Reviewing a Video Game is not something I normally do on this blog, although I've done it for a few games, most notably those in the Trails series. But after spending two months (140+ hours) basically playing this game instead of reading, I really feel like I want to give a bit more of an effort into my review of this game, even if I will be retreading some ideas that have been covered in other pieces.
Trails Into Reverie is the 10th game in Falhom's "Trails" ("Kiseki" in Japan) series of Japanese Role Playing Games. Unlike a lot of other long running series of video games or RPGs, like say Final Fantasy, the Trails series does not try to keep each game independent of each other so that newcomers can play them without having to play earlier games first. Instead, the series is like a long running steampunk-ish fantasy book series, with each game building upon the past installments such that new readers who start in the middle are going to miss at least a little bit - if not a lot - if they don't go back and read what came before. That's not to say there aren't on-ramps into the series other than the beginning; like a long running series, there are different arcs in the series featuring different countries in the setting, so if you start at the beginning of an arc you can probably get by just fine and enjoy....but events and characters of prior arcs will get involved in new ones not before long. As someone who has played all 9 prior games to this one - and even played the two of those 9 games that weren't localized in the US until last year well before that due to a translation patch - I guess I'd kind of be considered a major fan of the series, so this isn't quite a dispassionate review here, and I'm not going to take too much time to try to get people up to speed on the story in this review either...I don't think it's necessary for my judgment of this game or my judgment as to whether you should be interested in the series in general based upon this review (there won't really be spoilers here either in specifics in this review).
Like many long running fiction series, particularly in science fiction, fantasy or romance, a key element involved in Trails keeping me interested 10 games in are the characters and their development. The plotting in the games has runned from really great romantic fantasy (the first two Trails in the Sky games) to solid geopolitical thriller with questions about whether Omelas-like-suffering might be worth utopia (the Crossbell Games, Trails from Zero/Trails to Azure) to complete and utter mess, sometimes in infuriating ways (the Trails of Cold Steel Games). But each game in the series develops major characters - many old, some new depending on the game - and develops so so so so so many side characters who aren't really important such that you can't help but loving and wanting to spend time with almost everyone, even if there are some characters you likely cannot stand. So even after the 9th game in the series, Trails of Cold Steel 4, was a bit of a disaster in my opinion even in the character development department (particularly in how the game handled a major antagonist from the last 7 games), well, I couldn't help but want to plaly Trails Into Reverie as soon as it got over here like 3 years later, just to spend time with the characters again. And Trails from Reverie is a game built upon feeding that desire - this is a game that, even in introducing a new plotline and new small party of characters for a 1/3 of it, is really built upon giving you as much time as you could possibly want with almost every major character of the last SEVEN games and beyond. It's a fanservice game in the non-sexual meaning (although there is some of that too because sigh, it's a JRPG) to the extreme, intent on giving you more more and more - more character interaction, more gameplay of all the main systems and side mini games, more utterly bonkers possible ways to break the prior games' already broken combat systems. And the game is so so good at doing that and is simply incredibly addictive.