This review contains spoilers
Trails in the Sky SC starts very quickly after Trails in the Sky FC left off, with Joshua having skipped out following the revelation that the antagonist group of Ouroboros knows he used to be one of their number, and after confessing his feelings to Estelle. This game in turn picks up with Estelle going on further training as a Bracer, before picking up Joshua’s trail, tracking him down while also attempting to thwart the various elements of Ouroboros’ plan – because Estelle always gets her man, and dammit, Joshua is her man. (Cue awkward anime blushing). This in turn takes you through a lot of the previous environments from the earlier games, where you get to chat with a lot of the characters who you’d met before, see how the world has developed over a time-skip of a few months, and level up further and develop new abilities, as you learn more about the setting.
On the one hand, this could make the game feel cheap – you’re re-using a lot of environments, including some dungeon maps, from the first game, along with some character portraits. However, where the game clearly saves in production design, it makes up for it in the writing. This is a clear case of the game showing that using a serialized narrative structure between games, with game-assets being consciously and deliberately re-used with intent, can actually make for a richer world.
To put it another way, you don’t think Friends is being cheap for having the characters hang out at Central Perk, you think that’s a logical place for the characters to hang out, and maintaining that environment while introducing characters to it – as customers, as employees – enriches the world. The same applies here. It does also mean that when we go into entirely new areas – like a floating, Castle In The Sky-esque city in the game’s final chapter – those moves have considerably more impact, because we’re stepping outside of our narrative comfort zone, and the writing reflects it with the characters reactions.
Oh, and those reactions are still solid – the character portraits are great, and Estelle continues to have great reaction faces (to the point that I submitted one to the Axe of the Blood God Discord as an emote). The romance aspect of the story is generally handled well. They do a good job of using the development of Joshua’s backstory as a previous agent of Ouroboros who had been freed by Cassius Bright to try and make the idea that a romance between Joshua and Estelle, as adoptive siblings, less squicky. It kinda works – they basically set up that they were actually older than was initially implied when Joshua was adopted, and Joshua had a considerable amount of life experiences (including some very traumatic life experiences) before meeting Cassius. This isn’t going to fly with everyone, but it works well enough here to carry the rest of the story, and the Estelle/Joshua relationship.
The gameplay is generally unchanged from First Chapter – the biggest addition to the game is the ability to upgrade slots in your Orbments, allowing for more powerful Sepiths to be equipped and with that additional effects on your characters’ stats, and more powerful spells. It does change up how your character builds work, combined with the inclusion of more spells that will buff damage and defense. It does a good job of striking a balance of making sure that all the knowledge of how to develop your characters and how to manage combat from FC is still useful, while providing new wrinkles to keep players engaged beyond the story. It’s a good way of handling the Final Fantasy situation with the PS1 games: “These games need to recognizably play like a Final Fantasy game, while not being mechanically identical to the last game that came out,” while also dealing with the fact that they’re also maintaining continuity of setting between games, and some of the mechanics are inherently tied to the setting.
If you played Trails in the Sky FC, and enjoyed it, really you need to pick up SC because the story in FC isn’t actually finished, but you can be confident that it will come to a satisfying conclusion in SC. If you haven’t played FC yet – jumping in at SC will just confuse you. It does a decent job at reiterating some of the important plot points from the last game, but it’s done in the context of “That last game was over 80 hours, this game is also about that length, you’re going to need a reminder,” not “If you’re new to the series, here’s what you need to know.”
On the one hand, this could make the game feel cheap – you’re re-using a lot of environments, including some dungeon maps, from the first game, along with some character portraits. However, where the game clearly saves in production design, it makes up for it in the writing. This is a clear case of the game showing that using a serialized narrative structure between games, with game-assets being consciously and deliberately re-used with intent, can actually make for a richer world.
To put it another way, you don’t think Friends is being cheap for having the characters hang out at Central Perk, you think that’s a logical place for the characters to hang out, and maintaining that environment while introducing characters to it – as customers, as employees – enriches the world. The same applies here. It does also mean that when we go into entirely new areas – like a floating, Castle In The Sky-esque city in the game’s final chapter – those moves have considerably more impact, because we’re stepping outside of our narrative comfort zone, and the writing reflects it with the characters reactions.
Oh, and those reactions are still solid – the character portraits are great, and Estelle continues to have great reaction faces (to the point that I submitted one to the Axe of the Blood God Discord as an emote). The romance aspect of the story is generally handled well. They do a good job of using the development of Joshua’s backstory as a previous agent of Ouroboros who had been freed by Cassius Bright to try and make the idea that a romance between Joshua and Estelle, as adoptive siblings, less squicky. It kinda works – they basically set up that they were actually older than was initially implied when Joshua was adopted, and Joshua had a considerable amount of life experiences (including some very traumatic life experiences) before meeting Cassius. This isn’t going to fly with everyone, but it works well enough here to carry the rest of the story, and the Estelle/Joshua relationship.
The gameplay is generally unchanged from First Chapter – the biggest addition to the game is the ability to upgrade slots in your Orbments, allowing for more powerful Sepiths to be equipped and with that additional effects on your characters’ stats, and more powerful spells. It does change up how your character builds work, combined with the inclusion of more spells that will buff damage and defense. It does a good job of striking a balance of making sure that all the knowledge of how to develop your characters and how to manage combat from FC is still useful, while providing new wrinkles to keep players engaged beyond the story. It’s a good way of handling the Final Fantasy situation with the PS1 games: “These games need to recognizably play like a Final Fantasy game, while not being mechanically identical to the last game that came out,” while also dealing with the fact that they’re also maintaining continuity of setting between games, and some of the mechanics are inherently tied to the setting.
If you played Trails in the Sky FC, and enjoyed it, really you need to pick up SC because the story in FC isn’t actually finished, but you can be confident that it will come to a satisfying conclusion in SC. If you haven’t played FC yet – jumping in at SC will just confuse you. It does a decent job at reiterating some of the important plot points from the last game, but it’s done in the context of “That last game was over 80 hours, this game is also about that length, you’re going to need a reminder,” not “If you’re new to the series, here’s what you need to know.”