Honestly, I understand why people say Crossbell is peak because this duology probably has the best two games overall in the series.

I just love everything about Crossbell. I initially played this game wih the horrid translation, but still enjoyed my time with it. It wasn't until last year where I actually got to play it with a real translation in my Trails marathon, and my opinions on it definitely changed for the better.

Honestly, I think I prefer Crossbell as a setting much more to Liberl, not to say that Liberl is bad per se. Crossbell is just that good. I just love talking to each NPC in each Crossbell District after every story interaction and seeing how their dialogue changes. I also love walking along the highways (or taking the bus) and visiting the more remote locations of Crossbell like Mainz and Armorica. Crossbell is just the perfect setting for this game, especially when they explore the dark sides of Crossbell, like the Mafia. I just found it interesting how after Liberl, we were sent not to Erebonia, but to Crossbell of all places. A highly contested autonomous state between two major superpowers in Erebonia and Calvard. Crossbell is definitely my favourite country worldbuilding wise because of how much it has to even further paint the world of Zemuria. If you couldn't tell already I think Trails is the only game series ever to actually get me interested in its political structure and world.

Now let's actually start this review. From a story standpoint alone, I think this is the best game that the series has to offer (so far). I say that because, yeah, the game does start extremely slow, but I think that's valid because the Special Support Section are a new section of the Crossbell Police Department, and haven't earned the trust of locals, like the Bracer Guild has. The group has only been functioning for a little while and they're already trying to deal with Mafioso's and threat letters to celebrities. The Arc en Ciel part of Chapter 2 got me hooked into the story, exposing Mayor MacDowell's secretary and apprehending him. Chapter 3 was probably the most hype I've ever been. You got the anniversary festival with high highs with Estelle, Joshua, Wald, Wazy, and Randy. You also got the auction where you get more interested in Wazy, Mariebelle, and Lechter as characters. This chapter introduces you to KeA, who's just the ray of sunshine that the SSS needed to feel complete. The boss for Chapter 3 after stealing one of their prized posessions from the auction is probably the highlight for me. It's just so badass. I love the little intermission that gives us a little glimpse into the life of the SSS with KeA being added to their numbers. Also, storming a mafia base is just badass, and mkaes me love Chapter 4 as well.

I think the finale deserves it's own little section. Everything just hits the roof. The army and mafia have been drugged with Gnosis, and we find out one of the doctors at the hospital is the leader of a cult. The raid on the SSS and the IBC was great, but I hate how side characters like Grace and Cao were just commenting on us fighting hordes of enemies, like bro, help us? Anyways, I love the badass driving scene with Sergei and Noel, and we get to use Joshua and Estelle in the final dungeon. The final dungeon was creepy, stupid D:G cult. Honestly, the final dungeon felt rather underwhelming till the Garcia boss, and then the final boss, Joachim. Dude just downed a bunch of pills and became a demon. If not for Renne, it would of been curtains for everyone. The final boss dies, and the Brights finally adopt Renne which made me shed a tear not going to lie, it's been a three game journey for them. Overall, a very epic story, and personally one of my favourites.

Character wise, there's a bunch that stick out to me: Randy, Tio, Wazy, Fran, Jona, etc. Randy is interesting because on the surface he's all silly, but he's actually very serious. I just love and adore Tio and Fran. Jona just makes me laugh with his silly shenanigans, and Wazy is probably my favourite because he's just so mysterious and intrigues me and makes me want to know more. I actually thought Lloyd improved over time, and is a great protagonist. I know people don't really like Lloyd, but I just like how he's supportive of the entire group, and you can really tell that he cares for the entirety of the SSS, even in the little time that they spent together. Elie, I'm a bit iffy on, because I don't know what exactly she brings to the story, but maybe that's just me. Overall, this game has really good characters.

Battling, there's not much that's different from Sky, besides new Arts. At least they kept the orbment system, which I adore. I also enjoyed the addition of Evasion. Evasion Builds are just so fun in any game. Yeah, not much to say with battling, it is mostly the same.

The music. slaps. so. hard. The crossbell main theme, the highway themes, the Mainz theme, the Revache theme, the Stargazer Tower theme, the Ancient Battlefield theme, it's all just such a bop. I actually think I might prefer the Zero battle theme to Sophisticated Fight from Sky, idk it just hits differently. But yeah, the music slaps.

Some extremely minor gripes. I hate how the translators treat Lloyd like a playboy and oblivious, idk it just grates me for some reason. Also, I do not understand Wald as a character at all, he actually might be my least favourite in the series so far. That's about it for the gripes.

Overall, the game is extremely enjoyable, and I would honestly love to redo it all and experience it all again. It was that enjoyable.

I wish this was a normal game. The first two story chapters do their respective sinners wrong but each canto gets better and it doesn't stop. You get to explore the world and wonder how the next canto will top the previous one. This is a sequel hacked into gacha, if it stayed a normal game it'd be a spectacular rush where both story and gameplay get better and better and reach for the stars. Canto 6 ditches gacha dungeons from previous cantos and is the closest it gets to the experience limbus could've been. And unlike some songs mili does for other series, the limbus ones are always story relevant, sure nobody will say anything if you want to listen to them outside the game yet the ideal is to wait for context and reach the epic ruina boss. Remember to read leviathan first ofc. Despite what some people might say If you arent familiar with previous games and the comic you won't know what's really going on since the start.

And sure, it has gacha issues I won't deal with since you can probably imagine like endless grind and dailies and gambling and crap, it's awful. You are going to read about how this is the best possible execution of gacha and it's just faint praise. I guess the first things you'll also notice are autobattles and the ability to read if attacks are going to land or not, such as Dominating and Hopeless ones, which is neat qol that is not present in ruina. Autotargeting enemies is something ruina has (press P) but barely works. In limbus it works for the worst fights but it's a gacha game. It would be a good idea if this was a normal ruina sequel of a couple encounters, one against mobs to play quick and farm resources followed by some boss to spam special attacks against. But this is gacha about autobattling a dozen fights against nothing until you reach a somewhat challenging fight, then you might start reading and manually deal your clashes like in ruina. This is why dungeons at the end of most cantos are weird, it's where the plot gets good and gameplay takes even more of a dive, encounters are just not interesting, there might be some bosses who require you to read, but it's just droning through mob fights and saving a ton of resources to launch your special attacks later. Compared to ruina I hated my first 60 hours or so in limbus. Again, they just kind of hacked great ruina combat ideas into a gacha game and made it braindead enough.

This is the game for the current pm crowd and some people just don't have it in them to play games well, even though it's this braindead, because of uis, because of bad tutorials, but really some are just not good enough and will never make it past a boss. If this is you, it's still nice to watch this on youtube. But I think it's self sabotage since the ludo in limbus is actually nice to experience unlike the dumbass self flagellation of lobcorp and this side of limbus just gets cooler as it goes. I persevered through gachashit and was rewarded

tldr cool world to explore + cool ludo

Tales of Maj'Eyal plays like a standard roguelike with the addition of an impressive number of build options and a vaguely open world for you to explore. Some of it works, and some of it doesn't, but it is a very interesting entry in the genre that has been better every time I have tried it.

Besides the regular roguelike stuff, there are quite a few quality of life advancements here -- ToME eschews some of the things that I would call antiquated like randomized potions and scrolls, for instance. Other systems are obviated after a couple of plays with items that automatically identify everything for you, automatically destroy items for money, and let you warp out of dungeons easily. This stuff is welcome, but it feels like those systems should have just been removed outright.
ToME does have some UX problems that get in the way, however, with tons of menu and stat gore that make things generally difficult to easily understand and make equipment and abilities hard to compare. It is unfortunate since other modern roguelikes like Brogue and Cogmind have done a ton to move the genre forward in ways that ToME misses.

I like the build options, even though things can be a bit obtuse and the number of things to choose from is a bit overwhelming. Your character is just a set of skill trees defined by your race and class choices which works well as an interesting, modular way to build characters in a game like this. I did find myself tending down the same paths for any given class, but there are enough possible characters you could build that it doesn't really matter at all.
I really liked unlocking new classes and seeing what they have to offer. There is a lot of creativity on display here from straightforward melee classes of various flavors to ranged attackers, magic users, summoners, and mages who use possession. No other roguelike I have played has quite this variety in character options that can fundamentally change gameplay to this degree. The flipside of this is that many of the classes can play pretty poorly. The aforementioned summoner and possessor seem cool, but I found the actual mechanics to be clunky and dissatisfying.

ToME is an open world, but is heavily gated by level ranges you are sort of intended to find by trial and error, I guess. You can wander the (static, predefined) overworld and find your way into (predefined) dungeons that are procedurally generated at a specific difficulty level. Going into a dungeon that is too tough for you will almost always just result in near instant death. Because of this, despite the world being ostensibly open, things end up very linear. It is unfortunate, since you can see a lot of potential in a game like this with a generated open world layout or simply more options for where to go at any given time.
This is ultimately what has made me shelve the game both times, since even though the builds feel unique, what I am doing in the world feels repetitive and boring.

This is a cool roguelike to mess around with and worth trying out if you are a fan of the genre. I bounce pretty hard off the world/level design aspects, but find myself wanting to return just to explore the classes and unlocks and I haven't really even tried the expansions.
Tales of Maj'Eyal has only gotten better over time, so I hope dark7god continues to add cool things to this project.

PC port of this game can be found here: https://archive.org/details/infinity-blade-pc

This series was The Game at the time, it had a presentation and vision that was just something else compared to anything else you could dig out of an app store. Playing the PC port nearly a decade and a half later puts into perspective how much of the difficulty at the time came from doing all of the tapping and swiping motions on such a small phone screen. Playing it on said PC port now turns it into a bit of a meditative grind that you can do while half paying attention to something else. Hopefully there will be a source code drop for the sequels at some point, I'd love to explore memories related to those too.