Video Game Review: The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon

 

Trails Beyond the Horizon is the 13th game in the Trails series of JRPGs, a series of interconnected games on the fantasy continent of Zemuria (it's also the third in the "Calvard Arc" of this series). As my few readers may know, I'm a huge fan of this series, whose first game just got remade last fall (see my review HERE), but whereas that remake was very approachable for new players, Trails Beyond the Horizon is obviously not - just like the 13th book in a long running fantasy series is not going to be approachable for newcomers, the same is true here. Instead, the series truly embraces its long-standing epic nature here by combining the continuing main Calvard arc plot of protagonist Van Arkride (Spriggan/Mercenary for hire) with two new subplots led by former Trails protagonists Rean Schwarzer (from Trails of Cold Steel) and Kevin Graham (from Trails in the Sky the 3rd).

The result is....both uneven and often exhilarating. The gameplay of Trails Beyond the Horizon takes the gameplay from the Daybreak games and enhances it further with new mechanics that are real general pluses (only one of which is super broken, which is a plus for Falcom), so the game is pretty much always a blast to play. I really enjoyed the character-work done with the old returning characters (even Rean, who I pretty much hated in the Cold Steel games) and the game's side quests and minor characters' character arcs remain excellent. And of course the way the story winds up, ending in a cliffhanger ending of epic proportions, is tremendous and has me desperate to see how the story continues/concludes. On the other hand, the game's new three route structure, where you switch between Van, Rean, and Kevin's plotlines on occasion, as well as other issues with how the plot proceeds, result in the game's pacing being immensely frustrating, and the story not always really feeling like it clicks together. I'll try to be more specific after the jump, but the result is an excellent game that just feels like it could have been streamlined far more effectively and wasn't in favor of trying to expand far more than Falcom probably should.

Note: I play JRPGs in many ways as a power gamer, trying to tune my characters' abilities and setups to be maximally powerful even though that may take me longer, although I don't try to grind deliberately to overlevel or anything. That said, I also love the flavor and story of these games, which further impacts my play (For example, I refuse to part Renne from Pater-Mater, despite it not being her best holo core). The result is that I played these games on Nightmare with certain self-imposed restrictions on myself, which affects some of how I perceived parts of the gameplay.

SciFi/Fantasy/Romance Book Review: The Elysium Heist by Y.M. Resnik

 

Full Disclosure: This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on July 31, 2025 in exchange for a potential review. I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

 The Elysium Heist is the debut novel from author Y.M. Resnik and it piqued my eye when I saw it compared to Rebecca Fraimow's Lady Eve's Last Con (a book I loved last year) - especially as a queer sci-fi heist romance novel with a Jewish connection. The novel features 5 women as its point of view protagonist characters that, when combined with an AI* character form a trio of romances that develop throughout the book (with an awful LOT of pining). And the 5 women set their aim on a truly heinous target: a man who would blackmail one of them with an illicitly made/obtained sex tape and would deny his orthodox Jewish wife (another one of them) a divorce (a Get), luring him to a Casino Tournament in an attempt to take back what is theirs.

* An Actual AI, not some LLM nonsense. I hate that I even feel like I have to explain that.

The result is a short book that is really good on the romance department - although you may pull your hair out at both pairs of protagonists pining for the other without recognizing that their interest is mutual for sooooo long - even as it might struggle a little bit at times with aspects of the setting. Specifically, if you're very big into casino games and how they work....well, unless you really like queer romance, this might drive you a little batty. And the heist stuff is very very underwhelming to be honest. But the romance and interpersonal developments here were really enjoyable, making this one still a recommend.

Trigger Warnings: Sexual Harassment, and mention of Sexual Assault/Marital Abuse is prominent, but no sexual assault occurs on page or is described and none of it is gratuitous.

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years by Shubnum Khan

Full Disclosure: This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on January 9, 2024 in exchange for a potential review. I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years is a gothic novel by South African author Shubnum Khan. The story follows a girl, Sana, whose father takes her to live in what used to be a mansion, but is now a dilapidated house haunted by the past. The novel is more like magical realism than fantastical (or a horror) with the titular djinn being mostly just an observer who maintains the strong atmosphere of sadness and Sana's haunting being something that might not even be real. The book manages to set an incredible atmosphere, both as it tells a story in the present - with the house occupied by a bunch of older Indian Muslim residents all with various forms of heartbreak/trauma - and the past, as the story reveals what happened in the house that has haunted it all this time.

It's a story that is at times heartwrenching and sad but is ultimately hopeful, as Sana reads about the love and tragedy of the past and sees the heartbroken hearts of her neighbors and yet manages in the end to be captivated by the love she's read and finds some way forward. I'm not usually a person who loves reading bits that are based upon description to set atmosphere, but this one really worked, and the characters in both timelines work really well, as does the love between them and the traumas that many characters struggle with. The result is a really good novel that I would definitely recommend.

Video Game Way Too In-Depth Breakdown: Trails in the Sky

In this post, I'm going to go in depth into my thoughts on the systems and changes in Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter. Apologies if this is more of a ramble, but I need to get out my thoughts somewhere and they're way too involved for a review. I'm also not going to go too much into localization here - suffice to say I really badly miss some of the best lines that were removed from this game (an Evil Penguin? Do Not Insert Foot Into Mouth. etc), the terminology screwups here with "Orbal Golems" replacing archaisms among many other things, and just the lazy things like straight translating all monster ingredients as "Monster eyes", "Monster Tenders" so that they all seem the same unless you look carefully, which led to me being unable to complete my recipe book damnit. Others, especially those more familiar with the Japanese and translation, have covered those better elsewhere.

So let's talk gameplay changes - and spoilers here are present, so this will all go beyond the jump:

Video Game Review: Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter

 

Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter is a remake of the very first game in Nihon Falcom's now longrunning Trails series of JRPGs (itself a subseries of an even longer series, The Legend of Heroes). The series is probably the closest thing to a long running fantasy book series I've ever seen in video games, with the series now featuring 13 games, each of which continues a long running story - even if the 13 games are broken into essentially four different arcs that each follow a different series of characters (with old characters often coming back). The series started as kind of a mess in terms of how it got to English-speaking audiences, with the first Trails in the Sky game coming out in Japan in 2004 and not hitting the US until 2011 and the second Trails in the Sky game hitting Japan in 2006 but not hitting the US until 2015. So English audiences have always been behind - often very behind - Japanese audiences in terms of where the series is, although Falcom is now releasing the 13th game in the series (Trails Beyond the Horizon) this January, which will align the Japanese and English audiences for the first time. Given that the series is now more popular than ever and is finally being released worldwide at almost the same time, Falcom took the chance now to release this remake, which takes place in the very beginning of the series, hoping to give audiences a new entry point into the series that won't overwhelm them.

Just to be clear, I'm a bit of a Trails superfan here. I got into the original Trails in the Sky games after they were mentioned on Kotaku and have been hooked on Trails since, even buying Japanese versions of the two games that were originally skipped by localizations (and playing with a translation patch) just to keep myself fully up to date. Moreover, even after playing 12 of these games, the original Trails in the Sky games might be my favorite due to their simple but refined gameplay and incredible story and characters they contain, especially the slow-burn coming of age romance story of protagonists Estelle and Joshua Bright. The original Trails in the Sky games also contain what might be the most perfect localization, which really punches up the script to add fun and lovability to the characters. So yeah, this game is a remake of one of my favorite games ever, which means I'm holding this game up to an incredibly high standard.

And to its credit, Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter does a remarkable job remaking the original game here into something more modern audiences might be willing to take a chance on and enjoy. The game has gone from mini 3d sprites to full cell shaded 3d graphics and looks absolutely beautiful, the voice acting is generally really great, and the gameplay mixes real time and turn based combat like the most recent Trails games in an excellent and addictive combination. They've kept the original story pretty much entirely, but thrown in a few extra new sidequests that flesh out a few of the side characters and are enjoyable in their own right without being too distracting, which I very much appreciated, and some of the rebalancing of existing abilities from the original game work pretty well. This is a really good game and definitely one I recommend playing either in general or for those who have always been curious about Trails and never knew where to start. That said, I do have a few complaints that make me wonder what could have been: the game loses quite a bit of the original's difficulty as it has added more gameplay systems and most importantly, the new localization by Gung-Ho Games doesn't adhere to long established series terminology (which is really annoying) and doesn't carry over some of the most charming and highlight lines of dialogue/translation that was present in the original localizations. But even this more literal localization still conveys about 95% of the charm and fun of the original to the extent that new players will still find out why I love this story so much, so it's not nearly the problem it could hav been.

I'm going to go into more specifics beneath the jump here, but not too specific since I don't want to bog down this review. I have made a separate post where I go way WAY too in depth into my thoughts on the gameplay and mechanics and localization stuff, for anyone who might care. You can find that overly specific breakdown HERE.

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Silver and Lead by Seanan McGuire

 

Full Disclosure: This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on September 30, 2025 in exchange for a potential review. I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

Silver and Lead is the 19th mainline book in Seanan McGuire's October Daye series of urban fantasy novels, one of my favorite ongoing series out there. It's the first book in basically 2 years, and also takes place after a major two part event in the series that took place over books 17 (Sleep No More) and 18 (The Innocent Sleep). I'm not going to spoil those books or that even before the jump (after is fair game), but it was a major gamechanger in terms of the mental states of the characters. This is something McGuire has kind of done a bunch of times in the series, and often it is followed by a novel that keeps up the stakes but ends in a way that calms things down into a more stable and temporarily happier status quo.

Silver and Lead doesn't quite go in that direction as much, (we end up with a new status quo change that is kind of happier but still extremely tense), and while it's another solid October Daye novel (I think my low score for any of these book is a 7.5, just to be clear), I struggled with some parts of this novel for a few reasons. We again have one old antagonist returning in a bit role, whose capabilities the main characters should be well beyond at this point, so say nothing of the "new" central antagonist. That's to be expected after our last book had one of the 3 essentially gods of Faerie as an antagonist I guess, but it rung me wrong. The central surprise antagonist of this book is what kind of saves this one from being one of the other books with this similar issue (Book 12, Night and Silence, comes to mind), and I'm intrigued on how things go from here so October Daye fans should still be satisfied, especially with the tease at the end of this book.

Spoilers for Books 1 through 18 below, I can't talk around them further here. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. I may post a spoilery post also for this book after this book's actual release too.

Fantasy Novella Review: Audition for the Fox by Martin Cahill

 

Full Disclosure: This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on September 16, 2025 in exchange for a potential review. I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

Audition for the Fox is the first piece of long fiction by Martin Cahill, known in the SF/F space for short fiction and for being an editor at Erewhonian (and probably other places too before that). The story follows a young woman Nesi who desperately seeks a position as an acolyte of one of the 99 Pillars (deities) and reluctantly seeks the position from T'sidaan, the Fox of Tricks...only for the Fox to send her back 300 years in time to the time her people were conquered and oppressed and challenged to find a way to start a revolution. The result is an excellent setting and world, with a really strong lead character, excellent storytelling, and some solid themes of family, oppression, emotions and hurt, and justice.