Over ten years ago, when I was just getting started in this business, I played a game called *The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky*. It was a rickety-feeling RPG on the PSP, a port of an already low-budget PC game from several years earlier developed by Falcom, a little-known studio at the time.
I’d later learn it was part of a series dating back to the TurboGrafx era with a localization history, but without much notoriety—at least here in North America. The game felt kind of slow-moving and dull-looking at first, but before long, I realized I hadn’t played anything quite like it.
Estelle, the protagonist, is a goofball who’d fit right into a shonen manga, while Joshua is a brooding figure with a mysterious past—a perfect dynamic duo for interpersonal drama. The pair travel across their home continent, working their way up the ranks, eventually getting involved in wild events that sow seeds for conflict and shifts on the world stage for years to come. And sequels. So many sequels.
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### A Massive and Impressive Storytelling Ambition
*Trails in the Sky* is an example of tremendous writing, not only because it’s pretty good, but also because it’s massive in scope. The story spans dozens of hours and features several fleshed-out, important characters inhabiting a world undergoing a complicated geopolitical shift.
Every effort is made to keep everything a coherent whole—from character interactions and relationship development to how the world changes as the story progresses. For example, NPCs across the world update their dialogue to reflect new events. That level of detail is pretty rare.
These games are long and often long-winded, with the trilogy famously containing enough text to rival classic sci-fi novels. And *Trails* has expanded well beyond those three games, growing into an enormous series that has raised Falcom’s profile and elevated other series like *Ys* and *Xanadu* in the process.
The original *Legend of Heroes* brand has all but been left behind because this subseries has taken on a life of its own. The story has moved across continents and character groups, weaving them all together in different configurations as the situation develops. This kind of long-term storytelling feels impossible for video games—yet here it is.
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### The Challenge of Joining a Long-Running Series
As the series has grown and expanded, many players have been left behind. The story continues across multiple platforms and subseries in a mostly linear fashion, meaning unless you start at the beginning—and many don’t, due to FOMO and other reasons—there’s no good jumping-in or jumping-back-in point.
I fell off myself, simply unable to keep up with the release schedule, and haven’t found a good opportunity to return. Despite the hype and the passionate fanbase, *Trails* can feel intimidating. It’s like walking into a comic book store for the first time and trying to figure out where to start reading Spider-Man.
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### Enter *Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter* — A Total Remake
As the series arguably peaked and re-peaked with new storylines like *Trails of Daybreak*, fans loudly demanded—and sorely needed—a fresh way to start that wasn’t tied to a relatively ancient, niche PC game.
Enter *Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter*, a total remake of the first entry in the *Trails of the Sky* trilogy. This is a complete overhaul of that PSP game I played at the start of my career, meaning curious new players have no excuse not to jump in. For someone like me who stumbled on the series from the original, it’s a fantastic way to re-experience the story.
Obviously, there’s still value in playing the original, but if a remake is the unavoidable, optimal path, *1st Chapter* goes above and beyond to make it as welcoming and rewarding as possible.
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### This Is a Good-Lookin’ Video Game
Right from the start, *1st Chapter* is gorgeous—in a way that feels jarring. When I fell off the series, *Trails of Cold Steel* was the current run, and those games still kind of built off Falcom’s PSP era style. I hadn’t seen *Daybreak* in action, where Falcom took a major visual leap forward.
Whether you’re new or not, you can get a little taste of what *Trails in the Sky* originally looked like thanks to loading screens featuring the original character sprites—a nice nostalgic touch.
This remake looks like a low-budget RPG with a big-budget heart. That sounds silly, but it occupies a space between recognizable AAA blockbuster excess and something alive, bold, colorful, and expressive in a uniquely charming way.
Some elements still betray the game’s vintage—maps, for example—but everything moves in a way I’ve never seen before in a Falcom title. Characters wear their facial expressions on their bodies rather than static dialogue portraits, their hair sways as they walk or run, and combat animations are aggressive, playing with camera angles and lighting like there are hardly any limitations left.
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### Playing on Nintendo Switch 2
One reason this review is a bit later than others is because I played on the Nintendo Switch 2. This port was announced close to release and felt a little rushed (with patches on the way to add a performance mode).
It’s an interesting example of what Switch 2 is capable of, and the apparent challenges developers face. When I played the demo on the original Switch, it ran remarkably well in TV mode but struggled in Handheld Mode. With the Switch 2 upgrade, *1st Chapter* runs smoothly in Handheld Mode but struggles in TV mode.
It seems developers must make careful choices on what to prioritize when porting games to this system, especially balancing high resolution and frame rates without compromise.
Still, it’s awesome to play a new *Trails* game on a handheld that isn’t a bulky, warm PC crammed into a smaller shell—and have it running similarly well.
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### Voice Acting and Character Presentation
*1st Chapter* is almost fully voiced, and each character feels more emotive and personable than ever. I used to be ambivalent about voice acting; I loved reading the text myself. But between this and games like *Final Fantasy Tactics*, my perspective has shifted.
I’ve got a soft spot for characters like Estelle, and having her antics and wholesome energy reinforced with an earnest, somewhat off-kilter voice performance is infectious. This is definitely a win for RPG voice acting—from a former skeptic no less.
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### Combat: A Mixed Bag
On the other hand, the combat is where *1st Chapter* starts dropping the ball, mostly because it’s trying to do too much at once.
The original game was strictly turn-based, with a sort of grid system that encouraged attention to placement and reach without becoming a full tactical RPG. Here, combat mixes real-time and turn-based elements—you can roll around and hit enemies in the field for extra damage, then switch to turn-based combat on command.
It feels fast and meant to shake things up but comes across as half-hearted. Major encounters still force you into turn-based combat from the start, and the real-time attacks are simple and repetitive.
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### Balance Issues
*1st Chapter* also shares a frustrating issue with the original: enemy HP and player damage feel wildly off-balance, even on lower difficulties. Even the weakest enemies take far too long to defeat, while experience points scale down aggressively.
I found myself running away from combat constantly, since the math between time invested and rewards earned rarely makes sense.
The real-time gimmick compounds this by turning attacks into a noisy button-mashing affair, stealing away what could’ve been a fun, fast-paced brawl.
It’s a shame because the combat animations are fantastic, the overall pace is faster than the original, and there are many tweaks designed to make old ideas work in 3D space.
But weird padding and balancing problems hurt the flow, making preparation for bosses and side challenges feel unpredictable in uninteresting ways. My usual scenario: “Oh great, my EXP gains have stalled, guess it’s time to stop grinding. Oops, here’s a boss with fifty thousand HP, and my biggest attacks are like needle pokes.”
It’s bizarre that despite all the upgrading and retooling, Falcom still leans on this clunky approach to “challenge.”
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### Final Thoughts
*Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter* is an ambitious, transformative revisit of a modern classic RPG—a formative experience for a small, hungry audience that helped build one of today’s most absurdly epic storytelling experiments in video games.
In a world full of remakes that often feel like expensive wastes of time, *1st Chapter* meets a moment in a genuinely impressive and helpful way. It’s mostly a massive presentational overhaul, but one that truly “breathes new life” into the material.
The combat balance remains annoying, and the hybrid real-time/turn-based gimmick feels confused and pointless. Still, I found myself getting lost all over again in this game’s absurdly well-executed storytelling ambitions.
If you’ve been hearing about *Trails* for years from the passionate fans and want a cleaner, more approachable way to give it a shot, this is the moment you’ve been waiting for.
And if you’ve been a longtime fan, you’ve likely already decided to play this. But it’s a worthy excuse to go back to the beginning.
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### Availability
*Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter* is now available on PC, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, and PlayStation 5.
A Switch 2 code was provided by the publisher for this review.
https://www.shacknews.com/article/146342/trails-in-the-sky-1st-chapter-review-score
