When this first happened, because I was playing on high-speed mode, I thought it was some weird glitch. It was definitely something I welcomed though, and I wish it happened a little bit earlier in the game as well.
As the series has repeatedly done with the battle system, the fun part remains knowing what you can and cannot do while messing around with the orbment system and equipment to make your own devastating combos and strategies.
Verdict
After what was a bit of a misstep with Trails through Daybreak II, Trails Beyond the Horizon has found its footing once again thanks primarily to a plot that does a better job earning its tentpole moments, especially with its third act. Pacing is still an issue, especially with Falcom’s insistence on bringing back the Gartens, but it makes up for key quality of life improvements and more than cosmetic rewards when you give them your patience.
Speaking of patience due to pacing, it felt like this was one of the longer Trails games as I was playing, but I actually rolled credits around the 75-hour mark, making it the shortest game I’ve played in the Calvard arc even after finishing each 4SPG. For comparison’s sake, the first Daybreak took me 105 hours while Daybreak II took me 82 hours.
Everybody is here. No 6-7s though.
All that said, if it wasn’t obvious, if you’ve never played a Trails game, this isn’t the place to start. By all means, start with last year’s remake of the first game in Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter. More so than any other game, this is one that just assumes you played everything else, even with the Final Fantasy XVI-like glossary it has with every pause screen.
Trails Beyond the Horizon is a game that feels like it’s setting up the foundation to pay off the fandom with a surprising conclusion. Five years ago, I likened Trails of Cold Steel IV to Avengers Endgame. Trails Beyond the Horizon might as well be Avengers Doomsday, and there’s no telling what to expect when the sequel comes out.
The best part is we’re finally caught up, and there’s a good chance we’ll be seeing a worldwide release once we actually hit that conclusion.
At long last, the west has finally caught up with Japan and its beloved Trails series, and now more clearly than ever after 13 long entries, the end is near. Or is it?
At long last, the west has finally caught up with Japan and its beloved Trails series, and now more clearly than ever after 13 long entries, the end is near. Or is it?
Back to Calvard
The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon is the latest game in the Trails series and the most recent entry in its Calvard arc starring the spriggan Van Arkride, but this game is about more than just him and his “fixers” at Arkride Solutions. It’s about the fate of space and time.
Shoutout to the foodies on the Falcom and NISA staffs for flexing their appreciation of food both in writing and in the visuals
Taking place a mere three months after the end of Trails through Daybreak II, the beginning of the game wastes no time in getting into the mix of Calvard President Roy Gramheart kicking off the republic’s space program and even doing so much as moving dates up for more milestone launches. The initiative has made the citizens and businesses in Calvard space crazy, all while leaving entities like the neighboring Erebonian Empire and the always observant Septian Church wary. As you’d expect, nothing is what it seems.
Three Trails Beyond The Horizon
In addition to Van, the game also puts you in the shoes of Rean Schwarzer and Kevin Graham, two former Trails protagonists who are back in shared main roles not unlike what fans saw in Trails Into Reverie. Unlike that game, though, all the action takes place in Calvard with the three parties never converging… sort of. More on that later.
It’s not just Van’s show anymore. Separate routes from Trails Into Reverie are back, with Rean and Kevin along for the ride
Representing Thors and Erebonia as the “Divine Blade of Ash,” Rean is joined by his former student Altina Orion, his best friend Crow Armbrust, another former classmate in Fie Claussell, and his fellow instructor Towa Herschel to provide support for Calvard’s military in preparation for a top secret project for the space program.
There for more confidential reasons is the former “Heretic Hunter” and traveling priest Kevin Graham, making his first appearance in a Trails game since Trails in the Sky the 3rd. He’s joined by the self-proclaimed picnic brigade consisting of Swin Abel, Nadia Rayne, Lapis Rosenberg, and C, after hiring them to help on a dangerous covert mission that we won’t talk about.
Classic Case of Trails
The game’s structure is separated by three acts, each containing sections where you’ll be using the groups led by Van, Rean, and Kevin. Most of Van’s sections take place in the capital (with the exception of Anchorville, where Judith/Grimcat is from), while both Rean and Kevin’s sections take place in areas explored in the first Trails through Daybreak. With that, the gameplay loop is very much like each of the last two games. Something big happens, do a few a “optional” sidequests as you explore and shop around, and then move on to a dungeon with some bosses. The sidequests are still “4SPGs,” as both Rean and Kevin’s parties act as extensions of Arkride Solutions with Van’s permission.
When in Calvard, the Thors alumni spend their time watching orbal movies featuring the same two actresses by themselves.
I put “optional” in quotes, because every Trails fan knows the sidequests are never optional. World building has always been central to the series, and this latest entry is no exception. To mix things up a little bit more and add a more cerebral feel to its sidequests, they now have a deeper focus on discussion topics. Some of these sidequests require you to talk to more people than you’re otherwise used to, which might feel like more fluff, but they also serve as a good way to see if you’re paying attention at the cost of SP, which are used to grade your performance in every chapter. NPCs with topics you encounter have an orange indicator on the map, but cannot be seen when fast traveling from different areas in the town you’re in. It takes a little bit of work, but this is arguably better than the secret sidequests that the series seems to have gotten rid of in the Calvard arc.
Oh no, not the Garten again
While the questing has been retooled a bit, so has the newest iteration of a feature I was hung up on in Trails through Daybreak II. The Marchen Garten, now called the Grim Garten after Ouroboros hacked it, makes a return. Gone are the colorful and lush gardens and oases, as they’ve all been replaced by dark and bleak environments to make up its randomly-generated nature. From a gameplay perspective, the purpose of the Grim Garten is to level up your characters and collect all kinds of loot–and we mean all kinds of loot. As you finish each generated room or floor in the Grim Garten, you can exchange the currency you get accomplishing various tasks off the Garten checklist for things like quartz, battle items, costumes, equipment, and more. Like the Marchen Garten before it, it gives the game a uselessly gacha feel found in mobile games. Luckily though, Falcom at least made it less time-consuming to open your pulls by allowing you to buy up to 100 at a time assuming you have the currency.
The gacha-like grindfest that is the Marchen Garten is back, taken over by the Society of Ouroboros and now called Grim Garten
Eventually, though, it becomes more than just a grindfest. When you get to Act 2, Van, Rean, and Kevin’s groups all end up merging into the same Grim Garten turning it into a sort of central VR hub world, which conveniently makes it the perfect place for both fan service and more world building. Instead of just mindlessly fighting your way through floors, the Grim Garten can be a place to fish, play blackjack, spend currency to watch connection events that you couldn’t do during the main campaign, and even watch events to learn even things that happened in Zemuria that didn’t fit the main plot.
Ulrika the Influencer, Ouroboros Enforcer No. XVIII is easily one of the best written characters in the game and the highlight of the Grim Garten.
The Grim Garten did pretty much everything it could do to be an improvement over the Marchen Garten, especially from a quality of life perspective, but every time I dropped in (and you’ll do it over 10 times), it felt like filler. All the canonical filler is great, well written, and informative, but the time spent in these places really build up in what’s already a long game to begin with. Ulrika is dope though.
Shards, Awakenings, ZOCs–it’s all still fun combat
Combat in Trails Beyond the Horizon is more or less the same as what it was in the last two games. The hybrid system combining both action and turn-based battles are back with some nice wrinkles to mix things up.
In field battles (action-based), you have the ability to use assigned Arts. This way, you don’t have to switch to a character like Agnès to user her orbal staff, and you can spend more time in field battles without having to switch to command-based fights. There’s also something called ZOC activation, which stops time so you can get even more hits to fill up your charge attack more quickly. Finally, some characters have access to “Awakening” abilities you can activate by pressing both sticks down to bring out to temporarily “awaken” their hidden abilities and cause more havoc on the battlefield. Examples of characters with these abilities include the protagonists (Van has the Grendel, Rean has the ogre, and Kevin has the stigma), Judith who can transform into the Phantom Thief Grimcat, and more we don’t want to spoil.
We finally get Father Kevin in 3D!
With command battles (turn-based), S-Crafts are back to only needing one boost, though the cooldown period is there. EX-Chains are less powerful because enemies can recover after getting hit by them a number of times, but there’s a new BLTZ system which has support characters not in the active party attack when using a boost on a stunned enemy. ZOC activation also exists in command battles by giving a character an additional turn, while Brave Orders (now called Shard Commands) from Cold Steel III and IV make a return and are more aggressively used.
One of the game’s dungeons has enemies that throw an interesting twist at you–they have the ability to start a turn-based battle as you’re attacking them in real time, and they also can flip the action from turn-based to action-based. When this first happened, because I was playing on high-speed mode, I thought it was some weird glitch. It was definitely something I welcomed though, and I wish it happened a little bit earlier in the game as well.
As the series has repeatedly done with the battle system, the fun part remains knowing what you can and cannot do while messing around with the orbment system and equipment to make your own devastating combos and strategies.
Verdict
After what was a bit of a misstep with Trails through Daybreak II, Trails Beyond the Horizon has found its footing once again thanks primarily to a plot that does a better job earning its tentpole moments, especially with its third act. Pacing is still an issue, especially with Falcom’s insistence on bringing back the Gartens, but it makes up for key quality of life improvements and more than cosmetic rewards when you give them your patience.
Speaking of patience due to pacing, it felt like this was one of the longer Trails games as I was playing, but I actually rolled credits around the 75-hour mark, making it the shortest game I’ve played in the Calvard arc even after finishing each 4SPG. For comparison’s sake, the first Daybreak took me 105 hours while Daybreak II took me 82 hours.
Everybody is here. No 6-7s though.
All that said, if it wasn’t obvious, if you’ve never played a Trails game, this isn’t the place to start. By all means, start with last year’s remake of the first game in Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter. More so than any other game, this is one that just assumes you played everything else, even with the Final Fantasy XVI-like glossary it has with every pause screen.
Trails Beyond the Horizon is a game that feels like it’s setting up the foundation to pay off the fandom with a surprising conclusion. Five years ago, I likened Trails of Cold Steel IV to Avengers Endgame. Trails Beyond the Horizon might as well be Avengers Doomsday, and there’s no telling what to expect when the sequel comes out.
The best part is we’re finally caught up, and there’s a good chance we’ll be seeing a worldwide release once we actually hit that conclusion.
by Danreb Victorio
