QS stands for “Quickshot”, a series of short form review/preview/opinion articles.
Well, after an incredible adventure spanning a much longer runtime that I thought at first glance (I was only a third of the way through the game when I passed what I thought was the half-way point), I’ve finally finished off a 100% playthrough of Trails Into Reverie. While not perfect (none of the Trails games are), this was still an awesome game and a fantastic addition to the series that wonderfully tied off years worth of set-up, and laid the groundwork for the fresh and brand new stories to come.
For those not in the know, Trails Into Reverie is a culmination piece in the long-running Trails series of JRPGs, serving as the grand finale to the “Sky Trilogy”, the “Crossbell Duology”, and the “Cold Steel Tetralogy”. As such, this is an absolutely horrible place to try to get into the series. For long-time veterans, however, this is a fantastic send-off to this period in the series, and ties off so many character arcs, loose ends, and lingering plot threads that it’s almost impossible to come out out the experience without at least a few content smiles and warm fuzzies!
On a micro-gameplay level, nothing has particularly changed in the formula. You spend about half of your time running the equivalent of a marathon while exploring cities and towns and talking to NPCs for that sweet, sweet flavor text. The other half of the gameplay is spelunking through dungeons and ruins and battling monsters, embittered government terrorists, and a rogue AI replicating robotic replacements of series mainstays trying to overthrow world order.
It gets pretty crazy, pretty quickly.
I can’t try and tell you that the gameplay is anything revolutionary by this point. If you enjoy a lot of walking, talking, and straight-forward turn-based battling, this is the game for you. If you don’t, then you should probably pass on both this game and the entire Trails series. I’ll give credit for this game introducing some new concepts like the assault moves you can pull off with a large group of party members, but most battles still boil down to buffing your big damage dealers and then unleashing a few S-Crafts to secure the win.
On the audio and visual front, it’s obvious by now where the Trails development team places its emphasis on. Again, credit where credit is due, Trails Into Reverie includes legitimate cutscenes with full motion and action for the first time in the series, but they are rare. Otherwise, the graphics look straight from the PS2 era, which is bland and disappointing, but not a deal-breaker. Conversely, the voice acting is as absolutely phenomenal as ever, and the soundtrack is a real winner with some exceptionally earwormy tunes.
Trails Into Reverie primarily excels in two areas: Writing and Breadth of Content
The core of the story is a simple one here, but I cannot stress enough how good the quality of the writing is. Each Trails game has a few good scenes here and there, but this is the first entry that I’ve played where I’ve genuinely gone and thought ‘huh, that scene was pretty fantastic‘ after it was over, and I was hit with that feeling constantly. There’s some great one-on-one conversations through the entirety of the game, a few memorable cathartic moments of character development, and a lot of tear-jerking emotional payoffs in the finale.
And I am absolutely compelled to reference the game’s treatment of one of its central characters, the smarmy older brother of one of your party members, Rufus Albarea.
Rufus was, without hesitation, my least favorite character across the Trails of Cold Steel tetralogy. I adamantly hated the man. And yet, my personal bias aside, Trails Into Reverie does wonders with his character, to the point where I even shed a single tear for the conclusion of his arc. I truly cannot say I dislike him anymore, and I’ve never felt this strong of an opinion pivot before. It’s really all thanks to the writing quality.
This game is also packed with so much content it’s a struggle to even wrap one’s mind around. Every single time that you think this game will be coming to an end soon, it reveals a whole new slew of content for you to enjoy, and I’m not talking about padding out the story. The bulk of Trails Into Reverie‘s content comes in the form of the optional True Reverie Corridor mode, which is so stuffed to the gills with goodies that it feels like it won’t ever end as you’re wading through the thick of it!
You can chat with your allies and explore a constantly evolving and changing dungeon, repeating floors with new teams to unlock special character interactions. You can play the TCG minigame Vantage Masters and the Tile-Dropping minigame Pom-Pom-Party with the cast. You can explore a beachside resort and do a jet ski race and a watermelon smashing competition. You can play through the non-canonical Star Fox-esque flying shooter minigame, or perhaps play the Jeopardy-styled quiz game to test your knowledge on the Trails series. Or, perhaps you fancy the real-time action mech combat minigame. Of course, who can say no to fishing?
And this isn’t even to get into the over twenty-five full-length optional scenes that explore different groups of characters across the world and provide incredible lore and personal growth. Some of these scenes even foreshadow the next installment in the series to help build hype. Should I get into how all of this content is not only fun, but is also a pre-requisite to unlock the final showdown against the uber secret ultra ultimate boss to cap off the game, in turn perhaps the hardest showdown in the series so far?
It is, unequivocally, nuts, and I loved every single second of it.
At the end of the day, the biggest ‘knock’ I can levy at Trails Into Reverie is that it shouldn’t even be played, let alone looked at, if you haven’t committed yourself to this massive JRPG series. For series vets, playing this great game is a no-brainer. For newbies to Trails, you’ve gotta start somewhere else, or none of the wacky shenanigans going on are going to make sense to you.
Heck, I’m pretty qualified to play this game, and even I don’t fully get everything!
The Contrarian Corner 