The legend of heroes is an old franchise created and developed by Nihon Falcom in 1988. The first entry was released this year as Dragon Slayer Legend of Heroes for PC platforms, Sega Genesis and SNES. After a sequel and the Gagharv trilogy, the Falcom releases the Trails in the sky first chapter in 2004.
The Trails series was the big hit and the beginning of a world where sets the next games for 2 decades after.
The numerous and continue releases of games telling a story of the Zemuria continent over the years. The big problem to enter into the series has been the big amount of content to catch up with the most recent release.
The Trails through Daybreak comes to be the 11th game in the Trails saga, taking place in the Calvard republic after the events of the Cold Steel and Reverie entries.
Van the spriggan, owner and only worker of the Arkride Solutions office, is tasked to help Agnes, a high schooler, to find a familiar antique, for certain reasons can’t contact the police or bracers help to look into the matter.
Highlights for Trails Through Daybreak
Story
After a brief explanation about the origin of the familiar heirloom and the Daniel ahead, Agnes forces herself to work with Van to find the other devices from her family.
The plot starts to move forward with the recent activity of the new mafia in the underworld and suspicious events around the republic involving active jaegers and silent society.
The new cast features some similar backgrounds to previous protagonists but new faces. With a lot of returning characters from the first entries like sky and Zero games. Seeing them again is really touching to be honest.
The new mafia group is hitting hard the Heiyue for control of the underworld and due to the shady aspects involved in the cases is a fit work for the spriggan and new hires.
Battle system
The revamped battle system may be a little confusion at the start. However, the new menus are very handy. We have 2 kinds of battles over the field and the classic turn-based combat.
Over the field: this new way to explore and battle speeds up the exploration and keeps the player in his toes to not underestimate the mobs on the field. Furthermore, the monsters on the field can be defeated without entering in turned battle mode, this makes very interesting the new way to map the dungeons and open areas.
The effectiveness of the weapon affects the performance in battle against the different kinds of monsters, for example, the magic attacks of Agnes with her staff are useful for most of the enemies except for some robust enemies and beasts, and vice versa with the physical attacks of Van which are not effective against slimes and gas type monsters.
The player needs to keep changing and paying attention to what kind of mobs are you fighting, since we can’t change user once the battle starts.
Classic turn-based combat: the new feature in here is the menu, a little improved from the previous games where we can move freely and “link” to another party member to get a little buff from the new Xiphas.
Every button of the controller has an option assigned to perform ability or use an item, therefore interacting with this menu and the high-speed mode can trigger some problems in important battles, so be careful or prevent using it.
Continue World Expansionism
The major attraction from the series has been the world created and how the plot in every game move taking place on the continent and how every big event Influences on the next games, the timeline has been amazing since the very beginning, the final scene in the sky third chapter showed a lot of the next 5 games in the continent of Zemuria.
Seeing that this is the final arc in the Trails saga or at least that what Mr. Kondo (Falcom president) said in a recent interview. The end is nigh, the game is a perfect fit for new starters in the series as well.
Despite the major easter eggs and backgrounds of the side characters every new arc is good to check what makes Legend of Heroes an interesting saga.
The veteran players or whoever played the complete series, will understand every detail in each scene, mainly coming from the Sky and Crossbell arcs.
Something worth to mention is the maturity themes treated on this new entry, there are some scenes where we will see corpses, blood, tabaco, alcohol, drugs, violence and other topics in a new level not showed before in the Trails saga.
Personally, I see that as a good step to refresh the friendly atmosphere in the game despite facing civil wars, invasions and coup de et through the years.
Graphics
The new graphic engine is property of Falcom and replaced the PhyreEngine used on Cold Steel arc, it shows more vivid colors and realistic buildings, polished structures, soft landscapes, colorful fields and we can see actual damage to the outfits in certain occasions.
It’s easy to call the improvements on the visuals since the first scenes, the old engine used on the last 3 games felt repetitive already.
The game may need an optimization for the pc version, since the new engine is graphical demanding it may need a few tweaks to configurate it properly for handheld devices as Steam deck and such.
The anime art style is one of my favorites and looks amazing how the movement and actions of the characters were not affected negatively by the change.
Sound
The original soundtrack is on charge of Hayato Sonoda, Shuntaro Koguchi, Yukihiro Jindo and Mitsuo Singa. As usual with Falcom titles It has an amazing soundtrack and well places sound effects, nothing misses that worth to mention, it doesn’t have anu big show either to call a total masterpiece either but we can’t deny the good job poured in this front.
The music over map and the battle soundtrack hit the spot for the argument at hand for every chapter, touching for the first and rage for the second.
Performance
Tested on Steam deck original version, needed to try a lot of different configurations to reach a good balance between battery life, overheating and graphic quality. However, the website steamdeckhq provides a basic configuration to stabilize the system and prevent the repetitive overheating problems I was facing.
- FPS limit 40
- Refresh rate 80
- HRS no
- TDP Limit no
- Scalling filter: linear
- GPU Clock: disabled
- Character Draw Distance: Medium
- Level-of-Detail Distance: Low
- Light Draw Distance: Low
- Shadow Resolution: Low
- Shadow Filtering: Default
- Shadow Caching: Aggressive
- Local Shadowing: Default
- Resolution scale: 90%
- Anti-Aliasing: Basic
- Portrait Supersampling: High
- Minimap Anti-Aliasing: 4x MSAA
- Anisotropic Filtering: High
- Screen-Space Reflections: Default
- High-Resolution Cubemaps: Off
- Volumetric Lighting: Low
- Water Shading: Original
No errors or glitches detected after 40 hours of playtime.
I went up a step forward from the recommended on the website because wanted to look it better and reached a decent battery duration of 3 hours.
The game runs great on steam deck with proper settings, it needs some optimization to last longer without overheating but perfectly enjoyable.
Limited to 40fps and settings in middle range lasts 3 hours straight of battery life without overheating.
Conclusions
1. A new arc on the Trails series, perfect to start the series without playing previous games.
2. The revamped battle system, new graphic engine and the new direction to approach mature topics in a direct way rather than general talking make it feel very different from previous entries.
3. Another great title with charismatic characters, great art designs, amazing world expansion, great visuals and good OST as always.
