The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails

Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails is a fun ARPG game, that according to Nihon Falcom, has nothing to do with the overarching Trails series. Although it has Trails in the game, Nayuta is presumably unconnected and the gameplay is totally different as well. With graphics similar to the Crossbell Trails games, Nayuta plays out like a level based ARPG, where you get through a level and collect crystals, chests, and goals while doing it. As you go through the game and levels, you get more abilities, spells, upgrades, and more. Most of the time, the progression is to do 3 levels, 1 larger level, and then 1 boss fight. I thought that was a perfect middle ground for just enough content without it becoming a grind. The bosses are also pretty fun, though in normal mode they are not super challenging with food. I was able to beat pretty much every boss first try, but they were pretty fun regardless. Story wise, Nayuta doesn't really shine all that much, and it felt like a pretty generic plotline that was somewhat cheesy quite often. Maybe my expectations for a Falcom story are just too high coming from the mainline Trails series... There is a divide between where the gameplay takes place and the base village you are in and the world. In typical Nihon Falcom style, you can talk to NPCs and each villager has changing dialogue as you go through the game as well. Some villagers also give out quests in between stages as well. This honestly made me enjoy the game more by making the world seem more vibrant. Overall, this isn't a mainline Trails game, but it is a pretty fun ARPG nonetheless. I would definitely give it a play if the game is on sale and you just want some fun.

If there’s one word to define the Legend of Nayuta, it’s “repetition”. You have to repeat levels to get all three stars, repeat the levels AGAIN to find sidequest-related interaction spots that were unavailable back when you first went through it, then repeat the entire game all over again to get the last few bits of story and gameplay that have been arbitrarily locked away behind New Game Plus. Early on the Lord of the Rings, Bilbo Baggins tells Gandalf that he felt “thin, stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread”, and that’s exactly how the Legend of Nayuta felt to me. As if someone at Falcom suddenly decided the game needed to be twice as long but didn’t have the time or budget to actually fill it out, and it works to the game’s detriment, turning what could’ve been a pretty good 20-hour game into a tiresome 50-hour grind. It’s not an easy recommendation even on sale but, if you are already a Nihon Falcom fan and want to see what kind of insanity they could get up to when freed from the Ys and Trails mines, by all means, go ahead and I don’t think you’ll regret it. If you aren’t, well, maybe go buy Ys Origin instead, as it is fairly similar in terms of gameplay, but much cheaper and better in almost every way. Then, once you finally become a fan, maybe circle back and try this one out. I recorded a video review with some gameplay and deeper thoughts, if you'd like to see them: https://youtu.be/qgqnez2oy-M

falcom, where is nayuta 2??

Yeah falcom keep proving it time and time again, they are masters at crafting excellent Action RPGs. All the stages that I've played were excellent. And yeah I meant all of them. Even the teleporter stage. The story was pretty good, doesn't reach the same highs as the main series but it managed to stay consistently engaging while feeling like the "trails formula" of story-telling was nicely condensed into this game. I'm looking forward to coming back to do afterstory and eventually its NG+

This was a surprisingly very good game. I have played like 90% of the trails franchise and wanted to dive into this game because there may be some lore connections to the rest of the franchise (and at this point there likely will be just waiting on falcom to pull the trigger on that). But this game was a very fun action platformer, but it really got me when I got more movement options and abilities over time from playing the game. They kinda drip feed the abilities but I suggest sticking with it till you can start "moving" around a lot more and play around with some physics. Good game, its different from normal trails but I didn't mind that cause im not a "turned based or die" guy. Give it a chance take it in, have some fun.

Good game. Don't take the plot too seriously. If you like Ys you'll probably like this as well.

A fun action/platformer type game with RPG elements and combat, I really liked that you get to use monster drops in cooking to raise your EXP, also loved the characters and found Nayuta to be a very endearing protagonist I wanted to root for. My only real issue is that some enemies can be incredibly spammy. Well, certain equipped items can mitigate this issue at least.

This is the most infuriating stupid platformer I've played since Sonic Adventure 2. I only got it because I have played every Trails game but this is nothing like the rest. It's completely different system, and the dungeon design is god awful because it's really hard to tell where you are jumping because the camera is so awkward. Also it's hard to dodge enemies and dangers because you cannot see where you are jumping or what angle your character is jumping to. I know it's an old game, but I just couldn't make it through beyond the first couple of zones. None of the characters drew me in either so I just couldn't find a reason to continue. I will never consider this a "Trails" game because it's completely irrelevant to the series and the dungeon design is utter garbage.

I now understand why two friends of mine called me based for trying this game out. After 51 hours, 46 achievements, and two whole playthroughs, I can confidently say that this was a worthwhile journey. The game is like a marriage of Ys and Trails, both are the main series by Nihon Falcom. It's very much a PSP game, so expect some jank. The soundtrack was...fine. I liked a few tracks, but it was a bit on the muted end to be honest. I encountered a sound bug for the prologue tutorial where that stage's song is louder than any other song in the game. I checked, I had all the sound bars at default in the menu. The other bug was something finnicky in the [spoiler]After Story section. In the section on Altapea, that boss's key is super finnicky. I found myself jumping numerous times until it finally registered after the 15th try.[/spoiler] I'm keeping the details of the review to a minimum. I expected a seafaring adventure with this game. I was surprised that it wasn't that, but an entirely different adventure. I liked it in the end, but I think I would have preferred a seafaring adventure. The game's story feels like two games put together. I think having this story over two games would have allowed all the characters to fully breathe. The story was good, but I found myself wanting more and a bit overwhelmed at times. That's all I'll say. Go in as blind as possible and enjoy yourself. It will be worth it.

Fun game. Basically Zwei 3. If you liked the Zwei games, this is a worthwhile sequel. Not quite as good as the second game, but better than the first. The combat is interesting, the music is fantastic, the visuals are fine for what they are, the story is a bit on the generic side but it's not a major part of the game anyway. All in all, It's good. It's not as good as the best games from Falcom, but it's solid, and it was an enjoyable 24 hours.