Nihon Falcom recently released a demo for Trails in the Sky: First Chapter ahead of the game’s full launch on Sep. 19, and if you’ve hung around RPG spaces online for the past decade, you might know the game as just one piece of a multi-part series that spans decades That’s an intimidating description on its own, and eager proselytizers of the series usually follow it up by saying that Trails‘ interconnected story is one of the best reasons to play. They’re right, to an extent, but playing 13 long games just to see how all these narrative threads eventually spin together is a huge ask. The good thing is: You don’t have to. Trails in the Sky is excellent on its own merits, even if you never play the other games in the series.
Trails in the Sky is an epic saga, in the literary sense. It’s the kind of storytelling that traces its DNA to J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (minus the racism) all the way back to the medieval era and influential Icelandic poet Snorri Sturluson, who interpreted history by exploring personalities, not just politics. Sturluson’s view is, by accident or design, is the model for Trails in the Sky. The story sees a small nation slipping into post-war trauma amid tensions with its superpower neighbor and rising nationalism. But it’s told through the lives of one family and the people around them.
Protagonists Estelle and Joshua Bright are two teenagers who want to join a group of international do-gooders called the Bracers, so they set off on a journey to learn about how people live outside their own home town. Trails in the Sky puts their story on equal footing with the shopkeepers, mayors, office workers, and families you meet along the way. It’s not just some abstract idea of a nation you’re saving. It’s the scientist whose new shoes you tested, the orphans who’ll never forget the small kindnesses you showed them one day, the old man you saved from a mob of flesh-eating sheep, and all the other people who make that nation what it is.
It’s also a coming-of-age story, and while that might sound trite, few games handle these tales with the finesse Trails in the Sky does. Following on with the Lord of the Rings analogy, the game’s first half, and all of the demo, is like being in The Shire. This is the world Estelle’s known since childhood, and barring a few minor upsets, surely nothing will happen to change that or how she thinks of it. When the earth-shattering revelations do happen in Trails in the Sky, they’re serious enough to make you wonder how you could’ve been so naive to think life was that straightforward.
It’s like the moment you realize your parents aren’t just Your Parents, but complicated people with experiences and problems you never considered. Your understanding of the world broadens as Estelle’s does, your perspective changes with hers, and how she responds to these challenges is pivotal to both her character development and the broader plot.
None of this is new to the Trails in the Sky remake, which seems to stick close to the 2014 Steam release, despite using a different English localization. What is new is just how much better this version looks compared to the original release. Falcom first launched Trails in the Sky FC in 2004 in Japan, so that’s hardly surprising, though the quality of the animations and character models far exceeds anything the studio has made since. Much as I love the teeny little PSX-style sprites of the original and having to use my imagination to fill in the gaps of their interactions, it’ll be hard to go back to that now.
The remake also reimagines Trails in the Sky‘s combat, retrofitting some of the best enhancements made in later Trails games. It’s got a real-time hack-‘n-slash battle option that transitions seamlessly into turn-based battles, like 2024’s Trails through Daybreak. The remaster also adds a follow-up attack option when you knock enemies off balance, the same as two of the Trails of Cold Steel games. The pace of battle is much improved, even with the flashy new animations, and since standard battles in the original game could take ages, these changes are welcome indeed.
So if you’re keen to see what the fuss is about and don’t want to spend the next 1,000 hours of your life playing a dozen other RPGs, don’t be afraid of letting yourself fall in love with Trails in the Sky by checking out the demo. You’ll be glad you did.