So, I’ve been trying, for the better part of the month, to finally finish developer Nihon Falcom’s ‘The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky’, a JRPG I’ve been meaning complete for well over a decade. Not that I hate it—perish the thought, the game is great. The opening is fantastic, the narrative is well-paced, the characters are great, the gameplay is super fun. There’s a reason it’s got a cult following! And I’ve gotten pretty far but it’s just that I’m easily distracted… And look, I would’ve continued playing these last three days if the demo for the remake ‘Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter’ didn’t make its way to my inbox. My eyes blew wide-open, and my heart skipped a beat—do I keep playing the original classic or do I jump right into this anticipated remake of a JRPG I somewhat maintain within my internal rhythm (despite never finishing it!)?
…I guess I’ll be playing both!
(Nihon Falcom/GungHo Online Entertainment America)
To briefly recap, Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter is a remake of that aforementioned Legend of Heroes title—launching on PC via Steam, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch consoles next month: but a demo drops today across all platforms and supports save transfers to the full game. It brings our protagonists Estelle and Joshua Bright from that cosy CG-style of graphics against 3D scenery to a fully HD 3D world with a near-seamless hub world and a revamped combat system befitting it all. It is also the best-looking 3D game I’ve ever seen from Nihon Falcom—not just due to the available technical features and lighting but also the animation work is an insane glow up compared to their prior 3D from the PlayStation 3 era. Nothing can demonstrate this better than that iconic opening scene I mentioned:
And the original classic for comparison:
This introduction has not only gotten me into this game, but I’ve been able to pull several people online and offline into the series just by starting this game. Heck, one of those individuals, my little brother, has since gone on to complete the rest of the games in the series. I am both proud of him (even if he’s an active ‘League of Legends’ player) and mildly embarrassed at my inability to do the same thing.
Anyhow, I don’t even know where to begin describing this overwhelming sensation, seeing all this. Character models look fantastic, the world is bright and colourful, and seeing the country of Rolent in such a lovely visual style makes me swoon. It also runs great on this generation’s lower end GPUs, with the game maintaining a full 60 frames per second across my RTX 3060-based laptop and my Intel Arc B580-equipped desktop with all settings bumped to “high”. I was even able to maintain a near 60 on the latter after bumping up the internal resolution to roughly 140% of the pixel count of 1080p.
This overhaul to the visuals does a fantastic job of displaying Estelle’s overtly genki but occasionally reserved characteristics and Joshua’s respectful nature. You can see it in the animations and particularly in key story moments which offers the full range of animation work that I love to see. But it’s not just animations that have improved but the scale of the world—you can really see distant meadows, lush bits of foliage, airships in the distance—I mean, the best way I can describe how I see this game is that we’ve essentially watched Nihon Falcom go from shipping playable Gmod YouTube poops to games with modern and expected visual and gameplay standards. Something that I think the first Trails game truly deserves.
(Nihon Falcom/GungHo Online Entertainment America)
I don’t want to touch on the story much. This being a demo and all, you can grab it yourself now and see it for yourself—there’s a reason it’s the beginning of a long-running JRPG series, after all! What I will talk about is the combat: we’ve got this semi-hybrid action slash strategic turn-based system where the player can approach most encounters in the game by attacking enemies in the overworld and either stun them or finish those baddies off then and there. If you successfully stun them, you can enter right into the heart of the combat system and battle it out against foes in the turn-based side of things. This is where all the action truly lies, with Craft and Elemental Arts attacks at your disposal.
The turn-based battlefields are circular zones with no transitions, and the fights all occur in the overworld. In this demo covering the prologue, you’ll primarily control Estelle and Joshua when battling the creatures present. Estelle will cover for Joshua by providing heals and inflicting significant stun against foes if the player lines up her Craft attack “Hurricane” that reaches multiple enemies within the attack circle. By attacking foes from the side, this also increases amount of stun that is applied to enemies. Once an enemy is fully stunned, players not only get a chance to follow up with a powerful attack but also prevent the enemy from moving for the next turn.
This is quite necessary because Trails 1st will happily overwhelm the player and said enemies will often move much quicker than you do in the beginning. Dying isn’t the end, however, as you can always lower the game’s difficulty and retry battles freely. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be making frequent saves, however, and more importantly, keeping the duos gear and orbments in check. Your orbs dictate stat growth and available skills in addition to levelling up and equipment. Unlocking slots and creating said orbs is paramount to keeping yourselves alive, so ensure that you fight enemies and break objects in the overworld to horde shards.
This demo will give you quite a bit to level out of the first area in the game but do be prepared to sit through quite a few cutscenes. I spent about three hours or so myself just exploring the other roads that lead outside of Rolent and collecting a few chests here and there. I absolutely love what I’m seeing so far, and I can’t wait to play the full game when it launches on the 19th of September.
‘Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter’ now has a public demo available for downloading across Steam, PlayStation, and with Nintendo Switch consoles at a later date. As mentioned in this impressions article, players can experience the prologue of the game for free with full save transfers supported once the whole thing launches. You can learn more about the game right over here and check out physical edition details as well. This version of the game is published by GungHo Online Entertainment America.
