Trails Beyond the Horizon is the latest entry in Falcom's long running Trails series and is an early contender for my GOTY of 2016. Check out my spoiler free review below.
It’s crazy to think that we’re finally caught up with the Trails series in English, what was once a far off dream for a lot of us fans has finally been made a reality and they honestly couldn’t have picked a better game to get us caught up with. Trails Beyond the Horizon is both the 13th game in this long running story and perhaps the most important game in the series. It represents a turning point for the series that’s made me go back and question things that were set up nearly 20 years ago in the first few games. Sitting on it a bit after finishing, a strong narrative, characters, and new gameplay improvements have propelled Beyond the Horizon to be my favorite in the series.
My favorite part of Falcom’s Trails series is the fact that it’s telling a long form story with each arc focusing on new characters and problems that move the series forward. I don’t think every game series should do this, but I’m glad there’s at least one made for sickos. Horizon in particular starts making some incredibly deep cuts to some of the other games in the series that made it incredibly satisfying for someone who’s gone through the whole series, like me, to recognize. This game doesn’t assume you haven’t played all of them, so be warned things may go over your head if you haven’t already committed to going through all of them. While 13 games sounds incredibly daunting, what I tell anyone who’s interested in the series is to just pick the first game in an arc that interests you and start from there. You can always go back and pickup any game you miss. It’s important to not treat a series like this like homework, you’ll just burn yourself out in the long run. While it’s not 100% required to play every game, I think you’ll get significantly more out of the series if you do especially with this game.
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| Van is still the main character of the game, despite there being other routes |
Beyond the Horizon isn’t just all about reveals and twists, at it’s core it’s still the next game in the Calvard/Daybreak arc. One of the common complaints I see against this game is that Act 1 is incredibly slow, and I can agree that compared to the rest of the game Act 1 is lacking in major reveals and conflicts but it’s a part of the game I still like quite a bit. So far Edith is my favorite city in the series, it’s incredibly large and there’s so many little narratives going on I’ve loved revisiting it in the last three games. It’s cool that there’s so many recurring characters you see either out and about or in the various sidequests you do around town and it helps make the city feel living and dynamic and while I didn’t talk to every NPC this is the arc where I’ve gone out of my way to talk to the most.
Act 1 also works as a nice setup to some of the more major events in the game while also giving you a bit more time to hang out with the Calvard cast before things fully get into motion. Arkride Solutions is my favorite main party in the series so far, I love how they all bounce off each other and how their relationships have slowly changed over the course of the arc. Van Arkride is also my favorite protagonist in Trails at the moment, while he went through a major arc in the first game, Horizon gives him some great moments where you’re seeing how the events from that and the connections he’s made has started to change him. It’s unfortunate that most of these moments are relegated to the games Connect Events. While these are easily the best Connect Events in the series, and for the first time they let you see all of them in one playthrough, they’re still optional at the end of the day. One of Elaine’s Connect Events feels like such a substantial moment between her and Van I was absolutely shocked it was stuck into an optional event. Upon reading some developer interviews, it was supposed to be in the main story but moved due to pacing reasons. While understandable in a way due to how long Act 1 is, they still should’ve found a way to make it mandatory.
The meat of Horizon’s story belongs to Van and the rest of Arkride Solutions and I love all of the build up and character moments they have, in particular everything with Jorda and the end of Van Act 2 are fantastic, but a lot of the more mysterious elements in the story are built up in Rean and Kevin’s routes. It was great seeing Rean back, he’s matured since his last appearance and squarely falls into his role as a teacher and we finally get some time to meet his master, someone who’s only shown up via images at this point. His route brings up some of the most interesting plot points in the game and it was great getting to hang out with some of the old cast again. Kevin being a playable character again in the game was probably the biggest surprise to me, he hasn’t been in a game since Azure and he hasn’t been playable since Sky 3rd Chapter. I was the most excited to see him and figure out what his deal is and I was not disappointed. I’m glad he got to team up with the rest of the picnic crew from Reverie since they have surprisingly good chemistry. All of the reveals from these different routes tie into the greater narrative but it is a tad disappointing that the different parties don’t converge by the end and mostly stay separate.
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| The new board game-like floors in the Grim Garten are a step up from Daybreak 2 |
The one place all of the characters team up together is in this games randomized dungeon, the Grim Garten. I didn’t mind the Garten in Daybreak 2, it was a playground for me to mess with all of the characters and take on challenges, but the version of the Garten in Horizon is leagues and bounds better than it. This time instead of floors being anywhere from 3-7 combat stages, it’s now a pseudo board game where some tiles are battle stages and others provide buffs you can utilize for the boss. What really makes it worth going through though is that it has pretty significant story content. First is through Memory Orbs, which provide small vignettes giving backstory for some of the cast, and second is a major side story involving Ouroboros. Since they’ve taken over the Garten this time you’ll encounter several members and by the end it has some more major plot moments and reveals which once again made me baffled that this was in a piece of side content. The weirdest part of the Garten though is that the final area doesn’t fully unlock until right before the final boss of the main game, which leads to it feeling kinda weird pacing wise. If you fell off the Garten in the last game, it’s genuinely worth doing in this game for the story line alone.
One of my favorite parts of this side narrative was the new Ouroboros member, Ulrica. In Japanese she speaks in aggressively online, streamer lingo so for the localization they did the same but for English. It’s equal parts cringe and endearing and it was always funny how your party reacts to her nonsense (especially one of them if you did their Connect Event in the last game). The localization as a whole for this game is really good. I know NISA has had a very spotty track record, especially before the Ys 8 fiasco, but they’ve honestly stepped up their game in recent years. Their Pre-Daybreak Trails games had the occasional bad item description or weird line change but the fact that they were able to get three of these games out in the span of a year and a half while keeping a consistent, good quality is commendable.
Not only is this game good from a narrative stand point but I think it has my favorite gameplay in the series. The action portion of the combat feels way more realized than in the last two games, all of the characters control great and some of the new mechanics really flesh it out without feeling like it’s taking away from the turn based portions. At first it was a bit rough going from the build and mechanic variety that was introduced in Cold Steel 3, 4, and Reverie to the more stripped down systems of Daybreak but I did like the new spin on Orbments where you’re building into new passive abilities that have a chance of going off in battle. While Shard Skills were fun to use at times it also felt very limiting, you could use the new Boost mechanic to increase the chance of them going off, with two boosts bringing their activation chance to 100% and allowing you to use S-Crafts. Despite this it still felt like something was missing to really bring out its full potential. Horizon makes a big change by making it so you only need one boost to get all of your abilities and crafts with a second boost activating Z.O.C., which allows a character to act twice in a row. Acting twice in a row became a godsend at some points because I could get a character to cast a spell instantly to heal or throw and attack spell before an enemies stun wears off. Combine this with Brave Orders from Cold Steel making a comeback and it felt like I could actually build characters around using different Shard Skills. I was always boosting in battle and it made each character feel more distinct rather than boiling the entire party down to casters and a tank to draw the enemies. Every fight in Horizon felt satisfying, but it was also a fairly easy game. Thankfully setting it to hard felt challenging enough to keep it interesting.
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| The gameplay in Horizon is some of the series best |
The Garten is also where the gameplay can really shine, since you get access to every character in the game even if they’re from separate routes. This allows you to make some fun party compositions while taking on some of the harder bosses in the game. Horizon also starts to introduce different quartz with powerful effects which allowed me to make Rean into a walking nuclear bomb or make Kevin into a one-stop arts machine. While the Garten is the big piece of side content in Horizon, it also still has some of the side activities from the last game. Fishing, basketball, and drone flying make a return and all of them are fairly fun. This is still my favorite fishing minigame in the series but it’s unfortunate that basketball was so stripped down, it’s basically just a quick shooting minigame with no other mechanics. Of course this game has the series standard sidequests with this arcs morality choices, which I’ve always liked since they introduce a little bit of flavor and don’t really affect the plot. I’ve already mentioned that I really like the NPCs in this arc and that extends to the ones in the sidequests. Most of the ones in this game also tie into the main plot really well and there’s this constant sense of tension going through all of them. This arc has consistently had my favorite sidequests in the series and I’m glad it continues here and seeing Rean and Kevin tackle Van’s types of jobs was fun way at giving them a different perspective.
From a music stand point, I think this is easily the best this arc has been. I’ve thought this series has always had great music, but it definitely did feel like a step down from the Cold Steel games. The music in Daybreak has so far felt a lot more, I’m not sure how to say it. Subdued? The main battle themes in the last two games felt kinda lacking along with a few of the area themes. Not that they were bad or anything, on the contrary I still really like the music, but it definitely did feel like a slight downgrade. Horizon on the other hand I think brings it to about equal to where that arc was, it has some of the best area themes and battles in the arc and I especially want to mention the excellent final boss track.
Here’s a selection of some of my favorite tracks in the game:
- Battle Junction−1209−
- Street Corner Siesta
- Stroll Around the Edith
- KEVIN GRAHAM
- Raging Bloom
- Chaotic Beat
- Starry Night
- The Legend of VII
- Invited to a Foreign Town
- Flowers Seen in a Unknown Land
- The Height of Majesty
- Crossing Wills
- Smells Like Mysteryand Sweets
- Detoxify the Snake Venom! −Command Battle−
- A Night for Two
- Get to the Crux
- Give It Your All!
What makes Trails Beyond the Horizon such a special game is that it feels like a crescendo regarding series long lore and plot set up. I thought that they would have a hard time one upping the final boss sequence from Daybreak 2, but the one in this game is easily one of the best final bosses I’ve seen in a video game. It’s so well done. I’ve spent the weeks since I finished thinking back to so many small details in the previous games, even going back and looking at specific lines of dialogue in a new light and theory crafting with other people on what some of this could mean and how the future of the series is going to shape out. Obviously not all of this series was fully written from the start, but it’s so cool to see how they’re paying off years of setup. Combining that with some of the tightest gameplay they’ve made for the series and this has landed at the top of the series for me. I understand that some people were really frustrated that Falcom immediately went on to do Trails in the Sky remakes after one of the harshest cliffhangers in the entire series, but I’m fine with them taking their time. I want the final entry in the Daybreak arc to be the best that it can be because it has the potential to be something really incredible. This series has a vice grip on me and it’s not letting go anytime soon, I’m so excited what the future of this series holds.
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