For almost 20 years, The Legend of Heroes series has become one of the most promising JRPG games worldwide. With an immersive storyline and impressive gameplay, the series can be considered a contender to topple major JPRG games like Final Fantasy, Tales, Xenoblade, and more.
In 2023, Trails into Reviere was launched and marked itself as the pivot towards a new era of the Trails storyline. Recently, Nis America launched the latest addition to the Trails series, Legend of Heroes Trails Through Daybreak. This game is not only great but gives us a preview of what JRPGs and the series will look like going forward.
This review covers the Nintendo Switch Release of the game. Legend of Heroes Trails Through Daybreak is already available on PlayStation consoles and PC.
Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak revolves around a spriggan, an investigator who walks the lines of grey within the law, known as Van Arkide who was hired by a young high school girl named Agnes to help her look for her grandfather’s artifact. Unexpectedly, the more they investigate the whereabouts of the old relics, the deeper the mysteries become as they encounter dangerous people who plan to spread fear within the country of Calvard.
The story of the game is a great starting point to tell new stories in the Trails series. With a smaller cast of new characters and returning characters, there is a great chance for this game to grow as there will be more story arcs and surprises that fans will get to see including me.
The style of combat in the Trails series is turn-based combat. However, this new style has changed how it’s been in previous titles. Before engaging enemies, players can engage them by striking them and filling up the stun gauge. Once it’s full, they can enter combat mode and freely move around and perform a variety of attacks that can be either strengthened by your allies or using boosts. Overall, the combat is diverse, and the company behind this game has delivered what they promised to be a new change.
In terms of graphics, it has slightly improved as it shows a certain degree of rendering which Trails into Reviere showed us before. I would like to credit the developers for trying their best to improve the graphics.
On the other hand, I feel like they could have done a better job on certain environmental textures as parts of the map seem blurry and may make it harder for players to determine which areas are accessible or not. This may be an issue that’s exclusive to the Switch but it’s worth noting, nonetheless.
Completing quests provides a very tedious yet fun challenge to complete. Some quests are optional while others are required to advance the story. This feature is practically well-known to the Trails series but what makes it different is that certain quests let players choose how it ends.
Players choosing these endings will give them a boost in their social stats which allows them to unlock new stories and new equipment they can use in the later part of the game. This type of reward is incredible and gives a sense of letting players want to complete the game 100%. Not only that, the achievements that will be unlocked give them a sense of gratitude that will make them continue the game.
The only thing that probably needs improvement aside from the graphics is improving the performance of the game on the Nintendo Switch. Compared to the Trails into Reviere, the performance isn’t so bad, however, there are times that the NPCs pop out of nowhere and there are times that the game suddenly slows down. If I were to pick on this issue, I would say this feels more like a hardware issue as the Switch needs a major upgrade soon if the Trail series wants to continue on the platform.
With all that has been said in this review, Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak is a great game to play on all consoles. With compelling storylines, new combat systems added, and excellent voiceovers, this game has delivered what it means to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Trails series and I am hoping that the developers of the game continue to give us fans higher expectations for future releases.
