Trails through Daybreak 2 is the 12th game in the Nihon Falcom's Trails series of JRPGs and the second game in the Calvard Arc, the fourth arc in the series. If somehow you're reading this review without having any familiarity with Trails, the series is a JRPG series of video games that began 20 years ago (although the first game didn't come to the US until 10 years later roughly) with Trails in the Sky and, like a long running epic fantasy series, each game sort of builds upon the next so as to create one incredibly epic story. The story occasionally provides what seem like good entry points for latecomers to Trails, like the first Trails through Daybreak game (which began the fourth arc of the series, dealing with events in the country of Calvard), but inevitably events, plot threads, and characters from the prior games show up as each arc gets more and more complicated. And for the Calvard Arc, that moment comes in Trails Through Daybreak 2.
Now listen, I am basically what might be called a Trails superfan (even if I'm far from the craziest in that direction). I've played every game in the series (and most of them multiple times) and even played the two Crossbell games (Trails from Zero and Trails to Azure) using a fan translation because those games were skipped by the localization teams hired by Falcom for like a decade before they were finally released (with help from the fan translaters) two years or so ago. So keep in mind that none of this epic continuity is a problem for me in and of itself and that will color my review.
So what are my thoughts as a Trails superfan of this game? Well, I'll go into more details below, but in general, I had a lot of very mixed thoughts on this game compared to some of the earlier games in the series, particularly the last Daybreak game, which is honestly one of the series' high notes. Daybreak 2 is known for being a game with some very mixed opinions from fans and it definitely earns that reputation: the game relies upon some really silly shortcuts that are even more obvious than usual, the plot generally doesn't move forward as much as you'd like for a second game in an arc and drags seriously at times, and bringing back two characters from a prior game and centering them in the story feels like a waste. On the other hand, the core gameplay remains incredibly fun, much of the new gameplay is really good (although there are some lesser parts), and individual character beats which have always been a major focus of Trails shine immensely. I put 70 hours into Trails Through Daybreak 2 and I absolutely do not regret it, even if I'm not in a hurry to replay the game right now.
I tend to split my video game reviews into Story sections and Gameplay sections, and I'll continue that here below. If you're looking for opinions about the graphics (More than fine, but hardly super high quality graphics) or music (Incredible as usual for a Falcom game), I won't really be touching those areas in this review.
Story: 6.5 out of 10 - Daybreak 2 continues the plot a few months later from Daybreak 1, where we left off with our heroes having defeated the evil terrorist organization Almata and recovered 7 of the 8 Oct-Geneses, which the late legendary Professor Epstein prophesised must be recovered by the end of the year or else everything will come to an end. Spriggan (Mercenary/Fixer) Van Arkride and his assistants have largely split up for the moment, as his 6 assistants and master (who won't show up in this game) all depart temporarily to handle other matters, and there's been no sign of the 8th Genesis needed to complete the set. But when a red monster, that looks like Van's mysterious Blue demon-looking Grendel form, shows up in the capital of Edith and starts killing people, Van, his team, and his close associates have to investigate, figure out what's behind this new red Grendel and how to stop it....and the plot of the one behind it, who might have ties to the 8th Genesis.
That's the basic gist of the main story at least, although there's obviously a lot more. Most notably, Swin and Nadia - two of the main characters from Trails into Reverie (and before that, from one of the Cold Steel games' in game novels) show up here and take up a major section of the plot - arguably the main plot of the game has more to do with them than it does Van and his crew - to the point where the first two chapters are split in two, with half of those chapters focusing on what Swin and Nadia are doing as opposed to Van. I like the pair's interactions and Nadia is a lot of fun, but I love Van and his team far more so it always kind of disappointed me that this is the direction the plot headed (it doesn't help that Swin is for the second of his two games a rather poor character in gameplay).
The main plot is also massively affected by a new mechanic - the Genesis has the power to send our characters back in time to correct their mistakes when something bad happens - usually their deaths, but sometimes the deaths of others. In one part of the story - the intermission - the game actually makes this a gameplay mechanic where you can, if you're careful and observant, find ways to avoid "bad ends" and not need the time travel to survive, but for most of the game, these time travel events are unavoidable parts of the plot. It's a mechanic that's a mixed bag - the game uses in sometimes sparingly and sometimes incredibly often, so it can come as a surprise when a bad end occurs and you need to travel back in time. But the way the story drags on in the game's third act, where you're constantly dying and going back in time for more and more ridiculous ways (and the distance you travel back in time varies in further ridiculous and often hilarious ways) can get tiring, especially as the third act introduces a new plot twist that forces you to over and over again face scenarios where you have to stop an ally from doing something bad. And the end result is a plot that really doesn't move the overall plot of the arc forwards very much but seems in large part to be just killing time by having you fight the same characters over and over.
You'll note I've been kind of negative so far about the story, but still didn't grade it that poorly - 6.5 is my grade for stories generally that try interesting new things but don't work fully well but are still worth the experience. The reason is that, like many Trails games, Trails through Daybreak 2 is wonderful with regards to its characters. The story picks up some major plot threads from older games (with helpful voiced recaps of the stories for those who missed those games or forgot about them), even some of the more tragic ones (hello, Renne), and handles them rather well. The individual playable and just major ally characters' storylines and character developments are wonderful, and how everyone interacts with each other is often an incredible joy. The game also continues the first game's really nice handling of LGBTQ issues, with Quatre fully coming out as intersex and the game handling his own body issues (and other more fantastical issues that have a parallel here) in a truly beautiful and heartwarming way. For a series that sometimes has had some bad tropes with regards to gay characters (ugh, the sexual harassment in earlier games in the series), it's really wonderful to see and it made me want to spend more and more time with everyone here.
This even extends sometimes to the NPCs, some returning and some new, as they each of their own things and stories moving alongside along the main plot if you go and talk to them at every point - which I kept doing, because the game kept me interested. The story of orphan graffiti artist Kisara for example starts in an early sidequest and then continues through optional NPC dialogue and is lovely and hopeful for how it develops. This is the stuff Trails does so so well and always has and Daybreak 2 has that in spades. Indeed, even old NPC plotlines from the prior game are continued here, even when those plotlines don't result this time in a sidequest. It's what made me so disappointed when the game's post-game content was just more gameplay and not really any more story.
Gameplay: 8 out of 10 - Trails through Daybreak 2 kind of follows the Falcom formula for these games - it takes the gameplay of the prior game in the series, adds a bunch of more mechanics and ideas, and let's you go wild with it all. So once again you have a mixture of action based "Field Combat" to go along with turn based combat for bosses and whenever you otherwise want it. Field Combat gets two new enhancements: the ability to use "Quick Arts" on the Field to do extra damage and the ability to use Cross Charges when you perform a perfect dodge that brings in one of your other characters to do their charge attack. Both are fun, if entirely optional, and i wound up spamming both near the end of the game to get in game achievements because I wasn't really using them normally. Turn Based Combat gets a new EX type attack that you can use whenever an enemy is stunned to rack up additional damage, so as to further encourage you to try stun based builds. These are nice to add additional depth to the combat. Then we now have "Dual Arts", arts (magic) that count as two different elements and will do extra damage if an enemy is weak to either one of the elements, making them extra powerful and almost always more worth your time than regular arts. And while one of the main 8 playable characters from last game doesn't return, the other 7 do and you get the chance to play full time with 6 characters (4 of which are available for a bulk of the game) who were merely guest characters in the last game, who are all a lot of fun. Basically the core in combat gameplay remains really fun and if you liked the first Daybreak game, you'll like this. Note that of course the difficulty of this game remains low and the game is very easily breakable even with some nerfs to some of the more overpowered abilities of the first game - I played on the highest difficulty and deliberately challenged myself not to use two broken abilities and by the end there was still very little challenge, but I had fun.
Adding to the gameplay now are the return of minigames to the series, after Daybreak 1 bizarrely featured no minigames whatsoever. These are almost all more miss than hit, with a new card game being almost completely luck based and not worth any of your time and a basketball game that is an utter joke and worth even less of your time (since there are even less rewards for it) being two new additions, which is a shame because one of the prior card games in series was a lot of fun. Fishing also returns and is solid, but not really something you're going to want to do once you've caught all of the fish and got their related rewards. But added to the mix is a new hacking mini-game that protects various chests with good items throughout the game, which requires you to essentially solve a puzzle maze with various enemies and traps within a time limit, which I enjoyed quite a bit (the two most complicated such hacking mazes were not even tied to chest rewards but they were really enjoyable to solve).
And then there's the Märchen Garten, which is essentially a lesser version of Trails Into Reverie's "True Reverie Corridor." It's a series of RNG-Generated dungeon floors, each of which becomes available as you get further into the story (with more dangerous monsters appropriate to your story situation in each further level), in which you need to clear one of a few objectives: destroy X of a specific type of enemy, destroy X number of breakable objects, or use quick arts to activate X number of switches. You can use almost any character you've unlocked at some point in the main story (barring some story events) in the Garten, so you can have fun playing with different combinations. Once you clear an objective, you can advance to the next part of the floor, up until the boss stage, where you fight a boss to finish the floor. And your reward for doing this, besides XP and materials, are a crystal resource you can then plug into a new gacha-esque (loot box) game where you randomly burst cubes with these crystals and get random items.
The result is very underwhelming and a major disappointment honestly - clearing each dungeon level's objectives gets boring rather quickly and the rewards for doing so are not nearly high enough for it to feel satisfying: You can get some really valuable items and holo cores and then later you can get items to upgrade characters' crafts, but once you max out of the good items, you just keep getting tons of low level quartz that you're never going to need or use, so it's just annoying and time consuming. The True Reverie Corridor in Trails into Reverie by contrast and more varied things to do in the dungeons and had rewards like additional parts of story, new characters, and new minigames that made playing it seem fun and worth it (it also featured interesting bosses, whereas here we just reskins of bosses elsewhere in the story). And the post-game content for this game just consists of 7 new levels of the Garten (this was originally DLC in Japan) finishing with what's just a replay of the final boss from Daybreak 1 with a palette swap. It just feels very lazily put together.
Really that's my biggest critique of Daybreak's gameplay - a lot of what's presented just feels really lazy, as if Falcom didn't intend to make this game but rushed a game out to fit financial needs. The intermission chapter for example is a bunch of fun due to the story mechanics of one particular antagonist....and yet most of it consists of you fighting in groups all of your ally characters one after the other with little bits of gameplay in between. Act 3, which I mentioned above, besides dragging as part of the story, features one act which is literally just 8 fights in a row each separated by a cutscene with no gameplay in between them (you get to save and reorganize your party after the fourth and seventh fights. Certain sidequests will take you to arears that are at the end of dungeons or locations that were featured in Daybreak 1....but rather than have you replay those dungons or locations, like you would in prior Trails sequels, the game immediately teleports you past to the end of those locations for the fights, as if Falcom couldn't be bothered to port the prior dungeons over. Trails games always reuse assets to cut costs, and I don't mind that given the sheer wealth and epicness of the game, but this one gets pretty ridiculously laughable.
Again though, the core gameplay remains fun and the characters and individual character stories remain incredibly well done and memorable. The game is great with its LGBTQ character and in accepting some queer characters elsewhere and continues some of the other fun trends from the first game (movies are back!). I played 70 plus hours of this game over the course of a month, all on my commute, and I don't regret a single minute of it. So yeah, if you enjoyed Daybreak 1, get this game. If you're a trails fan who missed Daybreak 1 (or got burned out by Cold Steel and wasn't sure about continuing to Daybreak 1), get Daybreak 1, beat it, and then get this game. If you're looking to get into Trails.....definitely don't do so here, but this game shouldn't change the fact that you should give the series a try. This isn't quite the low point for Trails (cough Cold Steel 2 and 4), but it's one of the lesser entries, and it's still really good.
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