The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak II
Developer: Nihon Falcom
Publisher: NIS America
Platforms: Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 (Reviewed)
Release Date: February 14, 2025
Price: $59.99 USD – Available Here
Overview
While far from a mainstream JRPG franchise, one that has always been an easy recommendation for those looking to delve into a storied franchise has been The Legend of Heroes games. Spanning across nearly two decades of releases on numerous platforms, there have always been consistent story arcs seeing longtime characters often returning in later entries. What finally made the franchise a bit more approachable was the fact that, while still set in the same world and featuring the same lore, The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak a bit over six months ago placed the franchise in a nearly completely fresh starting point.
This allowed newcomers a chance to enter this storied franchise without too much concern for the lore, and even then an extensive glossary was provided in-game. So now that The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak II has arrived to continue the journey of Arkride Solutions’ members as well as implement elements from Reverie, is this a worthwhile continuation to Van an company’s story?
Story
A few months have passed since the events of the first game that saw Van Arkride and his allies take down the terrorist group Almata all while searching for the powerful Oct-Genesis orbments created by Van’s former client now turned secretary/apprentice Agnes Claudel’s great-grandfather, one of which happened to reveal a dangerous power and threat that had laid dormant for ages. Since these events, the various members of Arkride Solutions have gone back to their daily lives, scattering apart and leaving Van to mostly sleep away his days while taking on small jobs to feed the Spriggan’s love for sweets. That is until his friend Elaine enters his office with an alarming request. Not only has there been a series of horrific murders throughout the city, the culprit appears to bear a striking resemblance to Van’s Grendel form.
With Van choosing to leave his assistant behind in order to investigate the serial killer with the powerful Elaine, the pair manage to track it down only to find that not only is it true that this Crimson Grendel exists, but has a fairy similar to Mare as well leading its bloodthirsty charge. Despite their best efforts, Elaine is slain by a powerful attack only for Van to fall to a similarly powerful blow, killing both just as Agnes arrived on the scene, her despair triggering a hidden mechanism within the Oct-Genesis that somehow manages to turn back time to a few hours before. Despite having an odd sense of déjà vu, the pair resume their investigation only to find that Agnes and accompanying guard are also there this time and a pair of familiar faces in the form of Nadia and Swin dive into the battle when things start to once again take a turn for the worse, driving the Crimson Grendel and Red Fairy back. With familiar faces from past entries in the franchise popping up left and right and a strange new threat that mimics Van’s own Grendel form and fairy assistant Mare, it will be up to this Spriggan and his group of allies both new and old to try and get down to the truth behind these mysteries.
One thing that The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak II does that few games in the franchise have done is make it feel like players are almost instantly being thrown into the primary threat of the title instead of beating around the bush. Not only are the stakes instantly established when the power of the Crimson Grendel is unveiled but the constant twists, turns, and revelations that keep players on their toes means that Daybreak II isn’t afraid to put the pedal to the metal and keep up the pressure all while delivering a satisfying pay-off to the numerous plot points brought up through this lengthy adventure. Sure, things do slow down past the initial rush of events but even then players will still be treated to quite a number of interesting developments thanks to how strongly written even the side-content in the title remains. Though it would have been nice if a certain “morality system” felt like it had more impact but more on this later.
Another element that feels unfortunately wasted is the time-leap mechanic. Rather than having players make drastic choices that could either pay off greatly or see their party suffer from horrific death, almost every time the Genesis device is triggered and the Arkride Team finds themselves sent back before their impending doom, it is completely scripted. In fact, some characters are even portrayed completely out of character in order to have them stumble into a dead end and result in time rewinding. This means that players can’t even make specific choices and see just how bad things can end up going for the team on their own, rather just follow the pre-set paths to properly guide the crew past their otherwise inexplicable demise.
One element that remains one of the best highlights of the game is just how strongly written the characters and their interactions with one another are. Not only does this sequel give almost every returning character some room to shine, including a few that were overshadowed in the first entry, but even returning characters are given a chance to grow and develop, something that was desperately needed considering how overly packed Reverie was with its cast. Thankfully, even with the large cast of characters that make up Daybreak II, it never comes close to Reverie. That being said, the story writers did take inspiration from Reverie’s story telling being split between characters and have refined it a bit, though it still remains a bit annoying as a result.
For those unfamiliar, Tales of Reverie featured multiple storylines happening at once and often players could swap between these storylines and their respective characters at any given time. In fact, there would often be occasions when players would finish a battle or major development in one storyline only to find that they could no longer continue until they caught up with another characters’ story. This was annoying back then and has been revised slightly but still is troublesome. In Daybreak II rather than having to abruptly jump between groups of characters, the storyline will instead simply be split into two groups, basically boiling down to Ark and those that are traveling with him at the time and then the rest of the gang as the investigate something else, both likely culminating in an event that will result in them joining up, meaning that players will complete one act with one set of characters and then have to jump to the next set of characters and play catch-up, something that, while not as bad as it was in Reverie, is still an annoying way to split the storyline.
Gameplay
In many ways Daybreak II plays similar to the first release with its unique take on combat that offers both a blend of real time action and turn-based RPG depending on what players want to use on any specific enemy. Many of the improvements come in the real-time combat system as a number of new elements and moves have been added to the player’s arsenal besides standard attack combos and break attacks. As before, players can still swap between controllable party members while exploring the field and each character will have unique attacks on enemies and while standard enemies can be “broken” and stunned, they can also be slain outright in action combat. Now along with the aforementioned attacks players can cast pre-set “Quick Art” attacks to heavily damage enemy’s weak to Art or elemental attacks an even perform narrow dodges to trigger a powerful cross-combo that automatically swaps characters and deals tons of damage to a target.
If the player doesn’t want to slay an enemy outright in action combat and simply wants to “stun” it or enters a battle against a boss or superior foe then the characters will “deploy shards” which will trigger the game’s turn-based combat that the franchise has long been known for. Surprisingly, players have been limited a bit more on S-Crafts as it is no longer possible to spam these outright should the rest of the party have enough “CP” to trigger them. This prevents players from downright dominating foes by stocking up on “CP” and encourages the use of crafts more in standard combat. Along these same lines it makes using shard boosts feel more powerful. Alongside this things like stun damage has been increased, making it easier to stun enemies and proper positioning of your allies can allow for them to perform follow-up attacks and even Ex Attacks with the use of Shard Boosts.This allows for players to really build their team how they want, especially when it comes to equipping their Orbments with useful elements and spells, making the game as customizable as ever while encouraging a bit more in the way of tactics.
Another element that makes something of a return from Reverie is a mostly optional side-dungeon called Marchen Garten. This is a randomized dungeon similar to that found in Reverie and once again allows players to use any characters that they have obtained at will and without restraint as they fight through the mostly randomized floors of the dungeon. Each floor will offer a small objective that players will need to complete before moving on to the next floor and, depending on how well players do in the dungeon, they can then obtain special equipment and even buff items for their party for use in the rest of the game. This generally makes this dungeon feel like padding but one that works well enough, especially since players can use it to get a feel as to how certain party members might work together without risking things in an actual story dungeon or dangerous side-mission.
In-between taking on primary story missions players will also have the option to once again take on numerous side-quests and, as mentioned before, they are mostly all well-written and worth the effort to explore. These 4SPG quests can vary from simplistic to incredibly complicated and have quite a lot of variety between them, going far above and beyond the usual side-quest affair of delivering an item or slaying a certain number of enemies. Interestingly enough, many of these side-quests can also end in a choice that Van can make which will affect the moral standing of Arkride Solutions. Unfortunately, the actual pay-off to the morality system is very bare-bones with players having a “Law” choice, “Gray” choice, and “Chaos” option. Despite playing mostly lawful throughout our time making choices, it didn’t seem to make any notable difference in how Van and his allies were perceived nor what actions party members would take, seemingly having no point other than to have a morality system to balance player choice against.
Audio & Visuals
Considering The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak II is a direct sequel along the same series of console releases it is clear that the development team has grown more comfortable with the world they are crafting as character models are a bit more detailed this time around and special animations for more powerful attacks are as wonderful looking as ever. There are plenty of small details added to make the world feel a bit more lived in as well but nothing too extensive. It also must be said that unfortunately the game heavily recycles content both from itself and the first release, meaning players will be seeing a lot of the same familiar surroundings as they spend their time with the game which is disappointing.
As for the voice work, NIS America has provided their freshly recorded English voice track that appears to have all of the major voice actors reprise their roles for the main cast and the Japanese voice track is also included and readily available for those who prefer that option. It must be noted though that the use of the dub, at least in the English voice track, is incredibly odd as there will sometimes be one or two lines of voice dialogue mixed in with complete silence from the rest of the cast or only one character speaking aloud while everyone else is subtitled only, making for a strange experience. The soundtrack features a great collection of background music that fans will have come to expect from the franchise.
Overall
The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak II finds itself in a bit of a strange place. While the first release in this story arc could mostly be enjoyed standalone, this entry brings numerous elements from Reverie with it in the form of both characters, plot elements, and odd gameplay padding that feels a bit out of place. Combine this with some pacing issues thanks to the aforementioned story structure and it hinders what still remains an engrossing and enjoyable storyline filled with a cast of characters that continue to evolve and grow even in their second, or many cases third and fourth, games. The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak II keeps the revamped combat and refines it enough to feel fresh but also retreads far too much old ground to feel new at times, making this second release feel far less enjoyable than fans of the franchise, especially newer ones, would hope for.
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