For example, Noel’s SMG spray can hit not only her main target, but other nearby enemies as well. Different attacks and abilities even have different areas of effect. Fights take place over a small grid-based battlefield where your party, as well as enemies, can move and attack. When it comes to gameplay, The Legend of Heroes series has always had an interesting take on standard turn-based battles, and Trails to Azure is no different. Working with the developer officially has meant that The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure has incredibly competent writing, while at the same time managing to hang on to its own identity without it blending into the sea of other RPGs. The developer teamed up with a third party company, which has previously released its own translations. Of course, the biggest star of the game’s writing is definitely the localization. Not even the standard anime trope of a beach episode does much to elevate them as characters, unfortunately. The main focus of the story is the role Lloyd plays in the ultimate fate of the city of Crossbell, and while there are certainly tons of characters all over the place, Lloyd’s own party often ends up feeling like a bit of an afterthought. The rest of the party, sadly, feels a bit under-developed. His blind optimism, while somewhat preachy at times, did quite a bit to endear me to him, which is certainly a win in a gaming landscape where pessimistic, dark and brooding characters are quite popular. While he may come off as the typical shonen anime protagonist with a never-say-die attitude and the chutzpah to pick fights against enemies that quite obviously outclass him in terms of strength and skill, there’s certainly a fair bit of depth to him. The quality of a RPG is dependent on the strength of its character writing to quite an extent, and thankfully, despite a few stumbles here and there, Lloyd Bannings is a fun character to follow. The political landscape of the city of Crossbell has been rendered with an incredible attention to detail, with key political figures and their actions even setting up important consequences a few games later. Thankfully, despite its sometimes-plodding pacing, the story itself is incredibly interesting. The problem is especially noticeable in the prologue section, as well as some of the later chapters of the game. One of the biggest problems with The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure is its pacing. "When it comes to gameplay, The Legend of Heroes series has always had an interesting take on standard turn-based battles, and Trails to Azure is no different." Admirable as the attempt is, however, a lot of the time, you’ll just be wishing that the characters would move on with the current story already, rather than talking about events from Trails from Zero. The prologue, while relatively lengthy, tries to fill in the blanks for those who may not have played its predecessor. Picking up shortly after the events of Trails from Zero, Trails to Azure continues with the Special Support Section as our protagonists. The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure is definitely a sequel with a capital ‘S’. Talking about Trails to Azure on its own merits is quite difficult, since it relies so much on the events of Trails from Zero – being a direct follow-up – and also ends up laying so much of the foundations for the state of the franchise’s setting for future games.įirst things first. It’s 2023 now, and the developer is finally releasing the end of the Crossbell duology, so the only question that really remains is whether The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure is a good RPG. While the franchise only really caught on in the west relatively recently with its Trails of Cold Steel series, the Crossbell duology – Trails from Zero and Trails to Azure – have been hailed as some of the best games in the franchise by those who managed to play the games through fan translation or appropriate knowledge of the Japanese language. The Legend of Heroes series has sneakily been one of the longest-running RPG franchises out there.
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