LogFAQs > #901949209

One day, while surfing the RPGs: Everything Else forum, somebody mentioned that some game called "The Legend of Heroes" was coming out in the west and sounded excited about it. I had no idea what this was but checked out XSEED's site for it and was impressed by the artwork and the time they spent on it. There was a map of Liberl and I was curious because it looked quite detailed. The characters all sounded interesting and the cities looked really cool. Then somebody linked to a song from the series and I knew I would want to try out the game after listening to it. That song was:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUFqkmB5SSA" data-time="

Okay, it wouldn't come until the third game but it was still part of the series. So anyway, I bought the game and started to play it. There's a lot of information thrown at me early on and the game starts off like any other RPG for the most part. Nothing much is going on, I play as Estelle and Joshua and apparently they have a badass dad and they want to become Bracers. This is pretty typical storytelling for most JRPGs I've played since 1996, and I've played a lot, so for me it wasn't anything I would complain about as I was already used to something like this. The town of Rolent had a bunch of NPCs who knew Estelle and were all super friendly...yeah whatever.

Little did I know that this particular town was the starting point of one of the biggest, best RPG series I've ever laid my hands on. It's Trails of the Sky FC that completely warped my viewpoint of RPGs. Another milestone. What FC did was raise the bar extremely high when it comes to storytelling, worldbuilding, and characterization. If you've been reading up to this point, you'd know that I play RPGs for the story and characters, not for the gameplay (although bad gameplay can still ruin a game) and FC nails it. I mean, it was seriously difficult for me to go back to regular ol' RPGs after this, because FC showed me what JRPGs are capable of when it came to storytelling, when it came to dialogue, when it came to the world it is set in. Who knew this series which starts off with a boy and girl training to be Junior Bracers would turn into a large, interconnected adventure involving ancient floating continent, giant mechs, magical artifacts that can alter space and time, infernal castles and metropolitan cities?

People oft complain that the game's plot is minimal and doesn't really start until halfway through the game. I tend to disagree. I feel that keeping the player in the dark about what's going on behind the scenes is intentional. I was patient enough to endure maybe 20 or so hours of mostly worldbuilding and character crafting while the game fed me bits and pieces of foreshadowing and Chekhov'ing. Some people say, "Play until the play" because it's around that time that the story kicks into high gear. For me, Chapter 1 is when the story really came together. I wasn't exactly too excited about running around doing meaningless errands early on in the Prologue, and Rolent was my least favorite town in FC, but I do think that the Capua theft was when the plot truly started. When I reached Bose and met Olivier is when I realized I bought a damn great, finely crafted RPG. Oh Olivier, you and your lines. I laughed hard at mostly everything he said here and for the majority of Chapter 1 he stole the show. But it was the scene at the docks where Kyle and Josette meet with a mysterious masked man where I became extremely curious about the story. And it paid off.

Every piece of dialogue is well written, every NPC is named and has their own routine. Sometimes they are travelling on their own journey while you do yours. It's nothing like I've seen before. They change their dialogue after almost every event, and side missions are all mostly relevant and help develop not only the NPCs but the main characters. They'll even remember you and what you did when you check in with them in SC. Towns are huge and you'll spend a great deal of time in all five of the big ones.