Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter review — Falling in love all over again

One day, a young boy found himself in the Kingdom of Liberl on the western edge of Zemuria. The boy, broken and battered, was taken in by a kindly warrior just outside one of the kingdom’s sleepy towns. There, the boy met a girl, the man’s daughter. She was a direct contrast to the boy’s sullen and shy tendencies, shining brighter than the sun. From that day forward, the three were a family, and while it took some getting used to, the boy was happy. He didn’t talk about his past, but the girl didn’t mind and the two became inseparable. Now, the girl and the boy, Estelle and Joshua Bright, are following in their father’s footsteps, becoming warriors for the common man called Bracers. But their story doesn’t end there, in fact, it’s just beginning as the pair embark on a journey across the kingdom.

The Trails series is notoriously difficult to get into. It started with Trails in the Sky FC way back in 2004, and each game since then has continued the ongoing plot. There have been some entry points since then, such as Cold Steel or Daybreak, but unless you start right from the beginning, you are going to miss out on some plot points or recurring characters. If you want the full picture, you better be ready to play through 14 JRPGs which take, at minimum, 40 hours to complete. While I like the series as a whole well enough, I’m a bit of an outlier in that the very first game remains my favorite to this day. Despite the clunky combat, laidback pace, and having a bit too much dialogue, there’s just something about Sky FC that’s incredibly charming. It wasn’t a ton of fun in practice, but it’s one of those games where the more you think about it, the more you like it. 

So, when a remake of the game was announced in a Nintendo Direct sizzle reel of all things, I was ecstatic. If it could capture that magic again, it would remind me why I enjoyed the series in the first place, something I was forgetting after going through the rest of the arcs. Add in all the modern bells and whistles of the Daybreak games such as action combat, faster turn-based battles, gorgeous 3D visuals, voice acting, and more, then this remake could take a good game and make it an incredible one. Having now completed every quest, acquired the ultimate weapons, and combed every inch of Liberl, I can safely say that Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter is not only a phenomenal game, it absolutely blows the rest of its own series and some other franchises out of the water. 

The game follows adopted siblings Estelle and Joshua Bright as they become full fledged members of the Bracer Guild, an international organization of essentially helpful hands for hire. While they become Junior Bracers in the prologue, to become Senior Bracers they need letters of recommendation from all five branches across the kingdom, one in each region. They’ll uncover nefarious plots and conspiracies that may be more related than they appear at first glance. Even knowing what happens already, it’s a fun thread to unravel, especially when you notice certain connections before they’re fully revealed in the story. While the game ends satisfyingly enough, as the name 1st Chapter implies it does leave some very important things on a massive cliffhanger. So much so that some players will opt to go get Sky SC on GoG just to see what happens next instead of waiting a year or two for the remake. It’s just that gripping of an ending. 

Players who do that will find some story differences, however. Not like a Final Fantasy VII Remake situation, but more in the language itself. The Sky trilogy and the first two Cold Steel games were localized by Xseed, then NIS America took up the reins, and now GungHo are the ones retranslating Sky 1st into English. The game infamously has several novels worth of text given that the dialogue for most NPCs will update frequently as you advance the story, so it’s a massive undertaking. GungHo is going for closer accuracy to the original Japanese, but I still prefer the Xseed script overall as it has a lot more personality. For example, when Joshua is brought into the Bright family home, Cassius sort of implies that Joshua is Estelle’s present from her dad’s work trip. In Xseed’s translation, she hilariously asks “Why is my present a BOY?!” whereas GungHo Estelle says “Who is this BOY?!”. Xseed’s localization wasn’t perfect and neither is GungHo’s, so it really comes down to preference, but generally I find that this new version has some awkward writing and some very Japanese phrases that don’t read or sound great in English, like Joshua’s combat line “I’ll be your opponent.” The GungHo localization also gets shakier as you go along, but thankfully they still nail the important parts in the ending. 

Sadly, this version is also missing the chest messages from Xseed’s release. They weren’t in the original japanese script, but, to make a long story short, Xseed decided to have some fun and give every single treasure chest a fun joke or phrase if you examined them after opening. You can’t even examine chests after they’re open now, so while disappointing it’s understandable that they don’t return. I do hope in the future Falcom formally adopts this localization quirk, however. 

Aside from those issues, the game has a great story and some phenomenal characters. While someone like Agate only really shines in SC, the dialogue additions and changes did finally get me to like Schera this time, which is very impressive. There’s a ton of new little dialogue that just happens as you’re walking around, which gives a bit more color to the characters while keeping things moving. While 1st is about 5 hours longer than FC, at least if you’re going for 100%, it all feels like it goes much faster. Part of that is thanks to the voice acting, with the vast majority of the cast returning to reprise their roles from the original game despite only doing some combat quips there. They’re all fantastic, though I do find Estelle’s voice to be a bit too high pitched and cheery in this rendition of her. She's still my favorite character in the series, and one of the best protagonists in any story period in my opinion. Stephanie Sheh is a great actress and brings a ton of charm to the role, playing very well off of Johnny Yong Bosch as Joshua. 

Sky 1st has a ton of voice acting, but it still has half voiced scenes a bit too frequently. Most likely due to budget limitations, many games in the Trails series will have one or two characters in a cutscene be voiced. It’s always awkward, and honestly I would rather just have the scene be silent if needed. There’s a couple points where it makes sense, like when you were just introduced to a character it’s good to hear what they sound like, but largely I wish they would stop doing this.

Thankfully, that’s where all my criticisms of Sky 1st end. Everything else about the game is phenomenal, especially the combat. Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter features two modes of battle, action or turn-based. When walking up to a monster on the field, you can go ahead and smack ‘em by mashing the attack button. This will accomplish a few things, obviously you’ll deal damage, but you’ll also build up that enemy’s stun meter and your Craft gauge. The Craft gauge has two segments, and filling up just one of them will allow you to perform a hard hitting move for even more damage and stun. Perfectly dodging an enemy’s attack will fill both segments, allowing you to dish out two hits in a row if you so choose. 

You can defeat enemies outright in action combat, but for more experience and some real damage you’ll want to swap to turn-based once the enemy is stunned. This will grant your party advantage, and begin the fight with a Brave Attack. From there, you have three options: a single follow-up attack, two characters teaming up to dish out damage, or having the whole party pile on. The latter two options will use up points in the Brave meter, three and the full five respectively, while the former will restore one point. This is essentially your short-term goal in every encounter: stun the enemy to deal tons of damage with Brave Attacks as every hit on an enemy while they’re stunned will trigger a Brave Attack. These weren’t in the original game, being introduced in Cold Steel, but they’re a ton of fun to strategize around.

That’s only one cog in the machine that is combat in Sky 1st though. The two other big cogs are Arts and Crafts. Crafts are unique to each character, and cost CP to use, which regenerates by attacking or taking damage just like in action combat. Crafts are your bread and butter, having some great additional properties like impeding enemy attacks and spells, stealing turn bonuses, or dealing much more damage if positional requirements are met. For example, Estelle’s Hurricane Craft will hit enemies in a circle around her, deal more damage when she’s at an enemy’s side, and inflict strength down on anyone it hits. Some Crafts might focus on raw damage, others on stun, and still more on healing and buffs. 

Each character also has an S-Craft, which is a super move usable at 100 CP or above, being much more effective at the cap of 200 CP. Using these will consume all CP, but they’re super powerful and can turn the tide of battle in an instant. You can also use them at a moment’s notice with an S-Break, breaking the turn order to immediately use the chosen character’s S-Craft. You can use S-Breaks in a pinch, or to simply allow a character to go twice in a row, but it will also move their next turn much farther back in the order.

Of course, that doesn’t actually matter if you can end a battle with one. About halfway through the game, a common strategy for me was to have Estelle buff the party’s strength with her Morale Craft, then S-Break with Joshua’s Black Fang, which hits (and usually kills) all enemies. Breaking the battle system to trivialize encounters is a big part of the appeal of Trails combat, and it’s an absolute blast here.

To really break the game, you need to plan out a character’s Orbment. These are tiny pocketwatch things you slot stones called Quartz into, unlocking spells of the corresponding elements and providing stat bonuses. This is how you really build your party, as even if a character isn’t a spellcaster their stats can be greatly manipulated here. While Estelle is more of an all-rounder, Joshua focuses on speed at physical attack, so it’s a good idea to give him Quartz that raise both of those stats. I also like to give him support magic like Clock Up, Tear All, or Earth Guard so there’s still something he can do if he’s not attacking that turn or a 0 Arts turn bonus comes up. 

Turn bonuses are exactly what they sound like; a bonus for that character’s turn. These can range from HP or AP healing to guaranteed critical hits and the aforementioned 0 Arts, which lets you cast any art instantly for 0 AP cost. Normally, a cast occurs in three phases: starting to cast, the magic itself going off on a later turn, then another delay for their next turn. By using a 0 Arts correctly, you can have all three of those happen in sequence. Having Joshua cast Clock Up on himself on a 0 Arts turn will pretty much always allow him to take another turn immediately but now with a speed up buff so he gets even more turns after. 

Strategy does become just using buffed up S-Crafts as often as possible, but I did find arts to be much more useful throughout the game. Most enemies have slightly less Arts Defence than Physical Defence, allowing casters to shine a bit more than they did in the original game. When it comes down to it, they’re still useful for constantly putting buffs on your attackers to keep them basically invincible. My final strategy boiled down to having Olivier cast Saint on Estelle and Joshua, which buffs every stat for three turns, having Tita either remove debuffs from allies or buffs from enemies, and having the two protagonists beat the tar out of anything that dared stand in our way. The combat itself is still fun, as keeping all of this going is a balancing act at times, but the real fun comes in figuring out how to get to that level of broken. And thanks to the game being a reasonable length as opposed to 80 or 100 hours, as soon as you do feel massively overpowered the end is comfortably in sight.

Speaking of sight, Sky 1st is a gorgeous game, and feels like the fullest realization of the series’ anime art style. The Daybreak games looked great too, but Sky is so much more bright and colorful. It also achieves a sort of flat, manga look with characters casting some kind of shadow on anything directly behind them aside from the environment. You can see this most easily with Estelle’s hair, as her bangs will cast shadows on her forehead and clothes even if the lighting in a scene wouldn’t really allow for that. There are places where the effect doesn’t really make sense, but overall it looks great. 

The game sounds great too, and you even have three soundtracks to choose from. By default you’ll be listening to the new mixes, but you can choose from the original soundtrack as well as the Japan-only PS Vita Evo version. While the Evo soundtrack is a bit controversial, I don’t really think you can go wrong with any of them. The song you’ll be hearing most often, Sophisticated Fight, is an absolute bop no matter how you slice it. In fact, I wish we had Zanmai version from the Super Arrange albums just to complete the set, though that one probably wasn’t made with looping in mind. 

Honestly, I could go on for quite a while about all the little changes and tweaks, like quest and event markers to make sure you don’t miss anything, including the 11 books you need for the ultimate weapons, how each region is now a single room with no loading screens aside from indoor spaces, or how there’s more BP in the game than you need to reach max rank now, but I’ll leave those things and more for you to appreciate on your own. If you’re looking for reassurance that Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter is a good game, this is it. Go play it, right now.