I’m not sure how I feel about The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak II, which usually is not the case when I spend this long with a game. This may be because of how much time I’ve spent with the series since the Switch release of Trails of Cold Steel III back in 2020. With so many games and so many tweaks to those games, elements I like and dislike come and go. That’s expected and appreciated, but there’s one element that should remain consistent, and I’ll get to that in a bit.
First, let’s take stock of where we are. The game opens with…actually, let’s not do that. I’m going to write this review as if you have a working knowledge of these games and the characters within. If you do, you don’t need me to explain who everyone is. If you don’t, this is not the place to learn about them. At least bounce back to Trails Through Daybreak to introduce yourself.
This game opens with Elaine visiting Van at Arkride Solutions to detail a series of violent murders caused by someone with the ability to convert into a monstrous beast…as previously only Van could.
Considering that Arkride Solutions exists to address problems that lie in the gray area between the law and crime, this is Van’s kind of thing. So, he and Elaine set out to determine what’s up.
Meanwhile, Swin and Nadia return on a mission of their own that somewhat complements Van’s agenda. The parties end up teaming up, on and off, as they explore the Calvard Republic in search of answers. And, as you’d expect from a Legend of Heroes game, each answer only leads to more questions and greater danger ahead.
The problem this time is that the build to anything of actual interest is very slow. Previous games in the series have started with a bang, kicking you immediately into action and only later revealing how everyone fits into it. Here, we meet the characters (that we’ve met before) and just…spend time with them. We explore, sure. We fight. We play cards.
But we only get small glimpses of anything pressing, which makes the first couple dozen of hours seem inconsequential. If this were any other series I would’ve lost interest.
But this is The Legend of Heroes, so you know something crazy is in store. And it’s not like the game doesn’t give you anything to do as you push towards it. As before, there are a ton of items to buy, craft, cook, and collect as you work your way through the numerous towns and dungeons. And if you’ve ever lost your mind trying to remember what stall sells what and which stores you haven’t visited, Trails Through Daybreak II does a much better job of guiding you along.
It also introduces the Märchen Garten. The closest parallel to this would likely be the True Reverie Corridor from Trails Into Reverie, but better implemented and more useful here. First, you can get there from pretty much any town at any time. Access is even provided at the save points before boss fights. Why? Because the levels you push through in the Märchen Garten will level up your characters, reward you with helpful items, provide sepith to purchase better equipment, replenish your CP, and so on. It’s a great way to buff up your characters because it doesn’t feel like level grinding. The randomly generated dungeons have distinct visuals and a wide assortment of monsters to face, and that helps to keep things fresh.
As new characters are made available in the Märchen Garten, you can create teams that otherwise wouldn’t be available in the game. And they don’t just have to fight. The mini-games are slowly added, allowing you to fish, play 1v1 basketball, practice your hacking, etc. That doesn’t mean you’ll want to, of course; these games are mildly entertaining at best (fishing is fun, but you get enough of that in the main game) and infuriating at worst (the loose controls of the hacking game will undoubtedly get on your nerves). Oh, and those who enjoy dressing up warriors in spa towels for deadly combat should note that this is where those towels (and other costumes and accessories) are obtained via the gacha system of the Mystic Cube.
The Märchen Garten may be the biggest new addition, but it’s not the only one. Remember how Trails Through Daybreak added some real-time physical combat features to speed up the dungeon crawling? There’s now an arts element to that, too, and you can unleash special attacks by swapping characters at the right time. It’s still all pretty basic, but it makes the minor battles more engaging as you press through.
That’s important, because pressing through now involves the occasional repeat. For the first time, major battles don’t always end the way you’d hope. Characters will die! (Which is weird to see considering what most had to overcome to survive up to this point.) But when this happens, a mysterious power whisks them back to a previous point where they can make a different decision to affect the outcome. These moments are entirely story driven, so it’s not like you have to figure out what you did wrong. In fact, the characters even kind of know something’s going on with this, they’re just not entirely sure of what. This means you may have to work your way through the same dungeon multiple times, but opened chests remain opened and defeated semi-bosses remain defeated. Also, the second (and third) walkthroughs usually come with new shortcuts to get you to your goal faster.
The drawback to the time hops and the Märchen Garten is that they chop up the narrative, preventing the story from ever really gaining any momentum. It seems the writers relied solely on “Hey, look who showed up!” to keep you interested as opposed to giving us anything to really care about. That’s unfortunate, because the gameplay is pretty solid. So many tweaks have been made to the orbment system, combat positioning, skill activation, and other system settings that it’s starting to feel like an entirely different game from previous entries (almost more like an Ys game), but the system still works.
And boss battles retain the true Legend of Heroes feel…right down to their duration and the massive dialogue dumps at their conclusion. These intricacies are hard to master, but will entice JRPG fans who love the minutiae of party management. If that’s not you, no worries; just set an easier difficulty and push through without fretting over shard optimization and such.
The game looks great, too, with wonderfully designed landscapes to explore and some gorgeous combat animations. Performance does get choppy, though, and an in-battle glitch at one point forced me to reboot the game. Thankfully, auto-saved dropped me right back at the start of the fight.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak II is a good game. I just wish a little more focus had been applied to the narrative so that players would have more incentive to push through it all. Fishing shouldn’t be the most interesting part of a spriggan’s day.
