This game went from 0 – 60 real slow.
	The most accurate Japanese interpretation of NYC since Bustafellows

So after playing a bunch of terrible otome games I’m back on my JRPG bus and we’re continuing our adventures through the Trails series once more. We’re now up to Trails from Zero but as usual since I absolutely loathe the Trails battle system, I injected in a New Game+ save file a kind soul uploaded and was able to roflstomp my way through boring battles without having to waste 10-12 hours grinding trash mobs.

Not like we cared about 100% completion but using a premade save avoids a ton of aggravation there because there is sooooooooooooo much random “talk to EVERY person EVERY day in case they say something different” type stuff in order to get collectibles or finish sidequests.

System

I’ll start with the system because it’s identical to Trails in the Sky. There’s not much to say about it other than kill stuff, build up your bar, do the special move and repeat. You can outrun enemies and depending on what stuff you slot in, you can avoid enemies more easily. I didn’t have the cloak quartz this time so I would sometimes accidentally run into an enemy but fortunately they would usually die in a few hits. The only time the enemies required me to use actual attacks were in the last 2 dungeons of the game and on the couple final bosses. If you don’t have an NG+ file though, you’re basically out of luck starting from well…Zero and you will need to grind grind grind before the enemies don’t destroy your whole party. Some people enjoy this but I do not have the patience so NG+ I go.

lol honestly it’s fine. It’s way better than the typical “FIRE enemies are weak against WATER” JRPG combat. There’s not even really that much of it since you spend most of your time in the city rather than doing dungeon crawling. They also improved the way sidequests work in this game by structuring it so that you are basically supposed to do each batch before you do the MSQ segment for the day, that way you never end up with the problem we had in Trails in the Sky where we would start a quest and it would expire before we were done with it.

Story

I hate the Trails battle system however I usually enjoy the stories. That said, compared to Trails, it took me a LONG time to get into this story. The main issue I have with this game is it reminds me too much of New York City. Corrupt government, corrupt Mayor’s office, useless police and terrible mass transit that has constant delays. (Though in defense of the bus driver, they were attacked by monsters rather than a bunch of stupid kids who keep holding train doors or hobos acting crazy until someone pulls the emergency break.) So because of that I was just like oh my god everything is just so bad here, it’s too realistic! How do we go from fantasy village game like Sky to this!? Fortunately after we were done doing petty crime investigations, the story finally moved on from that and began to feel like a fantasy JRPG. The bad part is it took me like 30 hours to get to this point so it was a very painful slow start. It didn’t help that I couldn’t get into the characters for a while.

Trails in the Sky was really looooooooooooong time start as well, but that was because they needed to loredump the entire setting. Meanwhile this was only a single city but it still felt like we were doing random n00b requests for way too long before even getting a hint of what the “real’ story would be about. But still better than Sky SC where the game starts immediately after the cliffhanger ending of Sky FC but then is like “okay but first due all the random Bracer work that everyone else has dumped on your and only once you’re done with that can you start looking for Joshua.”

Characters

I struggled with the characters in this game because the pacing was so bad. It took a long time before they went into the backgrounds of all the characters, and when I finally go to know them a bit more, they finally became interesting. For example Elie was basically a cardboard cutout until they revealed that she’s a rich ojousama and the Mayor’s granddaughter. There was a lot of revelations about Randy and Tio which made me like them more too. Later down the line the game went into the truth about Renne and then Joshua and Estelle showed up to make things fun again. So until all of this happened, the combination of not being able to “get to know” the cast and the boring ass dry crime solving made the game really dull for the first several hours of my game play. But now that I finished the game? I love em. Of course they could never beat Joshua and Estelle for me, but they had their own charms. I’m looking forward to seeing them again in the next Trails game and I’m glad I persevered long enough to see them shine. I also loved all the cameos from the previous trails games like Joshua, Estelle, Renne, and Kirika so it’s nice to see a “continuation” throughout the Trails universe – something you do not see in the Final Fantasy series.

Even though I said that Sky starts slowwwwwwwwwwww, the one thing it does do during the loooooooooooooong opening worldbuilding period is introducing all the party members like Joshua and Estelle and letting us know that there’s obviously SOMETHING hidden here and making it exciting to find out what their deal is. But here they don’t even actually hint at anything with the party members during the initial setup until it finally comes up much later on in the story.

Final Thoughts

So overall, while it had a very slow start, in the end I enjoyed the game and the story and I am looking forward to more adventures in Trails to Azure. Unfortunately as far as romance/shipping it was a bit of a let down but at least you do get a cute scene with Lloyd and Elie at the end if you make sure to give her the 2 gifts for her room and pick her whenever it gives you the option to pick a party member to do stuff with. Apparently the confession from Lloyd isn’t until one of the Cold Steel games so like with the game itself, the slow cooker romance will have to wait. 😂

Look let’s be real, the reason that Lloyd never picks up Elie’s hints is because his typical point of comparison are all the oneesans telling him “ara ara get over here otouto-kun we’re gonna give you a 4P パフパフ.”