Review: The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak

The Legend of Heroes is an RPG series created by Nihon Falcom and published in Japan by Nihon Falcom and published by other publishers in other countries.

The first version of this game was released in 1989 and was a part of the dragon slayer series and the sixth game of this series. with the release of the third game of the legend of heroes series in 1994, the name of dragon slayer was removed and it was named The Legend of Heroes II: Prophecy of the Moonlight Witch.

The Legend of Heroes is one of the popular game series in Japan, which is not strange considering the interest of Japanese players in the RPG genre, the popularity of this game has also increased in the West, and publishers are very interested in translating and publishing it.

The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak was released on September 30, 2021 in Japan for PS4, on July 28, 2022 in Japan for PS5, and later on PC and Nintendo Switch in Japan, but the global release date is July 5, 2024. it will be available worldwide on all four platforms above on this date in English (this review may be published after July 5th and the game might be already out).

The series of games that have many games always have a problem, and that is that new players fear that the story of that game will be related to the previous games and confuse them.

but is that problem present in The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak or is it a good entry point?

STORY

Van Arkride is the protagonist of this game and is the newest protagonist of The Legend of Heroes series.
Van is a spriggan, a spriggan is someone who actually does multiple jobs: detective, bounty hunter, and whatever mission he can get his hands on and earn money from.

Agnès, a 16-year-old student at Aramis High-School, is looking for a watch that belonged to her great grandfather. After searching and asking around she will find about van a 24 years old spriggan who is famous for solving complicated cases so Agnes goes to Van, and this is the beginning of the acquaintance of the two main characters of the story, Van shows some of his personality from the very beginning, for example, that he loves sweets or that He does not show mercy and takes the specified amount of money from his client under any circumstances, but he does not accept more or less than that.

Van agrees to help Agnes find her great grandfather’s watch after a bit of arguing, so they go to one of Van’s info dealers and while searching for information, they get involved in events that complicate finding this watch. and this makes the case more important than finding a simple watch, they continue to look for the watch and find it, when they find the watch they realize that it is not a ordinary watch and it has powers. agnes gives more info about this watch to Van and says that there are eight of these watches and asks for his help to find the rest of them.

Agnes offers Van to work for him part time and Van accepts. A few days later, a client goes to Van’s office and asks for his help, so Van and Agnes agree and go to help her, but the quest of this client is not going very easily and the story of Agnes’s grandfather’s watch is also related to this story, which makes The story become more complicated and actually the main story starts here, after 8 hours you will get to know the antagonist of this game and the story just begins, the story of this game is wonderful and has good plot twists, the story is so detailed thanks to the long texts and conversations, but these long texts are sometimes troublesome, sometimes these long conversations may have many unnecessary details that are annoying and boring, but overall the story is full of details and its great.

the story gives you 50+ hours of joy.

The design of the characters is the best part of the story and the attention to detail and personality of the characters is wonderful and the characters are very memorable.

The story has some related parts to the previous games of the series, but the story of the game is completely new and is a good entry point for those who have not experienced this series.

GAMEPLAY

The gameplay of The Legend of Heroes series has always been turn-based and has always managed to do it well, but The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak has made a fundamental change in the gameplay and added real-time combat to it.

Of course, fans of the series should not worry about the gameplay, because this game is not fully real-time combat, but a wonderful combination of real-time combat and turn-based combat.

attack with X and dodge with the circle and by hitting a number of attacks your charge attack will be ready to be used and by pressing R2 you can use it to damage your enemies harder, by hitting the square whenever the enemy is close to you you can go to turn-based mode and make your fight turn based If you are doing the fight in real-time mode and stun the enemies and then press the square, you will hit a special move to the enemies and then enter the turn-based mode, Keep in mind that going to turn-based mode is mandatory in many fights because you can’t defeat all enemies in real-time combat, especially in large numbers, the real-time combat in the game is just these descriptions and nothing more.

The focus on turn-based combat has made the real-time combat not very attractive in this game, and this is a negative point, and if it wasn’t supposed to be given enough attention, it would be better if it wasn’t in the game in the first place, although this combination of two types of combat Is interesting and has a lot of potential.

But turn-based combat is extremely fun and makes you not feel the passage of time, in these fights you must have a good strategy to deal with the enemies according to their number and strength.

And to use EP, CP, S-Boost you should Have a strategy too, EP is for using Arts, which are powerful moves that are done with water, fire, wind, etc. which you can use according to enemy’s weakness, the number of EP is very important and you can refill it by resting in certain places and eating food or potion.

CP is required to use crafts and S-Break, crafts are special attacks that are performed with the help of the character’s own weapons and do not use water, fire, etc. and these skills are unique for each character, S-Break is a move which performs several different attacks with a long animation and has a lot of power.

S-Boost is activated by pressing L1 and makes the power of normal attacks and other skills stronger and increases the chance of S-Skills being activated and Even by using it several times, the chance of S-Skills becomes 100%. S-Skills are selected in the quartz section and added to your weapon, and the chance of their activation is different.

For example, this shard skill named chaos impact has a 25% chance of activation, but if you use S-Boost it will increase to 50% and if you use it for the the second time it will increase to 100%, This S-Skill has a chance to add mirage damage to attacks, CPs can be refilled like EP.

This turn-based gameplay can be done very fast and is not slow at all.

You can buy your chosen weapons, armors and accessories from different shops and increase your power, or you can buy your chosen quartz from some shops and use your preferred S-Skills, arts Drivers can be bought from shops in the same way and you can personalize your art, all these various powers have their very smooth and unique animations that are very attractive.

VISUALS

Visually, the art design of the game is good and beautiful and has diverse and beautiful and unique areas, the art design is relaxing and gives you a sense of relaxation.

I think we all agree that the graphics of a game is not the most important thing, But it cannot be denied that it is one of the important things and the textures of this game are low in details and this is annoying.

The resolution and performance are stable and the game is smooth.

SOUNDTRACKS

The soundtracks are excellent and exciting and bring great excitement to the fights and convey great peace to your ears in moments outside of the fight.

CONCLUSION

The newest game in The Legend of Heroes series is a great entry point for those who haven’t experienced the series yet.

A detailed and wonderful story that sometimes may have long and unnecessary conversations.
The gameplay is fun and it’s an interesting combination of real-time combat and turn-based combat, but the real-time part is not so entertaining and the long cutscenes makes the gameplay little.

Lovely art design but the textures are very low in detail.

The soundtracks are great.

Overall, this game is great and its problems can be ignored.