The Legend Of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak Review

Japanese RPGs have an amazing ability to get you completely immersed in grand fantastical worlds, largely thanks to their vast worlds, engaging characters and mesmerising plots. I’m a massive fan of the genre, which will be to the surprise of no one that’s checked out my previous reviews here. But one series that’s always been on the backburner was the Legend of Heroes series. It was a franchise that had always scared me due to it having a large catalogue of very lengthy games, a mostly continuing plot, and many divided opinions on where to start. Now I can say my days of never playing a Legend of Heroes game are behind me. As Trails Through Daybreak offers a great jumping on point for new players and provides a deep and engaging plot, packed with colourful characters that I had a really great time with.

Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak kicks off a new arc in the series and with that comes a new setting, characters and a solid point to jump into the Trails series. This game takes place at the furthest-most point in the series, meaning that the events of every previous game that has launched has already occurred. An addition to this game that really helped a newbie to the series like me was a timeline that’s accessible from the main menu that recaps the key events that have occurred in previous games that have gone on to shape the world in meaningful ways. You’re able to be read through the whole timeline to help bring you up to speed on significant events or act as a quick refresher for those that may have played the games many years ago.

In Trails Through Daybreak you play as Van Arkride, a character referred to in this world as a Spriggan. A Spriggan acts as a blend of a mercenary, private detective and bounty hunter all rolled into one, and work outside the restrictions of the police force and often take on the dirty jobs that no one else wants to take on or that the local police are incapable of doing themselves. When Van is approached by a young girl named Agnes, he is tasked with retrieving a series of orbments created by her grandfather. With no luck in tracking them down herself, she feels she has no one else to turn to. It’s soon revealed what the impact of not retrieving these items will be and the affect it will have on the whole republic and wider world, kicking off a grand and vast adventure.

The story and characters were a real highlight in the game, and its really easy to see why the series has so many loyal players that continue to jump back in and spend 100s of hours in each entry. Trails Through Daybreak establishes a new cast of characters, new location and story beats at a mostly engaging pace. It thankfully doesn’t take hours to begin getting interesting, though there are some pacing lulls along the way where progression slows down. Though I felt that the journey overall always complements getting to know the characters more as they continue to develop and grow as the game goes on. I also appreciated that the story has some really dark moments and knows when to take itself seriously and when not to, something I love to see more in JRPGs as I get older. I mentioned before that Trails Through Daybreak is a great starting point for newcomers, and I stand by that, but there are also many Easter Eggs and cameos that will be appreciated by long time fans if you’ve played previous games too.

The game also has bonding events that play out similarly to social links in Persona games if you’re familiar with those. I really loved these moments as they showcased different sides to characters and revealed more about their motivations and backstories along with plenty of world lore in moments that offer a great change of pace to the fast pace action of combat sequences.

Speaking of combat, it’s one key area that helps Trails Through Daybreak stand out from many other JRPGs. Where most JRPG titles are segmented by whether they utilise realtime or turn based battles, this game simultaneously combines the two modes to provide a combat experience that is fast paced when it needs to be, while also giving you the option to take things slow and methodical when need be. The combat encounters take place right in the overworld keeping the experience fast and fluent, not having to whisk the party away to a separate battle map for the fights and I loved how seamlessly you can flow in and out of combat. The realtime combat is action heavy, fast paced but quite simple and repetitive in nature due to it being a simpler system overall. Focussing mainly on attacking, manoeuvring your character and rolling/dodging. This is great for taking down the smaller fodder enemies quickly. But when a more strategic approach is needed or preferred, you’re able to activate the turn based mode where you’ll focus more on things like targeting enemy weaknesses, party positioning and action order as they really come into play during this approach.

There’s also a deep customisation layer the game incorporates that will help you tailor your party to your preferred playstyle. This customisation allows you to tweak character builds to your preferred spec by utilising quartz gems to tailor character perks, abilities and load outs adding a further level of player choice and allowing you to buff specific characters in areas that you see fit.

The whole experience is backed by a pretty amazing soundtrack that’s filled with diverse tracks from many different genres to help enhance the feel and mood of the game and its cutscenes. Filled with metro tunes, adventure tracks and powerful combat themes aplenty. There are some tracks that are fairly unforgettable and generic background music, but the vast majority of the score, especially the pieces used in battle scenes and sombre emotional moments are top notch. Also, while discussing sound, I always like to point out when a game has an English dub, and that is the case with Trails Through Daybreak. The performances are really solid all round, containing a cast stacked with many noticeable voices from the anime community with a special mention going to Damien Hass’ performance as Van being a real highlight.

While I enjoyed just about all aspects of Trails Through Daybreak, the game did fall down a bit at times when it came to the overall pacing and progression of the story, occasionally having you focus on meandering tasks that slowed down the flow of the story more than I would have liked. The side content in the game is also an area where a good portion of it feels like pointless padding and offers little when it comes to interesting things to do, preferring instead to offer repetitive missions. And I also found that the dungeon designs, along with a decent portion of the environments to be fairly plain in design and designed with a very PS3 era grey overtone art direction.

Overall, The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak offers a fun and engaging JRPG experience and is a great jumping on point for people who may have been overwhelmed by starting the series and unsure of how to take the plunge. It’s packed full of interesting characters and great performances, and its unique combat system helps keep things interesting for the many hours it will take you to beat it. It does fall down a little when it comes to side content and story pacing at times but the overall package has me excited to jump into the sequel game once it manages to get a localised western release.

A ps5 review code was provided for the purpose of this review.