The Beautiful Journey Continues
It’s a question that has been percolating around game criticism for a long time now. There are two main schools of thought: One, that a remake should introduce new ideas and twists on an established piece of art, à la Final Fantasy VII Remake. A new take on a classic that questions the message set forth by that original game. The other is that a remake is only necessary when you are trying to introduce a new audience to something – regardless of what we want to believe, a lot of people simply won’t play older games because they either cannot come to terms with the controls, or they just can’t get their hands on the native system or game. Think Pokemon HeartGold & SoulSilver.
I personally tend to subscribe to the first train of thought – I would rather a remake tried something brand new than was just a 1:1 copy of an already existing game. But there are specific cases when I think the latter option is not only preferable, but ideal. Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter is one of those cases.
Trails has been going on for over two decades now. The difference between this series and others is it’s a rare example of serialized storytelling in video games – a story told over multiple installments. There are thirteen games in the Trails series, and each of them contributes to a larger narrative. Trails In The Sky FC and Trails In The Sky SC are extremely important to the overarching narrative. So it made sense for developer Falcom to remake them in an attempt to get more people in. An attempt that has worked, as evidenced by how much I enjoyed my time in Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter as somebody who hadn’t ever played a game in the series outside of the remake of Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter, and the fact that after I rolled credits, I immediately purchased Trails In The Sky The Third.
Since Trails In The Sky 2nd Chapter follows Trails In The Sky 1st Chapter directly, it assumes you’ve played the first game. Main character Estelle Bright’s adopted brother (and wannabe lover, long story) Joshua has gone missing after having his past revealed to him, and Estelle is devastated by this, spending as much time as possible searching for him. During this search, she meets priest Kevin Graham, who joins her quest for his own reasons. Meanwhile, across the nation of Liberl, weird things are happening. Ghosts, random fog, boiling water at the local hot spring. As Estelle and her party (made up of up to four people, who are almost all returning characters from the first game) are going around the country, they come across several members of a mysterious organisation called Ouroboros. They’ve got something massive planned that will completely reshape the hierarchy of the world, and not in a good way, and it’s this that takes up the bulk of the story – finding a way to stop them. The new villains of the piece, known as Enforcers, are incredibly memorable – I’m not going to name them all, as one of their identities is treated as a twist in the narrative, but Blueblanc the Phantom Thief is a stand-out, his extravagance being so over the top it loops back around to being cool.
Bracer requests return from the first game. The magnitude of what is happening in the main story feels like it cannot be ignored, but Estelle is still a bracer. That means she’s dedicated herself to helping people where she can, even in the most dire of circumstances. A lot of these requests help to flesh out the world and minor characters living within it, while others give you the opportunity to level up your characters or unlock powerful items. It never feels dull – whenever I picked up a new Orbment (the title uses a system similar to that of Final Fantasy VII’s Materia system, with small gemstones offering new abilities), I was immediately testing out what I could do with it and figuring out the best character to wield it.
A lot of my love for these characters and this story stems from the performances. Stephanie Sheh’s Estelle Bright and Johnny Yong Bosch’s Joshua Bright are obvious stand-outs as the main characters, but I’m also extremely taken with Ray Chase’s Kevin Graham, a suave Bond-type character. But my personal favourite is easily Matthew Mercer’s Olivier Lenheim – each line is infused with both charm and mystique; I desperately wanted to know more about him every single time he was the focus of the story, and the final big reveal surrounding his character didn’t disappoint in the slightest. Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter managed to make me cry half a dozen times, which is probably some kind of record for a video game – some of those were clearly intentional, through carefully choreographed cutscenes and character beats, but others were in smaller moments which just helped to flesh out the world and character backstories.
Combat-wise, while I haven’t played the original games yet, I do know that it’s a departure from the turn-based style that they use. Rather than simply being turn-based, it’s a combination of both real-time and turn-based – you can attack and dodge in real-time until an enemy is stunned, before moving into turn-based mode with an advantage. There’s also a series of random effects throughout the turn-based battles that give you or your enemies an advantage – be that a guaranteed critical hit, healing, or the ability to use your magic without needing to wait for the spell to wind up. What this leads to is extremely intuitive combat which rewards thinking about positioning and what move to use at any given point – perhaps it’s easier to use a turn to buff up your stats, or perhaps now is the perfect time to go for massive damage.
This is further evidenced by the incredible boss battles throughout. These are fairly difficult fights which test what you have learned, and several of them required me to attempt them multiple times. When enemies have access to the abilities that you do as a player, and when they even have special abilities of their own, it becomes a matter of doing your best to stay alive long enough to take a turn. A particular boss fight had a move that was essentially an instant kill to one party member, which meant that I had to improvise – I had to figure out exactly how to fight this foe while being a member down. Was it worth reviving them, or was it possible to do the fight with three members?
The world of Liberl is really well-crafted, too. Several regions are visited throughout – Bose, Rolent, Grancel, Ruan and Zeiss – all of which have their own identity and feel. Rolent has the same vibe as a small countryside town, for example, while Zeiss is extremely technologically advanced. I realised how much I adored this world during a later chapter of the game. There’s an event that happens in the story towards the end which renders the airships that transport people between different parts of Liberl completely useless. Estelle and the party have to traverse the entire country on foot, and the fast travel points are no longer available. This should have felt like a chore, realistically speaking; all I’m doing is walking through a world I’ve spent about 80 hours traversing between the first and second game. It’s not like there are any real substantial changes to the world compared to the first game. But I loved it. I loved seeing every location one last time before the endgame. Not once did I feel annoyed or tired about having to walk around without fast travel, and I think that might be the sign of a job well done, of a world that is incredible to traverse.
Trails In The Sky 2nd Chapter is the point of a 1:1 remake. It is actively created to get new people into this world and interested in the older titles; it wants people to follow the stories of these characters, and it works perfectly. I need to know more about this world, about the plans of Ouroboros, and about what happens to the characters I absolutely love. It’s made me want to play the original games, and at the end of the day, isn’t that exactly what a remake should do?
Skybox is worker-owned and reader-supported! If you like pieces like this, support us at www.patreon.com/skyboxcritics or ko-fi.com/skyboxcritics and help us elevate games media.
