You can really tell this game was made in 2004; the graphics aren't the finest, menuing is often a pain, and you'll be constantly holding down the turbo button if you don't want every engagement to take a century due to the animation lengths. That said, the world building and characterization is fantastic, and the soundtrack is quite understated yet exceptional. If you can get through the somewhat sluggish beginning, you'll be fairly pleased with what's to come. Not my favorite game in the Legend of Heroes series, and I definitely had my gripes with plenty of aspects (stealth missions...), but I ended up liking this a lot more than I had originally expected.

Trails in the Sky SC is the best of the series that I've played so far, no doubt.

It's got the world-building and characterization of the first game, but without the super sluggish prologue and a more realized and expanded upon combat system. The plot just keeps pushing forward and there's a ton dabbled with and drastically improved with fantastic storytelling and even deeper dives into every character. This one's going to sit with me for a while. I'll keep playing through more of the series (3rd, then Trails of Cold Steel IV once that comes to PC), and hopefully it's just as good, if not better than this. But if this ends up being the peak, I'd honestly be okay with that. SC is just that good.

I can't play this game anymore lol. The concept of doodling works just fine, but there are a lot of problems. The color scheme of the overworld is absolutely nauseating for one. The camera has a lot of problems too; the FoV is way too small (and there's no slider or way to adjust from what I can tell) so you're often uncomfortably close to your character, and the camera is way too sensitive and rotates a ton every time you try and mess with it. There's no map on the overworld to try and guide you when you need to submit assignments (I later learned that you can just fall off the overworld to auto-submit). There are more tools to work with so you can expand your doodling ability, but these tools all seem to be scattered between isolated isles, with no real way to travel between them except hopefully respawning randomly on the right isle. And finally, I have no idea how the scoring algorithm really works to get a gauge of how in tune this is. The concept is fine, but the lack of attention just about everywhere else is a huge problem.

There is pretty much nothing wrong with this game, it gets exactly what it wants accomplished in the timeframe given and doesn't overstay its welcome. Play as much as you'd like and explore as much as you'd like, it's all up to you. And there is a lot to do in this game that can be as short or as long as you'd want it to be! I myself spent a good chunk of time fishing before I finally bothered finishing my climbing and flying. It's a good time, and I'd have no reservations recommending this to anyone looking for a wholesome yet adventurous experience.

Just got my RTX 3070 and decided to go spec testing.

I can run Control at max settings with ray-tracing and get consistently above 80 FPS.

I can't run b at max dandelions, max meadow size, and max ladybug count at above 5 FPS.

Let it b known (heh) that b may just be the most graphically intensive game known to man.

It's an ok game; super pretty visuals, though the narrative feels extremely disjointed with very little holding everything together. The twist at the end is solid, but it lacked the emotional impact that I expected because ultimately the narrative didn't really keep me enthralled all the way through, due to the constant and somewhat unrelated puzzles that the game makes you go through in order to get the true story's ending. The constant stuttering as I walked along didn't help either. And fuck the cursed miner in the ancient god puzzle, the last thing I need in a walking simulator is a jump scare zombie monster.

Basically, it's alright, and a visually impressive game, but I think What Remains of Edith Finch is almost exactly this but better thanks to a better told narrative and more interactive elements. And it doesn't have jump scares. Go play that instead.

Well, I gave the demo a fair shot. But there are a lot of problems.

1. 6 of your buttons are to jump, and there's no dash or dive button. As such, your movement options are just jumping and walking around. Pretty limited for a 3D platformer.

2. You can only hold onto 3 costumes at the same time (from the demo), and you can apparently collect duplicates of the same costume. This can result in situations where you have duplicate costumes delete costumes that you actually need to progress in the level.

3. The background curves toward the player (sort of like Super Mario Galaxy), but it's actually all a linear world. This results in the background constantly bobbing up and down as you explore the environment, and can easily cause motion sickness.

4. Combat is kinda lackluster, due to the limited movement options (where you have to jump on enemies to defeat them) and the few costumes that have other attacks cannot jump because the one button action is linked to the attack rather than jump.

5. The game sort of works like a metroidvania where you will have to bring in other costumes from other levels to access all the collectibles. But as I've sort of implied from the above comments, you'll lose your costume immediately after taking a hit or falling off the stage. Thus, there's very little room for error when you're trying to bring in costumes from other stages to 100% a level (because you still need room for the costumes in the level that are required for navigation).

I hate to say it, because as nice as the visuals and background music are, this might be the worst 3D platformer that I've ever played. The movement just feels so sluggish and the gameplay feels like it's lacking a lot of quality of life features. Really disappointed, and I would not buy this on sale unless it got major improvements.