The Legend Of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak Review – Van Is Great

It was only a year ago when I reviewed The Legend of Heroes: Trails Into Reverie. Today I got to get my hands on the next arc in the Trails series, Trails Through Daybreak. NIS America seems to be pushing these out fast and I couldn’t be more happier to see it already localized here in the West.

Game Name: The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak
Platform(s): PS4, PS5(Reviewed), Nintendo Switch, PC
Developer(s): Nihon Falcom
Publisher(s): NIS America
Release Date: July 5th, 2024
Price: $59.99

The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak has you filling in the shoes of a Spriggan known as Van Arkride. He has created an agency that deals with problems the police and the Bracer’s Guild won’t touch. Due to the shady clientele he gets from his jobs, he generally can get in all manner of jobs. One of these jobs start a chain reaction as he helps a girl named Agnès Claudel. She needs help tracking a special Orbment down known as a Genesis. Van gets involved and then helping her find the rest of the Geneses.

Living Life As A Spriggan

The loop of Trails Through Daybreak is similar to a lot of the Trails Games. You are Van and you get some required quests you have to do as well as a few optional quests. If you do the optional quests you get more SP which in this game is Spriggan points. More SP gives you a higher rank for Arkride Solutions. Each rank gives you a new accessory, quarts, or item. Quests range from defeating monsters, tracking down a special item, or trying to help someone escape the police. A good variety of side quests here.

Combat is where things get shaken up in the Trails formula. In dungeons or in fields you are running with all the party members in tow. When you reach an enemy, you can attack them with combos in real-time to stun them or just outright destroy them without gearing into a turn-based battle. The enemies will attack you back and you can dodge or sidestep them. If you activate turn-based mode during an enemy gets stunned, shards will attack all enemies that will deal damage and delay their actions on the timeline.

Turn-based combat has not made too many changes but it has enough that it feels new. First off you can control the movement of your characters on your turn as long as it is within their range. You can do a normal attack, use crafts with CP, Artes with MP, defend, or flee. There is now a shard boost system in play. You get this meter filled by attacking enemies or attacking breakable objects in the field. If you fill up two meters you can use two boosts that increase your passives as well as unlock your ability to use S-Crafts the character’s strongest ability. If you use an S-Craft the maximum amount of shard boosts increase and you can now hold more shards.

One thing to note in Trails Through Daybreak is that the real-time combat took a bit to get used to. Each character has a different combo, Van has a fast and fluid close-range combo, Agnès has a slow but far-range combo that does a lot more damage to heavily armored enemies, Feri has range and speed but it doesn’t do a lot of damage, and a lot of the other characters diversify their speed, range, and damage making who you play as in the field matter. I alternated between Van and Agnès the most.

Alongside the side quests, there are character events and connections. In each segment, you will have several tasks you can accomplish in character events. Usually two. You can choose from a few of your party members or contacts in the game to use your free time up to get to know them better. When you get new affinity ranks it gives you better passives but also helps you learn more about the characters. At the night time of certain segments, you also get the ability to watch movies at the cinema. These movies might also help you find other people to learn about but also to add more affinity points hoping to get a better affinity rank.

There have been some smaller changes that help a lot in ways I didn’t expect. In Trails games I love talking to every single NPC since a lot of them have history as well as a story throughout the game. In the Trails series just speaking to them once a segment doesn’t give you the full text. In Trails Through Daybreak if you meet an NPC you can talk to, they have a blue talk symbol above their head. If you talk to them and they have more to say to you, the blue bar stays. If you talk to them and they have nothing new to say to you, then the symbol turns grey. Also on the minimap if there is an NPC you haven’t talked to yet, they will be yellowish orange. When you are done talking to them, the dot on the minimap turns grey. This change allows you to plan out your routes based on the NPCs you haven’t talked to yet and it is awesome! A change I never thought I needed until now that I have it.

More quality-of-life changes help in an assortment of meaningful ways. When you go to Van’s office in a free-roaming section in Old Town you can use Hermes delivery service to take a look at the new equipment and items in all the shops. They will have the cosmetics you can find and the equipment you can find throughout all the stores in the area. Sadly you will still need to look for books, recipes, and gifts individually by store but this is a great addition.

One addition I loved in the game is the portable Orbment stations in the dungeons. You can rest and recover your HP/MP like usual, as well as shop for extra quartz and weapons. The big thing though is you can now choose to respawn all the enemies in the dungeon again. If you want to grind extra levels, you no longer have to leave an area and come back, you can just stay going back and forth in the dungeon through the various portable Orbment stations. It made grinding for bosses so much nicer especially since I don’t need to do a whole loading screen to leave and then a new one when I come back.

There is an alignment system in this game. Well, kind of. When you do side quests and you accept them, you get notified that they might increase your Law, Chaos, or Gray ranks. It does allow you to get more achievements in the game for trying to get more ranks into Law, Gray or Chaos. Certain choices at the end of quests can also increase your rank in any of the three categories. You get a different amount of rank based on how you successfully solve the problem you are given. You can solve it with the help of the Bracers, Police, or do your own thing. In some situations, you can also get a darker organization involved to help.

Beauty of Trails

Trails Through Daybreak is the absolute best the Trails games have ever looked! This is a new engine with new animations and physics and a lot of the textures and models have knocked it out of the park. If you were turned off by how the Trails games were still built on an engine geared towards PS3 games, now you can jump on a new engine and style for the series. Animations are no longer at a snail’s pace and this is the first game where I never felt the need to turn on high-speed mode. Inputs are snappy and battle animations are very quick but high quality.

There are a lot of locales in this game. They have large cities, spanning deserts, jungle-type areas, and more in Trails Through Daybreak. Each area has different types of lighting and effects. The nighttime shots can have some weird light textures that make buildings shimmer when they shouldn’t but overall this is a huge improvement from Trails Into Reverie.

Trails Through Daybreak Is Amazing

I loved Trails Through Daybreak. It is a solid start to the next arc of Calvard. It has a lot of intrigue, a new cast of characters that all feel like they have lives, and overall Van is amazing. I love his fascination with cars, and sweets, and his interactions with the part-timers that join him throughout the game. I had a good chunk of moments when I legit laughed due to his character or the voice behind him. Daman Mills kills in this role. My only complaint is there weren’t as many scenes voiced as I thought there would be. The big thing too, is Trails Through Daybreak has a lot more death in the game than the other Trails games which makes characters with names even more impactful.

The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak releases July 5th, 2024 on PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, and PC.

Review Disclosure Statement: The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak 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.

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