The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond The Horizon, we need to talk about your names. And not just because I need a tea break and a lie down in the middle of saying your full title. For starters, one of your characters is called ‘Dingo Brad’. I was astounded to learn that they didn’t wear a hat with corks on strings. You’ve got a magical priest called Kevin, whose name sounds more at home in my local pub. The less said about the extremely unfortunately named ‘Professor Epstein’, the better.

But enough ranting about names, I need to make a declaration: I have not finished Trails Beyond The Horizon at time of writing. I’ve given it a good go, mind. I’m fifty hours into the thing. That’s the price you pay with JRPGs, I suppose. I try to get these out in a week or so and, well, I need sleep. Still, those fifty hours have taught me all I need to know. It’s a bright, imaginative RPG that’s paced like super slow-mo footage of someone pouring out a jar of treacle.

Blasting Off

Trails Beyond The Horizon has a lot of plot threads, but they all revolve around one thing: a space launch. The world is prophesised to end and, as a last ditch effort to avert that, the Calvard Republic launches a satellite, with plans for a manned mission soon after. Meanwhile, on the ground, three groups are picking at the related threads. I tried to write down all their names but quickly ran out of paper. The principal players are Van, a sort-of bounty hunter type chap; Rean, a military instructor; and Kevin, a priest who was formerly tasked with hunting down heretics.

While definitely an interesting plot overall, the amount of threads gets a little ridiculous. At various points, you’re battling new mechas, fighting a cult, investigating a rise in special monsters, and so on and so forth. It all contributes to the bizarre pacing, where we start pulling on a thread then instantly stop. Part of that is down to this being the 13th game in a series, I think. We’re constantly (and I mean constantly) introduced to recurring characters, where we get a little snippet of their previous involvement. Their introduction is so laboured that it feels like we’re permanently trapped in a sitcom clip show at times, full of screams and whoops at every new character.

The writing is also fairly standard for the genre. By that I mean, mostly twee with a lot of screechy, annoying characters. Still, it is above average. It rarely labours the same point over and over, though it has a tendency to rely on its invented terminology. But then again, this is a big series. I do struggle with the character writing at times, though. There’s very little tension in the dialogue, or anything but happy acceptance, bar a smidgen in Kevin’s route. It feels like a Scouts group outing. It’s charming in its own way, and I did like some characters, but they don’t feel like they grew over the course of those fifty hours.

Hack And, Eventually, Slash

Part of the ‘stop and start’ feeling to Trails Beyond The Horizon is down to how it parcels out its gameplay. The start of every new act features the group in question running around town, chatting to the recurring characters of the hour, and bumbling about the shops. It’s a pace killer to see Van sitting around talking about sweets, when five minutes earlier we learned about a giant invisible monster. The plot doesn’t seem terribly well integrated with the core gameplay, so the pace keeps screeching to a halt when gameplay resumes. Downtime is essential, of course, but I don’t particularly care about the composition of a local dessert right now.

Combat is largely separated out too, but thankfully I rather enjoyed it. Out in the field, it’s split into two parts. You start as a real-time hack’n’slash affair. Fairly basic stuff, light attacks and a charge move. The actual blows don’t feel that great, but the key is at any time you can switch to the regular turn-based mode. So the real-time stuff gives you an opportunity to get rid of the smaller creatures, and if you can stun the big boys then you get a free hit when switching to turn-based. It’s a really clever idea and made grinding quite fun.

It helps that the visuals are very over-the-top, so landing super moves feels great. It’s not all show, either. The turn-based combat has some moves I like. ‘Shard Boosts’ are one. This is a little meter that fills when you hit the enemy, and you can use a charge of it to power up, or use two to act twice on one turn. You can even use one to perform a super move at any time. So it becomes another stat to manage, alongside the usual health and flavours of MP. It was just enough of a twist to keep the boss fights interesting, alongside the wonderful style that drips off of the whole experience.

Trails Beyond The Horizon – Charmingly Frustrating

I will say though, if Trails Beyond The Horizon does click with you, then it’ll stay with you for days. It’s absolutely stuffed to the gills with side-content. There are the usual side-quests, but there’s also a mini-RPG tacked on called the Grim Garten, complete with its own plotline. There’s also fishing and cooking, and a whole suite of stats to fiddle around with. Even hacking into locks has its own bespoke minigame. There are even direct gameplay benefits to interacting with them. Cooking and eating food gives gourmet points, for example, which give stat boosts.

Then there’s the general style to things. Voice acting isn’t bad, mercifully. The music is top notch, with battle music getting regularly lodged in my head. Graphics are nice too. There’s an emphasis on bright colours, which I like. Monster design is varied, ranging from sassy skeleton birds to one level where everything had a cat face. Character design is fairly varied too, if a little tropey at times. I think it’s a law that a burly, hand-to-hand fighter must be included. I’m not in love with the actual character art style though, which makes everyone looks like Barbie dolls. But there’s no denying the sheer volume of creativity on display.

Lastly, if you’ve not already guessed, I’ve not played any of the previous ones in the series. This is probably not the best entry point, so take my opinions with grains of salt. But even if I had, I don’t think I’d enjoy pacing this bad. The firm separation of plot and gameplay, and the constant flat dialogue with recurring characters, brings everything to a grinding halt. Every time I’m getting into it, it pulls me back out. I found myself growing fond of the characters but by the end of fifty hours, I was really hoping we could get a damn move on.

(The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond The Horizon‘s Steam Page)