The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak Review – Relent, My Spriggan

Introduction to Trails through Daybreak

If there was one series I could confidently claim I’ve spent hundreds of hours on across each title, it would have to be Trails. Each entry of this rich franchise boasts innumerable character interactions that delve into so many tangentially related facets, ultimately giving life to the most immersive gaming world I’ve ever seen. In the West, we aren’t too far off from what has been currently released in Japan, which is honestly pretty unbelievable. Having followed this series since the localizations of the Sky saga, I genuinely never thought we’d progress this much, this swiftly.

Anyway, this has finally led to the arrival of the highly anticipated Calvard arc in The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak. After four games of Erebonia in the Cold Steel saga, as well as what was essentially a Crossbell 2.5 and Cold Steel 4.5 in Trails into Reverie, this arc’s arrival has been desired as a clean slate of sorts. While obviously connecting to the past and future of the games, having a new cast in a new setting is a welcome shakeup.

With all that being said, I eagerly dove into Trails through Daybreak. And after spending over 120 hours throughout this intricately woven adventure, it’s undeniable that this is the most ambitious start to an arc in the franchise’s history.

New Setting and Protagonist: Van Arkride

Trails through Daybreak occurs one year after the events of Trails into Reverie, and at least for now, we have moved on from the likes of the SSS and Class VII, both new and old. Here in the Republic of Calvard, the economy is booming more than ever, thanks to post-war reparations from the war in Cold Steel IV, Operation Jormungandr. Still, that doesn’t necessarily mean that all walks of life are all hunky-dory. This truth is perhaps most evident when seeing the region through the eyes of our protagonist, Van Arkride.

This self-appointed Spriggan regularly toes the line of legality, taking on jobs for individuals who can’t turn to the police or Bracer Guild for aid. He’s seemingly as morally gray as you can get, though this doesn’t stop Aramis student Agnès Claudel from making a request of him that significantly alters the trajectories of their lives forever. As effectively a protagonist in her own right, Agnès is on the hunt for the Geneses, mysterious orbments that are somehow tied to her family. And after the first Genesis causes Van to transform into an aberrational being known as the Grendel, he decides to help Agnès find all eight pieces, likely making this the longest job he’s ever taken on.

Character Development and Narrative Tone

Trails through Daybreak is a breath of fresh air in practically every way you can imagine. The distinctions here are immense, from the story pacing and general tone to the party acquisition and dynamics. The center of these narrative and character alterations stems from Van Arkride, who, aside from Kevin, is the boldest protagonist in the series. Contrasting the transparently well-meaning natures of Estelle, Lloyd, and Rean, Van’s occupation makes him jaded and more realistic.

That isn’t to say he’s cold-hearted and cruel; he isn’t. It’s more that he explores solutions and conversations far differently than the norm of this series’ conventions. Also, given the fact that he’s friendly with and willing to take jobs from society’s underworld, even the antagonistic group Ouroboros, you can see why he stands out. Further, being 24, a bit old for a JRPG protagonist, Van’s dynamics with the cast inherently stand out.

Pacing and Structure: Blending Familiar and New Elements

Even after just this one game alone, Van is already my second protagonist in the franchise because, aside from his compelling traits, the way he’s approached is so masterfully clever. To elaborate, you’re not privy to sensitive information about Van’s life, even when it sometimes feels like you should know. Whenever a facet of his past comes up in the midst of conversation, it’s always natural and rarely needlessly expository for the sake of the player. You’re kept in the dark about certain aspects all the way to the end, making his enigmatic background constantly engrossing to ponder. More than any previous protagonist, even Rean, it sometimes feels like you don’t truly know who you’re playing as, providing an indescribably unique sensation.

This character approach makes the rest of the main cast, especially Agnès, more engaging by extension. For instance, in some scenarios where you make a story choice, Van will ask a member of the party a question he already knows the answer to, putting even more of a noticeable distance between him and the player.

As for the rest of the party, they’re not quite as strong, but I became impressively attached after just the start of this arc, surpassing my engagement with the Sky and Crossbell casts. Aside from Agnès, who we’ve discussed at length, the party members are gradually introduced across each chapter, making the pacing the next topic.

The combat and customization systems of Daybreak are addictive and fulfilling throughout their entire durations.

Trails through Daybreak can be seen as a melding of every previous saga in terms of its progression. You have a hub in Calvard’s capital, Edith, akin to Crossbell and Cold Steel. At the same time, you visit new areas and greet new characters as party members for most chapters, which is somewhat akin to the Sky saga. Above all else, you’ll become most well-acquainted with Edith as you spend tons of time here before embarking on the chapter-specific trips.

Like almost every previous entry, Daybreak is full of sidequests and boatloads of NPC dialogue, with recurring characters who have mini-storylines and arcs of their own if you pay attention to them. These NPC storylines do fantastic jobs at showcasing Zemuria’s and, more specifically, Calvard’s cultural and financial climates, with some examples being the introduction of idols, the success of films in the entertainment landscape, and cars becoming an increasingly popular sensation for the public.

To be honest, I wasn’t expecting Daybreak to have much NPC dialogue to begin with since, unlike the previous arcs, you’re unable to talk to literally every single NPC on the map. Instead, you can only interact with those possessing “Chat” icons. However, plenty of dialogue is here to peruse, much more than what the average player will read through. Still, if you do so, you’ll become far more invested in this region than you would be otherwise. While not on the level of Cold Steel’s NPCs, Daybreak is near the heights of that raised bar.

I spoke to every single NPC throughout the game, meaning I’ve seen every bit of dialogue sans party-specific circumstances depending on who was with you. As a result, I can comfortably claim that the editing job here is excellent. This is NISA’s strongest localization to date, with no standout grammatical or spelling oversights I can recall, even with the most minor NPCs. Only a few negligible typos that likely won’t come close to impeding the experience for even the most hardcore fans come to mind. But if I had to nitpick anything, it’s that characters use “Still” as a sentence opener far too frequently.

Localization and Accessibility for Newcomers

Another topic worth discussing is whether Daybreak is truly as newcomer-friendly as advertised. And the truth is that it’s less than you would expect. While you can certainly begin here and follow the general plot, the reliance on knowing the previous games becomes increasingly evident the further you progress. Then again, this is likely one of the last recommendable entry points the series will have, so if you feel like this one is really calling you, then, by all means, give it a shot.

Circling back to the writing, Daybreak excels with its main cast and dynamics, with everyone naturally fitting into the group. Admittedly, Judith and Bergard feel shafted by comparison, but they, too, receive moments of significant limelight. The supporting cast, comprised of the Bracer Guild, police, Heiyue, and several other organizations, also shines, with there being no weak link.

However, the villains are where I have the most issues. While each has a tremendous presence, they fall into the tired Falcom practice of being comically evil with flimsy, half-baked justifications that arrive far too late to leave an emotional impact. One of them doesn’t abide by this generalization, so she stood out far more positively. And I found one of the other members constantly entertaining thanks to a fantastic English dub performance.

Speaking of, the English dub of Daybreak is expectedly terrific, continuing the level of quality the Cold Steel saga boasted. Damien Haas and AmaLee felt like ideal casting for Van and Agnès, respectively; I can’t praise their performances enough. Everyone was honestly great, though I wouldn’t say I liked the casting choice for the returning character, Zin. Patrick Seitz did not reprise this role from his combat lines throughout Sky, which was jarring since Keith Silverstein returned as a certain other character from Sky. Unfortunately, Zin’s English dub voice was the only one that did not fit.

Combat and Customization Systems

Finally, moving onto gameplay, Daybreak is an all-new ballpark with plenty of ambition evident right from the outset. This is the first full Trails game with Falcom’s new in-house engine, which has several improvements, such as the seamlessness of exploration. Entering interiors no longer requires a loading screen, which may seem minor, but it is a massive step up from the developer’s previous releases. The character models are also generally smoother and more expressive, so the move here was the right decision.

Combat is another area of vast differences that are genuinely intimidating. The orbment system has seen a fundamental revamp, making this the most major shift since the start of Cold Steel over a decade ago. The sole similarity that comes to mind in application is Holo Cores, which basically serve the same function as Maser Quartz.

To simplify these matters, the new orbment system brings back the importance of sepith values from the pre-Cold Steel titles, with every character having element-specific slots as you would expect. However, the new implementations are birthed from these sepith values, with each line of a character’s orbment, be it attack, defense, magic, or extra, having specific abilities, Shard Skills, that are unlocked depending on the elemental distribution throughout that specific line.

For example, let’s say you want to give a character’s attack line the capability to instill physical strikes with the element of fire. Acquiring this ability requires you to input Quartz with the necessary amount of fire sepith into that line, like Attack. It’s an admittedly overwhelming practice that becomes parseable the more you experiment, and it’s full of fascinating ideas. Bonuses like viewing treasure chest locations on the map can even be learned, taking the place of Detection Quartz. As someone who loves the orbment systems of Sky and Crossbell, I quickly found this new iteration to be my cup of tea. Specialized character builds are more cathartic to achieve than ever before.

Innovative Features: Orbment System and LGC Alignment

Also, like previous games, you must unlock each character’s orbment slots with sepith in order to slot in Quartz. I found this process to be an improvement over the later Cold Steel titles since you need massive amounts of sepith to unlock later slots, to the extent where you’ll be doing so for almost the whole game. As a result, unlocking an orbment slot feels like a major event, making the character growth significantly rewarding.

However, it’s worth noting that the orbment line abilities only have a percentage of activating, which relates to another new feature, the SP gauge. During turn-based combat, you can activate an SP boost, communicated by glowing bars on the UI’s bottom left that fill the more you attack and take damage. SP boosting increases the likelihood of orbment abilities activating, and they’re also required for S-Crafts, powerful character-specific techniques that unleash boatloads of damage or recover health. Interestingly, the number of SP gauges per battle increases the more times you boost, so you can really go into town on enemies if you stock up. This design choice also prevents multiple characters from spamming S-Crafts at the start of battle since two bars are required for their activations.

Still, I’m getting a tad ahead of myself. The most generally identifiable difference with Daybreak’s gameplay has to be how you can shift between turn-based and real-time action combat on the fly. The latter features every playable character having their own simple combos and single special attacks. Further, while doing action combat, you can either choose to defeat your enemies in that circumstance or enter the command turn-based battles. Performing this feat is ideal when you break an enemy on the field by filling their stun gauge.

This entire process is seamless, with an explorable environment identical to your combat scenarios. The turn-based battles will be abundantly familiar to veteran fans, with magic spells known as Arts and character-specific skills known as Crafts being at the heart of each encounter. However, positioning is more important than ever before, with some Crafts benefitting from where you’re standing in relation to a targeted enemy, providing lite yet appreciated strategy. You also have to consider enemy elemental weaknesses and buffs, as you do with your typical RPG.

Before moving on, it’s worth emphasizing that Arts have seen structural changes. They’re no longer tied to Quartz. Instead, they’re tied to new equipable items called Arts Drivers, which come pre-equipped with an assortment of Arts themed around specific builds, such as elemental-specific or healing ones. Still, depending on which Arts Driver you’re working with, they have a number of free slots that you can equip Plug-ins into, solo Arts not affixed to a Driver.

Van Arkride is, aside from Kevin, the boldest protagonist in the series.

These new Art features took some getting used to since they are entirely different from what this franchise has done previously. Admittedly, I don’t believe this idea was embraced to its fullest extent since you rarely need to rely on attack Arts, but buffs are pretty integral. Regardless, it’s an excellent foundation to build on that can further enhance character specializations in future entries.

During command battles, the ARCUS links of Cold Steel have returned under the new name of SCLM, so there’s some familiarity there. Plus, the audio and visual design of the attacks themselves, both in command and action, are delightful, so encounters are always satisfying. However, Daybreak is undeniably the easiest game in the franchise. While this series has never been known for its difficulty since you can break apart their balancing at the seams, Daybreak’s lack of challenge feels greater. Unlike in the previous titles, where you had to do some setup to break the balance, Daybreak is just inherently easy, even on the hardest difficulty, Nightmare, which is how I played it.

To be candid, I was initially going to really lay into Daybreak for this fault since if I were playing on Nightmare, I should expect a challenge. But Daybreak isn’t much of a step down in this avenue when considering this series’ past. It’d be another matter altogether if the combat was simply unfun. However, since it’s enjoyable thanks to solid audio design and visual impact, the lack of difficulty never actively felt like a detriment throughout my experience.

There were at least a handful of boss battles, chiefly in chapter three, the final optional virtual simulator encounter, and near the endgame, that required actual strategy. Plus, you do need to take your equipment and field positioning into account, especially during boss battles, since those are only command-based. So, I would not describe Daybreak’s difficulty as nonexistent or mindless; you merely have to stay up-to-date with your builds and formations. It just never goes beyond that necessary envelope, so I hope they improve upon this in the later entries.

This is the most ambitious start to an arc in the franchise’s history.

Summatively, the combat and customization systems of Daybreak are addictive and fulfilling throughout their entire durations, but the difficulty should’ve been retooled to make these mechanics more necessary to alter creatively as you progress. The action and turn-based systems have separate difficulty toggles, with the former only going up to Hard and the latter extending to Nightmare; this is blatant misdesign that allows you to progress throughout dungeons with the far simpler action systems. A potential fix could be to prevent enemies from dying during field combat and surviving only once a portion of their health was depleted. This design choice would have magnified the importance of the turn-based systems and stopped players from cheesing through standard enemy encounters.

Still, if you’ve been keeping up with this series, I doubt you’re playing them expecting a hardcore challenge or elaborate dungeon design. These titles don’t ever really need those facets to thrive. Turbo mode is worth mentioning, too, as a returning feature from past entries. This can be turned on at all times, even during the action combat.

I have yet to mention another major feature of Daybreak: the LGC alignment system. This new feature is the only factor I have a significant issue with, but let’s first dive into what it’s comprised of. Throughout the main story and quests, Van will sometimes have to make choices that determine the outcome of usually unimportant characters. These choices provide points across three moral alignment spectrums: Law, Gray, and Chaos. At times, these values are also gained automatically. As for what these values actually do, reaching certain thresholds impacts Van’s morality, influencing a certain choice in one of the game’s later chapters. These moral alignments also impact other later scenes.

The LGC alignment is utterly captivating by concept alone since it provides player choice in a clever way and emphasizes Van’s grayness with the world. So, regardless of which option side you choose, it fits his characterization. However, the actual consequences of these choices are merely slight divergences that either lead back to a common ground or lead to effects that don’t matter to the story or cast at large. The player agency it provides is superficial at best.

LGC is an overly ambitious concept that should probably have been dropped entirely or left on the drawing board for a while longer. Its implementation could have been improved somewhat by that aforementioned choice in one of the later chapters being more strict. To elaborate, Law, Gray, and Chaos all have five levels, and that choice in the late game opens options that are only possible if an alignment has reached level three. The issue, though, is that sans Chaos, you will most definitely have reached level three alignment levels for Law and Gray since you gain those attributes so frequently. The only other notable benefit to the LGC alignment levels is that special monsters appear in the final dungeon if an alignment is maxed, dropping materials for ultimate weapons once defeated.

Daybreak should have made each moral alignment equally difficult to gain points for, thereby instilling genuine consequence for this major choice in the late game. As it stands, LGC is an inoffensive yet questionable mechanic that could have been so much more if it was reworked. I personally believe that utilizing it effectively is too ambitious since it’d require significant deviations to communicate the rippling effects of your choices. I loosely think of this fault as akin to Persona, where your choices in main story scenes generally don’t matter whatsoever, but since there’s a point system in Daybreak tied to every moral choice Van makes, it stands out much more.

Getting back to new features, Daybreak has a revamped food system that draws inspiration from the Sky saga due to the sheer number of meals you can acquire. Each food item you find or cook grants Gourmet Points, with the amount dependent on the dish. Then, each level acquired in the Gourment Points system gifts collective stat boosts to the entire party. It seems overly straightforward, but it cleverly encourages you to check out every shop and engage with cooking, a mechanic many players overlook.

Granted, cooking has been simplified this time, with each dish only having one possible cook and no variations. This seems to be going overboard, but when considering how many food and drink items there are, the deletion of variation was probably for the best. Thankfully, there is an in-game achievement system akin to the Crossbell duology, so there’s more than sufficient reason to peruse all this game offers for rewards.

Trails through Daybreak is a breath of fresh air in practically every way you can imagine.

Speaking of simplification, Daybreak has wholly removed the character notes, books, and enemy scanning mechanics seen in every previous entry. There are also no minigames either, including fishing. These design decisions make completion far less intimidating at the cost of almost too much leniency.

It’s not like any of these concepts are integral to Trails’ identity or anything, but it is unfortunate how they’re absent altogether with no sufficient reinventions. Admittedly, the newspapers are still around, and they’re likely the best iteration throughout the series, thanks to the incredible depth poured into Calvard’s intricacies alongside a larger word count.

On the other hand, the books can be seen to be replaced by movies, which are brief cutscene segments that impact character affection. The films can be enjoyed for a good laugh and there, but they don’t come close to the immersion the in-universe book series granted.

Going back to affection, though, Van has access to Connect Events on free days, akin to the bonding episodes seen throughout the Cold Steel saga. He gets to interact with the main party members and several acquaintances. Most of these scenes are terrific supplemental deep dives into Van’s one-on-one dynamics with particular individuals, as well as occasional teases for the future. Then, these scenes fill out character-respective affinity gauges that grant rewards one fill. Purchasable gifts in towns also contribute to the eventual completion of these gauges, giving another reason, like the cooking, to peruse vendors as frequently as possible.

Soundtrack and Final Thoughts

One final facet I’ll discuss, albeit briefly, is the soundtrack. Personally, I believe there’s been somewhat of a drop-off in Falcom’s music quality post-Cold Steel II. Don’t get me wrong, I’m in love with these soundtracks, but the lack of identity with these later entries’ songs and a lack of memorability with individualization can stand out. Daybreak has plenty of top-notch tracks, though, with “Rise of the Grendel” perhaps being the most loopable song Falcom has ever produced.

Starting a new saga after four games of one and a reuniting follow-up is no meager feat, and Falcom accomplished it with flying colors. The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak excels with a brand-new original cast, meaningful cameos, a gripping narrative, and inventive gameplay systems to set itself apart from the series’ past.

Unfortunately, the lack of difficulty can feel excessive, and the clever LGC alignment system is too ambitious for its own good to pay off effectively. Regardless, these are issues that can be mitigated in later entries. As it currently stands, fans, new and old, will undoubtedly find Daybreak to be a fresh shakeup in almost every conceivable way, making this yet another modern classic under Falcom’s storied catalog.