The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie Review

Anyone who knows the articles I write or the videos I help create, knows I love the Trails series done by Falcom, so when Trails into Reverie got announced to be localized I was screaming from the rooftops with glee. I was also excited to see that this is the game that celebrates the anniversary of the series 20 years since Trails in the Sky was released. It was promised to be the culmination of all the previous titles in just one game.

Game Name: The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie
Platform(s): PS4, PS5, PC (Reviewed), Nintendo Switch
Publisher(s): NIS America
Developer(s): Nihon Falcom
Release Date: July 7th, 2023
Price: $59.99

The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie starts where the Trails of Cold Steel 4 left off with the Special Support Section going back to Crossbell and the new Class VII going back to Thors. Lloyd and his gang are trying to find a way to gain independence from a new military that has now reoccupied Crossbell. Rean and Class VII are in Erebonia working on their studies when they get told that Prince Olivert is off the radar. All while this is happening there is a plot being done in the background by an individual named “C”. You get to take control of all three parties to figure out the big mystery and why Crossbell is the center of it all.

DISCLAIMER: If none of the above made any sense to you, it’s because you haven’t played any of the Trails games, and I recommend you play them before attempting to get into this game. If you are unsure where to start, this guide we have on the site can help you figure that out if you were able to understand the above paragraph. Good! Now we can get into the actual review!

Getting into Trails 

In Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie you will be primarily focused on three storylines. The storyline of Lloyd and the SSS, Rean and Class VII, and C. You have to start with Lloyd’s story first and go through a portion of his story and get several allies to join your cause, then you will unlock Rean’s route. Once unlocked you can change to the respective route by pressing the right directional button on the controller. At times you will reach a spot where you have to do something in a different route before you can advance again. You can’t just do all Lloyd’s story, then Rean’s, then C’s. You will be shifting back and forth constantly.

Most of the gameplay loop will be playing through a route, getting to a stop, and changing to a different person to play their route. Where that stop occurs is generally after a big revelation of a piece of the overarching mystery that is taking place in the Trails into Reverie. This can be jarring at times, especially since whenever you start someone’s route, it doesn’t usually start where you left off on that route. One nitpick I have with the story is how the routes keep doing the same type of story beats. You go to a big action set piece in the beginning. Then it makes you go back in time to where you ended the previous route to then take you to where you left off in the beginning. Then it finally lets you take control of the character’s party.

The first few times, I was fine with it, but after being able to basically see this happen almost every time a route starts is annoying. Granted, this could just be annoying due to me playing through this game nonstop and not taking breaks. If I stopped at the end of the route and then didn’t play the game til the next day, it probably would not have been as noticeable to me. If you are wondering what I mean, I will give you an example. Rean ends one of his routes, figuring out that Olivert has been missing and that a guy named C has taken credit for it. When we get back to Rean’s story he is in the middle of a big operation to discover leads on this “C” character. Ordinarily, this would be fine, but they then take you out of the moment by backtracking to Rean gets told Olivert is missing, C has taken credit for it, and is now making plans on an operation to find C. They then fast forward back to the operation and now the route finally starts. I would prefer we just not have the flashback and start where we left off, or just stick in the middle of the operation with small talking scenes happening along the road that explains what they are doing.

Combat in Legend of Heroes games has not felt nearly as satisfying as it does here in Trails into Reverie. All the mechanics of Cold Steel 4 come back. You start with four party members in your team and can have up to three reserve party members. You can link one of your party members to another one in order to achieve a link attack after a successful guard break attack, or critical hit. You have a Brave Point bar at the top right in battle that gets increased whenever you do a link attack with a partner on the field. With three Brave Points when a partner does a link attack you can instead follow it up with a rush attack where the character you are using and their partner both attack the enemy at the same time. If you wait to get five Brave Points, you can use a Burst attack after a link attack happens which will have all four party members attack at the same time.

Another feature of Trails of Cold Steel 4 that makes an appearance is orders. Each character in your party and in your reserve have unique order abilities. These orders have a variety of effects for a set number of turns. They can increase your damage, can reduce the amount of damage you take, and they can also flat out reduce the amount of time your moves take, which puts less delay between turns and can make you have two to three turns a character before the enemy even gets to go. One new feature they added, which I love, is the United moves. United moves can only be activated if you have more than four members in your total party. You can do a United Attack which has all members go and attack the enemies at once. They can do a United Artes, which deals magical damage from every person, or just United Heal, which gives you a big boost to your health. United moves utilize your Assault Charge gauge. If you have one bar filled up, you can activate any of the three United moves.

Alongside the Assault Gauge, and Brave Point bar, the other metrics you need to pay attention to in Combat is Health Points, Energy Points, and Craft Points. Health Points is the party member’s health pool. When it goes down to zero they are unconscious and unable to fight. Energy Points is what is used for their Artes or magical abilities. Craft Points are used by characters Crafts, which are special abilities that are unique to each character.

Into Reverie

Once you get far enough along into the story of Trails into Reverie, you will then get access to something called the Reverie Corridor. This is mainly the big part where the side content of the game is located. You can utilize anyone in the three parties of Rean, Lloyd, and C to be one party and traverse floors and floors of enemies that are randomly generated. As you do defeat giant enemies you can get special sealing stones. These stones can be unsealed in the garden at the Unsealing Pedestal. They unlock daydreams, modes for the sports tablet, characters, and items. Daydreams are special events that show some of the downtime between the three parties as you see parts of their life. The modes for the sports tablet include a variety of minigames like Pom Pom Party from previous Trails games, or Beach events and Mishelam Wonderland. There is a limited amount of extra characters you can unlock in the Reverie Corridor. They can only join you as a party member in the Reverie Corridor itself, not the main game. They can be brought over as a Tagalong character, though. Tagalong characters can be brought in to give you new and different orders in your list to choose from during combat.

At any time in the Reverie Corridor, you can choose to rearrange the corridor, which will reset all progress in the main areas and you will be able to fight all the enemies and bosses again and get more sealing stones to unseal. You can also take this time to level up some of the characters you might not use in the story much. Doing the first few floors constantly amasses not only a lot of experience points, but also Azure Droplets. These droplets are instant-use experience points for any character you choose. Enemies drop this in the Reverie Corridor like they are candy. I spent quite a lot of time just doing and redoing the Reverie Corridor in order to gain more and more experience for the characters.

Culmination of Trails

The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie is everything the team at Falcom learned from the Trails games put into a single game. We get a lot of the characters of Liberl, Crossbell, and Erebonia shown and updated to the new engine they used for Trails from Cold Steel 3 and 4. We see characters like Wazy, Noel, and the Michel in a new polished look for the first time. I was also very excited to see the Crossbell Bracers in this new engine for the first time. Bracer Scott has such a good glow-up from the could basically be a normal NPC layout he had in Trails from Zero and Trails to Azure.

Since Trails into Reverie is in a similar engine to Cold Steel 3 and 4, it also has some of its hiccups. Namely the story animation cutscenes. In battle, we get a good speed of when the character does attacks and abilities, but outside the animation for attacks can be clunky and slow in comparison. It is extremely polished, however, as I was able to play through Trails into Reverie on the Rog Ally at a pretty consistent 120FPS. It allows up to 144fps if I had a screen that had that kind of refresh rate. Not going to lie. After playing through the Cold Steel games on Steam deck at 60 fps, playing Trails into Reverie at 120 fps made animations and cutscenes a lot more fluid than my Cold Steel experience.

On To The Future

Overall The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie builds on all the best parts of the Trails series, the characters, and the world it resides in. It also adds a lot of production to the voice acting. Sean Chiplock absolutely nails his moments as Rean, and that voice acting carries a lot of the scene’s emotional intensity. The dialogue and voice direction of C is masterful, especially once you know who it is behind the mask. This game executes so much with the characters from the series that made me have to hold back tears. Randy has some great moments, and we get to see some flashbacks to moments of Trails to Azure with Noel that punches your heart. The localized release of Trails to Azure didn’t have an English dub, so hearing it for the first time dubbed in English gave me some added emotional impact with that scene.

If you are a Trails fan, this is an absolute must-play. If you are not a Trails fan, become one and start the series, as it is masterfully crafted with so much love and care for these characters and this world of Zemuria.

The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie releases July 7th, 2023, and will be on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, and PC.

Review Disclosure Statement: Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie was provided to us by NIS America for review purposes. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy for more info.

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