The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie

= Preface =
The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie is the epilogue for the series’ Crossbell and Erebonia sagas, which in other words means this game isn’t an entry point for newcomers despite the name not being related to any of the previous games.

• Minimum Experience: Cold Steel - Cold Steel 4
• Recommended : Sky Fc - Sky 3rd + Zero & Azure + Cold Steel - Cold Steel 4

The End of the Beginning
The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie marks the end of a lot things for the series. Like the end of the SSS’s struggle for Crossbell’s Liberation. Or the end of Rean and Co’s fight against the Curse of the Empire. But Reverie also marks a new beginning for the series going forward by wrapping the current saga up with the same heart, passion and polish that managed to draw me into the series in the first place.

The Legends of
The story picks up a few months after the climax of Cold Steel 4 where the effects of operation Jormungandr are still felt throughout the continent. And without going into any major details, Reverie's story will mainly be about resolving several conflicts and character arcs that have already been set up, and some are even from as far back as Trails from Zero. This is especially felt through the journeys of the game's three main protagonists: Rean, Lloyd, and 'C'.

The story is structured much like your typical Trails affair but since there are three protagonists this time around you will be using the newly introduced Trails to Walk system. Trails to Walk essentially lets you play through the story at your own pace to a certain extent by letting you pick which of the protagonists' stories you wish to go through yourself. I say 'to a certain extent' because you can't just blitz through one character's story while ignoring the others since you will eventually be progress locked if you were to do so. Still the system does its job well enough and whenever certain characters stories do overlap with each other at times it does make for some fun sequences.

Combat Tweaks
Reverie still adopts the Arcus battle system that was first introduced in Cold Steel 1 and it has never been as broken as it is here. Some new additions such as:
• Battle Gauge upgrade-able for up to Eight slots,
• Zero craft turn bonus,
• United Fronts, basically full party burst attacks that trigger certain bonuses and high damage when upgraded,
• Brand new higher tier of orbments,
These additions are much appreciated for the added strategy to combat and add some much needed help if you plan to play on Nightmare or higher like I did.

True Reverie Corridor
The True Reverie Corridor (TRC) is the game's central hub and will be where you are going to be spending most of your time grinding in. It is basically a combination of Cold Steel 2's Reverie Corridor randomly generated dungeons and Sky the 3rd's Phantasma activities such as summoning new characters, side story missions, and minigames. In the TRC you will also get to complete missions that will help you obtain new currencies that will help you unlock a variety of useful things for your adventure, like the previously mentioned upgrade-able Battle Gauge.

One of the main draws of the TRC I'd say are those side story missions where you'll get to experience short optional adventures with different characters throughout the series. Besides the popular picks you'll also get chances to play through stories revolving around some more unusual choices like Jingo or Freddy. Besides just being entertaining, some of these do contain a lot more surprises than I was initially expecting. Even at their worst they still do manage to add more of the series' signature world-building that we all know and love.

And now, in my opinion the biggest draw of the TRC is the fact that you'll be able to go nuts with all of your favorite characters (with proper builds of course). With the dungeon's randomly generated nature and the 50+ characters you'll be able to unlock, Reverie will still keep you playing it long after beating the main story.

Songs of Reverie
As I've said before I just can't ever review a Trails game and not talk about the music. If I had to describe it briefly I'd say it's better than Cold Steel 4's. Still doesn't have the consistency of the earlier titles but there are quite a few songs in the ost that do manage to reach those same heights for me personally. The epic 'Sword of Swords', the bittersweet 'Lapis', the awe-inspiring 'Perfect Steel of Zero', just to name a few.

The Beginning of the End
As a game that aims to bring conclusions to a myriad of long burning questions while also providing an action packed farewell at the same time, The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie succeeds on delivering on nearly every one of its promises. It isn't just a love letter to long-time fans but also to the characters that this series has developed since its 20 year long existence.

This is a closing/followup game to 9 other very long games so do not start here. I only played through the Trails of Cold Steel arc but still understood 95% of the content/discussions so you can start there and still really enjoy the games. It's more of a graphic novel you play through than its predecessors because that is the only way they could possibly cram in every playable character from all the other games.... and it's a ridiculous amount of playable characters -.- On top of that you get to beat the crap out of each other a bunch too. Overall not my favorite of the series but it's nice to close up a lot of the plot questions.
I like these because if you are having a bad day you can switch to super easy mode and just whomp the turdbutter out of everything. If you feel like a tactical challenge you can turn it up in the middle of play. Or if you don't feel like doing anything watch one of the 10 million daydream clips. There is something here for everybody.
List of games in order since nobody has posted it;
1. Trails in the Sky
2. Trails in the Sky Second Chapter
3. Trails in the Sky the 3rd
4. Trails from Zero
5. Trails to Azure
6. Trails of Cold Steel
7. Trails of Cold Steel II
8. Trails of Cold Steel III
9. Trails of Cold Steel IV
10. Trails into Reverie *You are here
11. Trails through Daybreak
12. Trails through Daybreak 2

The Legend of Heroes: Trails Into Reverie can be summed up with one word: Impressive.
As someone who only got into the Trails series as of the middle of last year, chipping away at it in my attempt to catch up in time for its 13th entry in the next half-year, I’ve grown beyond-attached to the consistency of its characters and world. It goes without saying that this is the last game you should be starting with if you have any remote interest in the series. Starting here would be akin to making Avengers: Endgame your starting point with watching the Marvel flicks. Don’t skip, don’t wiki-read, don’t retro-youtube-lookup. Just snag Trails in the Sky FC and let this series have its way with you if you have any remote interest in slow-burn, long-developing characters that are well-written, vibrant, and best of all: Fleshed out.
That last point is the heart of this series as a whole, and Reverie is no exception to this. If you are just tuning in from the perspective of someone who has finished the Crossbell and Erebonia games back to back, this game is the culmination of build-up both of those arcs setup and then paid off through serendipitous celebration. Side note: Please also read the in-game story “Three & Nine”. Don’t ask why. Just do it. The characters introduced from that novel are worth your investment. To put it simply, this game makes you feel nostalgic goosebumps regarding all of the characters’ appearances, repeatedly. I can’t imagine the feeling this game must have had for those who had to wait patiently for it, because even with my marathon of the series, I felt the nostalgia goosebumps, and they were hitting on the regular, given how frequently characters you’ve come to know and love throughout the past nine games kept appearing with the same consistency that they first started with. I see folks bringing up what their favorite and hated characters are.
Here’s mine: I don’t have a favorite because I love them all, except I hate Angelica so much that she was permanently given a mishy-head cosmetic. If you have played the previous games and felt a similar way by this point, then you will be happily thrilled with what you get out of this 50+ character extravaganza. And the best part is Angelica is delegated to cameo with how little she is involved, so feel free to enjoy that factor if you share my sentiments regarding her existence.
I want to emphasize more about these characters and why they sniped me. The best way I can describe the satisfaction I get from Reverie is to reference one of my favorite western RPGs, Jagged Alliance 2 (the recent 3 was also good). Without going into details if you haven’t played the JA games, they are turn-based tactical RPGs involving a giant cast of colorful, albeit simply-described mercenaries with their own established histories and love/hate relationships between one another. You can team up Wolf, Fox, and Barry and they’ll be besties who love working together, or you can put Lynx and Buzz together and prepare to watch your money go down the drain as they set a Hispanic island on fire just to neutralize each other. The only downside of this wonderful chaos is that despite their established histories, you don’t get to see them living their lives or fleshing out these characterizations through extensive dialogue apart from fun quips. You effectively get a tiny taste, and then a lot of what you know about them is just assumed and head-cannon’d.
Reverie is the anti-JA, in the sense that these characters do have love/hate relationships with each other and massive histories, but unlike JA, we know these characters, and we can regularly swap them around and just enjoy their banter in dungeon-crawls and story-dialogue. There is such an intense satisfaction to seeing the payoff of how they interact amongst one another. Seeing Lloyd and Randy continue their bromance, enjoying Agate squirm against his true final boss Erika, or even just seeing Tio and Tita nerding out over new-character Lapis. I could list hundreds of combinations of characters, and even in just running Reverie’s dungeon-crawls with any of these characters, I was being entertained by the combo-victory quips, practically swapping out characters all the time just to see what they’d say to one another after landing a link-kill.
You probably noticed I barely talked about the plot. That’s because the plot isn’t that important. It has its significance to the greater scheme of the Trails universe, but I have to keep emphasizing that I am here for these characters, and no matter how much fans want to fight over the value of individual plots in these games, the more the characters are emphasized? The more I am entertained. And Reverie, next to Sky 3rd, is the king of delivering on character-development. The side stories, in particular, are show-stealers that ended up being more valuable than any rare weapon/accessory/quartz could ever bestow.
If you have made it through the series, you deserve to play Reverie. If you have not played these games and have gained interest in it after reading all of this? You are not allowed to play Reverie. I forbid it. In fact, if you disregard that warning and play Reverie without playing the previous games, then I’ll just laugh at your utter confusion and frustration as you attempt to find meaning and joy from this unbelievably massive roster. It’s probably not impossible, but given how this series is consistent about not giving history-lessons about previous entry moments, it would be in your best interest to just take your time and give this series a chance.
It is now my favorite JRPG series to date, Final Fantasy, Yakuza, Nier, Grandia, and Xeno-series be damned. I can’t wait to finish my journey. I hope some of you will try the ride. It’s worth it.

A great conclusion to three previous arcs. The story doesn't drag like CS III & IV - the main story is around 50 hours. There's a huge optional dungeon you can explore after you finish the story with tons of great rewards. Almost all of the characters from previous entries are playable. A lot of side stuff like mini games if that's your thing.

So yeah, if you're a fan of the series - you're in for a treat!

Today I finished the main story and the postgame. It's been a epic journey, playing this saga for over 12 months non-stop, This game works as an emotional closure to complete many stories of the most beloved characters Today I'll finally get to the Calvary Arc. Thank you Falcom for creating this masterpiece, the best video game in history in terms of narrative and story. <3

And here, my journey of 10 trails game in almost 3 years has come to an end.
Falcom proves me that the good games are always be the game that has been loved by the creators.
They are pouring their heart in many details in the game such as NPC dialogs or even gameplay mechanic adjustment one by one since Sky, which leads the player to love their games too.
For the one who want to try this series but concern of the very long story line, trust me. It's really worth your time.

➤➤ Short Review: --Buy now! (BUT)--
I absolutely love the trails franchise. It is in my opinion peak JRPG goodness. Trails into Reverie is no exception, quite the opposite even. as the conclusion for 2 (maybe you could say 3) arcs, the story is from beginning to end just amazing, to a point where I can't even describe how good it is. For Anime fans, specifically One Piece fans, it's basically the same as how One Piece gets amazing later on to an unimaginable degree. BUT! You do need to play all previous entries to have this effect. The game and story does stand on it's own, but you will realize that there are tons of things you won't know, even story relevant parts.
(Another BUT! I wish NISA would implement a new system for how languages work in "localized" games. If you're playing with the japanese audio, there are tons and tons of discrepancies to the point of ruining immersion. These games have heavy "Localization" instead of "Translation". I wish they made it so that if you play with the japanese audio, it's only translation and not localization. For lack of better words, they butchered some characters with the localization, but people that play with the english dub will never know, which is sad.)
➤➤ Long Review:
- Story: I will keep this one short, it's the conclusion to 2-3 arcs that were told in 9 different ~60 hour each long games. As such, it's extremely hype and from my perspective, an amazing conclusion to the arcs, characters and the world it plays in.
- Gameplay: It's more or less the exact same as in Trails of Cold Steel IV, the combat is solid, with enough depth for people to create unique builds for each character. It got a new additional feature which is a good addition and gives a bit more power to the player. They did add a new system to the game that is heavily involved in the story, but without spoiling too much, it's a randomized dungeon for you to level up, get loot and other goodies.
- Sound: The OST is as usual phenomenal. Nord Highlands OST for example is just a vibe that I can listen to even when I'm not playing the game.
- Visuals: I won't say the game looks amazing or great. Genshin Impact and other Gacha games have already shown that the anime styled graphics can look really good, even in action. The environments also don't look that detailed or amazing. You could argue the areas sometimes could be from late PS3, early PS4 era. This isn't necessarily a big problem as the story, soundtrack and combat clearly carry this game to the top of the JRPG genre.
- PC settings: Durante and Team did an amazing job. That was by far the best decision NISA ever made.