Trails Through Daybreak is technically the eleventh game in Nihon Falcom's "Trails" (Kiseki in Japanese) series of Japanese Role Playing Games (JRPGs). That said, like a long running book series (which I and others have compared the series to in the past), the Trails series contains a number of arcs, each of which form kind of a distinct plot grouping. Trails Through Daybreak is thus the start of a new (the fourth) arc, dealing with events in the nation of Calvard - one of this world's two most pre-eminent superpowers, and the one which we've really only gotten glimpses of in prior arcs. What that means is that the game's plot isn't nearly as reliant upon past games to work and the story can be used as a jumping on point for new players - some old characters show up and past events are referenced, but they are always to the side rather than the center of attention. Just as importantly, the start of a new arc allows developer Falcom to shake up the way the game plays: oh it's still recognizably a Trails game and certain systems from the past return, but much of the gameplay is drastically overhauled. Given that the last arc featured FIVE games (prior arcs were three games and two games respectively) all with the same system....well, fans who have played the whole series like myself are probably very welcome to try something different and new in both gameplay and story.
Now I am a big Trails fan. I've played all 10 prior games at least once if not multiple times and even played the second arc - the Crossbell games Trails from Zero and Trails to Azure - via a translation patch prior to the games being officially released in North America. So I have supremely looked forward to playing this game - even basically dropping my reading on the train for like a month to play this game all the way through - and am not the most neutral observer. That said, despite being a huge Trails fan, I haven't always loved every game in the series: the last arc, the Trails of Cold Steel games, drove me nuts in a couple of directions: the games were ridiculously easy mostly and incredibly easy to break in gameplay and the story in the last two games got really really cliche and bad, as Falcom seemed to avoid taking any difficult choices and relied on laughable plot turns to close everything down. The last game though, Trails Into Reverie, was a really fun fanservice-y game and the characters involved even in the bad games were still largely very enjoyable (except for Cold Steel protagonist Rean, who sucks), so I still had hopes for the series. And Daybreak delivered heavily on that front in both the story and gameplay...even if I had some minor complaints here and there.
I'm probably going to spend way way too long on this review after the jump, sorry, but the short of it is, Trails Through Daybreak is a really fun JRPG that I happily recommend to both newcomers and old players of the series alike.
