Trails in the Sky SC is another one of those games that from an objective standpoint is probably a better game than its predecessor, but is missing some of the quirks from the original that I liked. Right off the bat, the pacing is way improved from the first game. For one, it doesn’t take 12 hours for the plot to kick off, and on top of that, the chapters are actually divided up in a way that makes sense. Second Chapter having ten chapters that last 3-5 hours as opposed to First Chapter’s five chapters that last 5-10 hours feels way better to play through in terms of pacing out one’s play sessions. Second Chapter also goes out of its way to give backstories to the majority of the main cast, in some cases drastically increasing my appreciation of the attached characters. I actually like Agate now, and Schera and Joshua… well, I still don’t love them, but I don’t hate them anymore, which is an impressive feat in and of itself, so props to the writers for pulling those ones off.

Where some of my gripes start to come in is with the plot itself. For Second Chapter they pivot away from First Chapter’s political drama and choose instead to focus on the secret society of Ouroboros. I found this sort of disappointing because even though most JRPGs have fantasy politics lingering somewhere in the background, rarely are they put right at the forefront of the conflict like they are in First Chapter, so it felt like something of a breath of fresh air for the genre. To choose to then pivot from there to the most generic sort of antagonist you can have, an undercover organization bent on world domination, seems a bit like wasted potential to me.

Additionally, while all of the protagonists are great, some of the supporting cast left something to be desired. Cassius is still astonishingly poorly written. This time around, not only does he know every important person in Liberl, but he’s also well-connected to politicians from other countries and is apparently on good enough terms with a LITERAL DRAGON DEITY to call in a favor right at the end of the game for one final Cassius ex machina. Dude is straight-up impervious to conflict. I feel like I’m going crazy because he is the most aggressively “Gary Stu” character I’ve ever seen and I haven’t seen anyone else online acknowledge it.

My burning hatred for Cassius Bright aside, I was also kind of disappointed with the Enforcers. Most of the game they were being set up as individual foils for members of the party, and I thought that was pretty cool, but come the end of the game when it’s time for them to explain their motives and they give some of the dumbest reasons I have ever heard. Even the game’s main antagonist, Weissman, has pretty shaky logic if you think about it for more than like, one second. It’s not a huge deal because none of this comes up until the final few hours, so you don’t get to linger on it for very long, but I thought I’d mention it anyway because it felt surprisingly stupid compared to the rest of the game’s writing.

Now two games in, the Trails series has been a solid time for someone like me who likes fantasy epic JRPGs, but I can’t help but feel it’s missing a little something to push it over the edge. As previously stated, I enjoy the main cast and their dynamic quite a bit, so I can only conclude that it’s the overarching narrative that feels a bit lacking. I wish it would push for some slightly more daring concepts or jarring plot twists. First Chapter’s ending and the stuff with Hamel come kind of close, but those feel more like exceptions to the rule than anything else. Knowing that Ouroboros remain the antagonists for the rest of the series, I’m not super hopeful this will happen, but hey, I hear Zero and Azure are really good, so maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised.