I will be splitting this review into 2 separate parts, these main paragraphs is the main game and when I get to it, I will edit a smaller review below going into the side stories and post game. After being so absolutely burnt out due to CS4 and taking a break with college coming back around, I finally got around to finishing up Haji/Reverie. Note that this is the take of someone who played the game on Abyss difficulty on a fresh new game start and I will be saying Haji instead of Reverie due to that's being the name I learned about this game through and since I played the JP version with the English patch (we hate NISA, I want my Reverse Babel back)
Haji is a game I had a lot of expectations for going into it. With Sky 3rd easily being my favorite trails game and almost even my favorite game of all time, me hearing that the layout of Haji is like that in layout gave it big shoes to fill. With that, I would say it did a very good job and I genuinely love this game. But as you can see, it is not a perfect 5/5 for me as I think Sky 3rd is. As I think and many others agree, Haji is one of the absolute peaks of character writing up to now in the series. C being the character I think absolutely steals the show for me. C as a character shows the complex ideals of a man living with the weight of his sins. The scene with C and Lapis will live rent free in my soul until the day I leave this world. Lapis due to who she is has a very different view of humanity as a whole and what this does for C means so much. Alongside C, Swin and Nadia are characters I would say absolute peaks. Swin less so strength wise, but Nadia is easily one of the most interesting written characters in the series. That main idea of trauma being transferred to dependence with what the Emperor did to them 2 and Swin wanting to keep up the promise he made with Ace, their bond absolutely brightens the scenes they had with each other. But the most absolute surprising win I had with this game is the development Rean gets. Rean is a character I had a very mixed love/hate relationship with. He never got much good character writing in my personal opinion in CS1-4 and since those were games I don't really love (as you can see with my reviews lmao), he just never intrigued me. But the thing I always did love about him is what he meant as the mc. Not the stupid fact that he's breaking the boundaries of power scaling in becoming so powerful so fast it's boring, but as this man who keeps trying his absolute best and just keeps becoming shattered internally because of it. With this beautiful game, they gave him some very good character writing and finally made an iteration of the character I genuinely believe got what he deserved. Since again you can see it's not a 5/5 game, there are some problems I have with this game. The biggest one being that the story as a whole just did not interest me at all. [BY THE WAY, I WAS KEEPING IT SPOILER FREE ABOVE ON PURPOSE, THIS IS WHERE I WILL BE GETTING INTO SPOILERS, YEAH? Good, back to the review. The key story to me was just, acceptable. Elysium as an idea is fine, but it really just feels like it could have unironically been an idea picked out of a hat and slotted in. Trails stories honestly always have been a bit to, extra for me. Like fuck the curse, it's such a shit and boring way to create """evil""". The robot doppelgangers is a very interesting idea to an extent, but I feel like wasn't done to the peak it could have been done. The robot Rufus was a perfect foil and development tool for the real Rufus and the rest of that squad, but the rest are just "POWERFUL ENEMY IN LORE MADE AGAIN". The best addition via Elysium is Ishmelga Rean. Ishmelga Rean making both endings of CS4 canon is an insanely cool thing to do, and I love what Ishmelga Rean means for the core idea of the story. A version of Rean who just, lost his fight with Ishmelga and became someone who he is not. Another thing I didn't fully like is that sometimes the groups didn't feel fully sealed with each other. Like Rufus' group is a great example. Rufus, Swin, Nadia and Lapis all work with each other so fucking well. But then, Renne kinda gets slotted in only to help the story advance and does nothing else. Her story completed mostly in Crossbell and even more in CS4, so she has nothing to do. She is just there.
Now for the combat, lol. As someone who played on ng Abyss difficulty, I found the combat to be interesting. Early game combat was completely mashing Burning Heart into Aeon Shield, mid game is mashing Burning Heart into Aeon Shield/Evasion and end game is mashing Burning Heart into Aeon Shield/Evasion/High Heavens. Lloyd never leaves your team if you have the choice and if you don't use him YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY THROWING. Another thing I am not a huge fan of is needing to wait for your evasion tank (you basically need to use an evasion tank) to have aegis which enables you to actually use phys units. If you don't have aegis, the split aggro is probably not worth it. This leads you to pretty much using any of these casters (Crow, Nadia, Towa and Tio). It opens up when you actually get aegis which made me actually enjoy the combat more. I can see why a lot of people don't do it cause it is much more gimmicky than genuinely difficult. Fights can easily be invalidated with Lloyd. But this all changes with some fights lowkey being RNG dependant. Some fights with dis-orders early on can just steal your defensive utility and one shot your whole team. And if Lloyd is on field when you get wiped and not in the first slot, you wont be able to revive him and lose your ability to create BP. There may be a silly 4 legged robot that does this exact thing which is INFINITELY WORSE CAUSE THEY FORCE FUCKING ALISA AND SHARON IN YOUR TEAM. Many fights basically just wipe you off the start and you need to wait for a good start to event attempt the fight and that's kinda cringe. With this all being said, I do not regret playing on Abyss. I have been complaining about Nightmare difficulty for multiple games now, so this was a very much needed addition. This difficulty gave me some of the best rushes after beating a fight I have felt in a JRPG in a long time, which I genuinely missed. I had to beat Abyss or my friend would rub in my face that he did and I didn't, so I simply did.
As a whole, to me it is hard to not compare this game to Sky 3rd. When I do that, I miss Sky 3rd. Sky 3rd genuinely changed my life and how I perceive games now and forever. This game, just didn't do that for me. Sky 3rd's character writing felt so real and what happens in Haji feels so far away from me. I did not dock points just because it isn't Sky 3rd, but it's just an example of a similar formula done better. Fuck the beach minigame I will never do it
Date beat (Main Game): 5/24/24
4.5/5
Post Game:
Fuck man, that shit eating grin I had on my face hearing Azure Arbitrator again in that final boss. I was very surprised to see how, easy that final boss was? Yes I was using very good teams on a """meta""" standpoint (A: Sara/Rean/Olivier/Renne | B: Elie/LeGuin/Jusis/Nadia | C: Fie/Mcburn/Vita/Crow) but defensive brave orders just pretty much invalidates much of the fights. The phase 3 1hp move doesn't matter if I make sure I'm always above 5bp for High Heavens, and phase 1/2 are just not even note worthy. I do wish it was more than 2 floors and a couple mini bosses before Demiurge but I can't complain. Many JRPGs don't even have a post game like this, this is awesome. The story was interesting and how the little amount of it flowed reminded me very much of Sky 3rd (I SAID THE THING). I was expecting more when I heard from my friend a while ago that it has a post game, but we ball. Big fan of this game, can't wait to play Kuro
Date Beat (Post Game): 5/29/24
4.7/5
Haji is a game I had a lot of expectations for going into it. With Sky 3rd easily being my favorite trails game and almost even my favorite game of all time, me hearing that the layout of Haji is like that in layout gave it big shoes to fill. With that, I would say it did a very good job and I genuinely love this game. But as you can see, it is not a perfect 5/5 for me as I think Sky 3rd is. As I think and many others agree, Haji is one of the absolute peaks of character writing up to now in the series. C being the character I think absolutely steals the show for me. C as a character shows the complex ideals of a man living with the weight of his sins. The scene with C and Lapis will live rent free in my soul until the day I leave this world. Lapis due to who she is has a very different view of humanity as a whole and what this does for C means so much. Alongside C, Swin and Nadia are characters I would say absolute peaks. Swin less so strength wise, but Nadia is easily one of the most interesting written characters in the series. That main idea of trauma being transferred to dependence with what the Emperor did to them 2 and Swin wanting to keep up the promise he made with Ace, their bond absolutely brightens the scenes they had with each other. But the most absolute surprising win I had with this game is the development Rean gets. Rean is a character I had a very mixed love/hate relationship with. He never got much good character writing in my personal opinion in CS1-4 and since those were games I don't really love (as you can see with my reviews lmao), he just never intrigued me. But the thing I always did love about him is what he meant as the mc. Not the stupid fact that he's breaking the boundaries of power scaling in becoming so powerful so fast it's boring, but as this man who keeps trying his absolute best and just keeps becoming shattered internally because of it. With this beautiful game, they gave him some very good character writing and finally made an iteration of the character I genuinely believe got what he deserved. Since again you can see it's not a 5/5 game, there are some problems I have with this game. The biggest one being that the story as a whole just did not interest me at all. [BY THE WAY, I WAS KEEPING IT SPOILER FREE ABOVE ON PURPOSE, THIS IS WHERE I WILL BE GETTING INTO SPOILERS, YEAH? Good, back to the review. The key story to me was just, acceptable. Elysium as an idea is fine, but it really just feels like it could have unironically been an idea picked out of a hat and slotted in. Trails stories honestly always have been a bit to, extra for me. Like fuck the curse, it's such a shit and boring way to create """evil""". The robot doppelgangers is a very interesting idea to an extent, but I feel like wasn't done to the peak it could have been done. The robot Rufus was a perfect foil and development tool for the real Rufus and the rest of that squad, but the rest are just "POWERFUL ENEMY IN LORE MADE AGAIN". The best addition via Elysium is Ishmelga Rean. Ishmelga Rean making both endings of CS4 canon is an insanely cool thing to do, and I love what Ishmelga Rean means for the core idea of the story. A version of Rean who just, lost his fight with Ishmelga and became someone who he is not. Another thing I didn't fully like is that sometimes the groups didn't feel fully sealed with each other. Like Rufus' group is a great example. Rufus, Swin, Nadia and Lapis all work with each other so fucking well. But then, Renne kinda gets slotted in only to help the story advance and does nothing else. Her story completed mostly in Crossbell and even more in CS4, so she has nothing to do. She is just there.
Now for the combat, lol. As someone who played on ng Abyss difficulty, I found the combat to be interesting. Early game combat was completely mashing Burning Heart into Aeon Shield, mid game is mashing Burning Heart into Aeon Shield/Evasion and end game is mashing Burning Heart into Aeon Shield/Evasion/High Heavens. Lloyd never leaves your team if you have the choice and if you don't use him YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY THROWING. Another thing I am not a huge fan of is needing to wait for your evasion tank (you basically need to use an evasion tank) to have aegis which enables you to actually use phys units. If you don't have aegis, the split aggro is probably not worth it. This leads you to pretty much using any of these casters (Crow, Nadia, Towa and Tio). It opens up when you actually get aegis which made me actually enjoy the combat more. I can see why a lot of people don't do it cause it is much more gimmicky than genuinely difficult. Fights can easily be invalidated with Lloyd. But this all changes with some fights lowkey being RNG dependant. Some fights with dis-orders early on can just steal your defensive utility and one shot your whole team. And if Lloyd is on field when you get wiped and not in the first slot, you wont be able to revive him and lose your ability to create BP. There may be a silly 4 legged robot that does this exact thing which is INFINITELY WORSE CAUSE THEY FORCE FUCKING ALISA AND SHARON IN YOUR TEAM. Many fights basically just wipe you off the start and you need to wait for a good start to event attempt the fight and that's kinda cringe. With this all being said, I do not regret playing on Abyss. I have been complaining about Nightmare difficulty for multiple games now, so this was a very much needed addition. This difficulty gave me some of the best rushes after beating a fight I have felt in a JRPG in a long time, which I genuinely missed. I had to beat Abyss or my friend would rub in my face that he did and I didn't, so I simply did.
As a whole, to me it is hard to not compare this game to Sky 3rd. When I do that, I miss Sky 3rd. Sky 3rd genuinely changed my life and how I perceive games now and forever. This game, just didn't do that for me. Sky 3rd's character writing felt so real and what happens in Haji feels so far away from me. I did not dock points just because it isn't Sky 3rd, but it's just an example of a similar formula done better. Fuck the beach minigame I will never do it
Date beat (Main Game): 5/24/24
4.5/5
Post Game:
Fuck man, that shit eating grin I had on my face hearing Azure Arbitrator again in that final boss. I was very surprised to see how, easy that final boss was? Yes I was using very good teams on a """meta""" standpoint (A: Sara/Rean/Olivier/Renne | B: Elie/LeGuin/Jusis/Nadia | C: Fie/Mcburn/Vita/Crow) but defensive brave orders just pretty much invalidates much of the fights. The phase 3 1hp move doesn't matter if I make sure I'm always above 5bp for High Heavens, and phase 1/2 are just not even note worthy. I do wish it was more than 2 floors and a couple mini bosses before Demiurge but I can't complain. Many JRPGs don't even have a post game like this, this is awesome. The story was interesting and how the little amount of it flowed reminded me very much of Sky 3rd (I SAID THE THING). I was expecting more when I heard from my friend a while ago that it has a post game, but we ball. Big fan of this game, can't wait to play Kuro
Date Beat (Post Game): 5/29/24
4.7/5
If this is their apology for everything that was CS4, I forgive them.
More Rean please ♥️
More Rean please ♥️