The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure

It's a lovely game.

Trails to Azure is, in my opinion, the best of the series up to this point. Everything comes together great, from the combat to the story it's a perfect continuation of Zero. There's really not a lot to say, it's simply Zero but better mechanically, while the story easily rivals or even surpasses SC with its heart and emotion. I won't lie and say I didn't get emotional during several scenes in the final stretch of the game. Simply sublime

If you got to this point, the fifth game in the Trails series, you already know what to expect. It has a slow pace, even for a JRPG, but then again, you must be used to that if you got here. The thing is, Azure might just be the best I've played yet. I have a particular fondness of Crossbell as a setting, the SSS as protagonists, and this duology (alongside Zero). The story keeps one-upping itself time and again, containing some of the most important and jawdropping events that I've seen yet in this series. I'm at the final chapter but I have already seen so many great moments that I feel I can judge the story (I'll be editing the review once I'm done). The gameplay is the most refined yet if you've only played the PSP titles. It has a few problems with character balancing, and I feel like in the first half, Magical Arts are almost useless besides buffs, which made me use physical characters a lot, but then in the latter half, they become so overpowered that physical characters kinda feel useless. However, the game feels very balanced on Normal, so that you'll barely beat certain fights if you don't prepare too much, but you'll almost never curbstomp anything if you over-prepare. Buildcrafting keeps being kinda rigid, as in the Sky trilogy and Zero, but I feel like the addition of Master Quartz makes it a tad more interesting. Again, the only bad thing about playing Azure is that, by what I can gather from public opinion, this might be the peak of the series. Not that any game is bad, but this one might be so good it eclipses the rest. Okay, so I finished the game, and yes, the story is the best yet. It managed to surpass Sky SC, and establish the SSS as my favorite group of protagonists in the series. Cold Steel has really big shoes to fill.

simplesmente essencial pra qlqr amante de JRPGS. começo lento, mas se paga no final. Jogue o Trails from Zero antes que aí a experiência é completa

GET OVER THE BARRIER LLOYDO BANNINGS

A wise man once said "A lawyer can't cry until it's all over". And today... my PSP Trails Journey is all over. You've got a lot of required reading through 1-4, but hopefully Zero and Azure and the other 3 from those buggers at Falcom get you to cry, just like this hardass did.

not gonna lie I really have hard feelings about trails in the sky trilogy because of the random annoying softlocks where you had to redo hours of gameplay if you mess up ur build and nonexisting payoff (although crazy trails fans will tell otherwise and get angry at you if u disagree), but crossbell arc is really a huge improvement. The combat finally started making sense as they boosted phys dmg attacks, added useful crafts, added safe points before bosses (yes, in trails to the sky bosses appeared randomly out of nowhere), added restoration places for CP (in trails to the sky, there was no way to restore your CP before combat besides grinding weak enemies), made good bosses so that they don't have 1 billion hp with 3 phases while u deal 1 000 dmg, made random encounters much easier, and stuff like this. I have played many jrpgs in my life (most not on Steam), and I genuinely think that trails series has the best battle system out of all them, and they made it much, much better in crossbell arc. Concerning the story, I freaking love Erebonia because it has so many amazing characters, and the totalitarian, militarized state Erebonia has so many parallels with the real world; it is almost surprising how good this game is at politics considering that the story is a typical anime ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ about friendship. Erebonia, Calvard, and all the politics surrounding Crossbell felt so amazing and realistic (although some times oversimplified for the sake of anime crap). But the background main story involving Ouroboros is so freaking weird because the protagonists are fighting against Ouroboros, but Ouroboros has never done anything evil, like killing ppl. To really understand why Ouroboros are evil, you need to be Japanese because they believe that the law is always good, and hence every secret organization going against law is inherently evil for them. For me (European), all the interactions with Ouroboros is borderlines cringe tbh. What I respect is just the sheer forsight of the developers for the story where every single element makes sense in the bigger picture, and the picture just keeps growing with every game. This game, in particular, is super important for understanding the entire trails series. Overall, it is really hard to recommend this game or the entire game series because it has so much ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ grind, boring dungeon-crawler elements, and very bad gamedesign decisions alongside with borderline nonsensical and overly Japanese story. BUT! I will probably stay in it for the combat and pretty nice world building honestly because I really don't expect anything good from the story (not matter how much crazy fans falsely advertise it to others as a masterpiece story with "shocking" twists).

10/10 game amazing story, combat is great, boss fights are actually challenging on hard, LLOYDO BANNINGS

This game was great, but some of the bonding into romance felt kind of tacky and forced. It's okay though, I'm sure this will not show up in later games!

Barrierman adventures From Zero continue To Azure and remain very neat