It's new to me: The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky the 3rd

A cross between revisiting a world and characters you already know with planted seeds that wouldn't begin to sprout for some time yet.

This column is “It’s new to me,” in which I’ll play a game I’ve never played before — of which there are still many despite my habits — and then write up my thoughts on the title, hopefully while doing existing fans justice. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.

One thing that makes Nihon Falcom’s Trails series of JRPGs work is its two-pronged approach to world building. On the one hand, this is a series that, by Falcom’s own admission, is 70 percent of the way through its continent-spanning narrative after over a dozen games and 18 years. A narrative that, by way of the various sub-series, better acquaints its players with specific regions and their peoples each time out — for Trails in the Sky, it was the small but technologically advanced Liberl; then there was the Crossbell duology, followed by the Erobonian Empire-focused Cold Steel titles.

On the other hand is Falcom’s intense zooming in on the people of these regions: Trails games manage to both macro and micro scale at the same time, and effectively so in both, which is necessary because there are so many returning characters and moving pieces at all times, but also works the way it does and as well as it does because there are so many returning characters and moving pieces at all times.

The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky the 3rd is a game meant only for people who have already played the first two Trails in the Sky titles. It’s not just that it’s probably inscrutable without the knowledge of events and people and places gained through playing those first, but also that the main reason to play this third entry is to revisit those very events, people, and places, and to gain new context on all three of them, as well as context for surrounding, off-screen and interstitial events, besides. It’s an entire game of fleshing out the past, with additional emphasis on characters that the first two Trails games couldn’t always make the central focus given those were, even with their excellent pacing and doling out of context on scales large and small, largely about the story of its protagonist and deuteragonist, its joint protagonists, however you want to refer to the pair of Estelle and Joshua Bright. At least, on a personal level, and Trails in the Sky the 3rd largely involves itself in the personal. Just more for everyone else who fought alongside (or even sometimes opposed) Estelle and Joshua, rather than more about that pair specifically.

Trails in the Sky the 3rd isn’t just for super fans or focused on fanservice over everything else — nothing of the sort. But it is designed to ensure that you understand more about the allies of Estelle and Joshua — their personal lives, their motivations, their backstories, their fears, dreams, hopes — and it’s difficult to care about that sort of thing if you can’t connect any of it to what has already been learned about those characters, or done by them in the previous two outings. It’s not filling in the blanks if all you’ve got is blanks.

It did, however, seem a bit more isolated from the rest of the series in terms of its narrative back when it first released, since it focused heavily on the Septian Church — which, otherwise, is purposefully an institution the player doesn’t know much about, because the game world itself also lacks knowledge of the true inner workings of the church — and this alternate world called Phantasma: a world that can recreate reality, but, if left unchecked, could also theoretically replace it. As worlds like Phantasma — dimensions and planes separate from the primary one this series takes place in — appear in more and more games, though, it’s clear that the Septian Church, its closely-guarded secrets, and the effect places like Phantasma have on the world are more and more vital to understanding the full picture of Trails that’s still being painted. So, maybe you didn’t need Trails the 3rd to explain what’s going on in Trails from Zero, but by the time you get to some of Cold Steel and what’s beyond there (that, as of this writing, remains in Japan but will come to North America eventually), it’s vital to have a grounding in the elements Trails the 3rd focuses on, both on the personal level and in the grander scheme of things.

You very much get back what you put into Trails the 3rd: much of the fleshing out of its characters occurs in optional segments, where there is a door that will only open for specific characters or under specific circumstances, and beyond that door are sometimes trials, sometimes “memory fragments” that give you a glimpse into a past you were not aware of but the character in question was. Well, usually, but I’ll leave you to discover which is which. Sometimes these take place as mere text bits, advanced and presented somewhat like a visual novel. Sometimes they’re designed just like any other story element, with characters interacting in the world like they always do, but without any combat or exploration. And sometimes you’re going to be doing a whole lot of fighting, like when you explore the memories of Scherazard Harvey, back at the time she was still a junior Bracer attempting to escape the life she had before then. You might have just been using Schera with all kinds of powerful skills and weapons in the present, but in her memories, she’s basically a newbie, and fights like one, too. Good luck with that jarring switch.

It’s clear in Trails in the Sky SC, where Kevin Graham is introduced, that there’s far more going on with him than is let on, and that only becomes more obvious and in-your-face as you go. He can’t just be a simple priest, not when he fights the way he does and quickly changes the subject or moves on when it becomes clear he knows more than he’s letting on. Trails the 3rd gives you some more background on who he is, his abilities, how he got in the position he’s in, what that position actually means, and his own inner and outer turmoil. Part of this is revealed by the introduction a new relationship, that of his new squire, Ries, who just happens to be someone who knows from his youth and has left behind — the why of it all is kind of at the center of everything you’re doing here, even if the how isn’t clear from the start.

So, that’s the point of the game — filling you in the past and motivations and such of characters you know, and possibilities that could play a significant role in the series down the line — but how does it play? Mild spoilers, though I’ll say you can figure it out before the game straight-up tells you this is the case: because of the structure of Phantasma, a world created by the thoughts and memories of those within it, you don’t do so much exploring or large-scale traversal of the world to get from place to place. There are planes of existence within Phantasma that are basically dungeons reminiscent of the dimensional bits from the Cold Steel games, maybe with some light environmental puzzles to solve, but mostly paths that lead to the exit and paths that lead to optional treasures and other finds. Otherwise, you’re revisiting areas you’ve been to in the other Trails in the Sky games — the capital of Liberl, for instance, but only its buildings, not its people or surrounding lands. Or the training area the Bracers utilize, except rather than having to actually walk from place to place in its neighborhood, you just choose on a map whether you’ll be in the forest, the dungeon, etc. Trails the 3rd very much has its own locations and sprites and enemies and such, but it also reuses much from the previous outings, and locks you into those spots when it needs to for storytelling purposes. It’s odd if you’re used to the openness of the Trails games, but makes plenty of sense for what the specific game is aiming for, and isn’t the bad kind of odd, either.

Battles are less advanced than they are in Trails from Zero, which makes sense given that came later, but they’re still pretty close to what’s going on there. You’re just missing some of the team-up stuff introduced there, since the Trails in the Sky games utilize an escalating chain attack feature that uses up Craft Points (CP) for their team attacks. Augmenting your Orbment — basically, the in-game device used for figuring out what kind of spells you can cast that also modifies your stats — is trickier here than in future Trails installments: it’s not quite as clear how you go about getting a specific spell you might want, such as the high-level revive, but you can get there through trial and error. Less convenient than future iterations of the game, but not a dealbreaker by any means, and no different than the setup of the previous Sky titles, either.

Trails the 3rd is a turn-based JRPG on a grid, where concerning yourself with turn order and positioning is of the utmost importance. You want to focus on building up Craft Points for your high-level attacks, skills, whatever depending on the character in question, but you also need to have a balanced team capable of taking down enemies more susceptible to elemental spells than physical attacks, or vice versa, and don’t forget about buffs and debuffs on speed, attack, defense, and so on. Those could be the difference between living or dying, just as much as the ability to deploy a high-level craft at just the right moment — to defeat a powerful foe preparing their strongest attack, to cut in line ahead of them in the turn order and steal away the critical buff they were to receive, to take away the 10 percent heal they were about to receive, whatever it is. It might be turn-based and not timed, but your turns are always full of something to pay attention to and react to, and feel more action-oriented than you’d expect given that.

Since you’re not able to take on jobs to receive money (mira in this world), given you’re trapped in an alternate dimension where the only people within it are you and your party members, the funds you receive for vital purchases of new weapons, armor, and items comes from completing those optional scenes and trials behind locked doors, and the occasional chest. So, those are optional, but they’re a huge part of the draw for playing in the first place given what’s inside of them, and they do help you survive long enough to find the next one, too: there’s no reason to avoid or skip them, since, as is so often the case for a Trails game, the stuff you can miss can end up being as vital a clue or detail or as emotionally satisfying as whatever the main quest is providing you.

If there’s a skippable Trails game, it’s this one, in the sense that it is, at its heart, about revisiting with old friends and old haunts to learn more about them all. Given this is still Trails, however, which focuses so much on the lives and humanity of its subjects even in its ancient big bad plots the destruction/control of the world angles, it still feels necessary. What drives Kevin Graham? What motivates Ries Argent to work for this man who abandoned her as he closed himself off from the world? Why did he close himself off in the first place? These are all questions as vital to Trails’ whole deal as The 3rd’s main thrust of “where the hell are we?", and it’s this combination of character with grander narrative that makes Trails games so hard to put down, and so easy to invest into, in the first place.

Trails in the Sky the 3rd was, for some time, a Japan-exclusive title: it released on Windows in 2007, then the Playstation Portable in 2008, followed by the Playstation 3 in 2013 and the Vita three years after that. In 2017, the Windows version finally reached North America, and it remains the only way to play it in that region to this day. Maybe, though, it’ll see a broader re-release if the other two Trails in the Sky titles see a revival down the road: again, this is a series that is just over two-thirds complete narratively, and we’re already looking back 18 years into the past for its origin point. At some point, Falcom will have to do something about ensuring it’s all on more platforms than just Windows, but if not, hey, there’s always that.

It took me some time to get to Trails the 3rd despite not being a newcomer to the series by any means, but what finally gave me that last little push was a Steam Deck: Trails the 3rd isn’t fully optimized for the Steam Deck like Trails from Zero is, but it works more than well enough: you have to get a little used to the control scheme for bringing up the game’s various menus that are used to having keyboard inputs, but that’s it. Combat, exploration, the camera, fast-forwarding, all of it is easily accessible with the default control format of the Deck, so don’t shy away from it just because it’s not officially Steam Deck-enabled with the green check mark to prove it. And if you don’t need that kind of motivation to play on something besides a PC, well, what are you waiting for? Besides playing Trails in the Sky FC and SC first, anyway.

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