Sholva The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak II Review

This game was an insanely fun and wild ride. After eleven games, Daybreak II had very deep boots to fill, especially coming from what truly felt like a very complete Trails game, with Daybreak I and, after completing the main story and all side quests and exploring every single corner of the game, I can comfortably say that Daybreak II surpasses my expectations. This is clearly a very classic “middle of the arc” Trails game, we’ve had a few of those at least, in those eleven previous games and, when you are someone who’s played all of those previous games, and paid attention to all the little details and, what one could call “seeds” that Falcom loves to plant within their lore and story well…Daybreak II has fed me with a ton of new stuff to ponder about and theorize, for the future and upcoming titles in the series. Before going on, let’s talk PC Performance: much like Daybreak I (and previous games), we have yet another excellent port from PH3, truly not a single detail is missing here for Settings, and there’s an incredibly high level of care put into making this game scale up (or down) quite well, depending on the Hardware. On my rig, with a Ryzen 7 5700X and RTX 3060 Ti, this game can run at mostly Ultra Settings, 1440p, and keep a steady 60 FPS, most of the time, except minor moments with intense particles (certain S-Crafts, etc.), where it may drop into the mid 50s for a second. Tweaking down the new Color Precision setting, and maybe dropping PCSS shadows to Soft, helps quite a lot to gain a decent amount of performance on my GPU, and I can keep MSAA at x2, with Sparse Grid Super Sampling too, and it looks good enough. Daybreak II improves a bit the Graphical Fidelity seen in the previous game, for sure, so I cannot wait to see what extra improvements Falcom has made for the next one. I also want to mention the excellent PC controls customization this port offers, and the game plays like a dream on Mouse and Keyboard, if you prefer this input method, it truly is one of the very rare cases of JRPGs that plays perfectly on this control setup, while most other JRPGs out there barely provide acceptable M&KB support for every aspect of the game. I do enjoy using my DualSense for these games too, but it’s so nice to play a game like this, with some Action Combat bits in it, with a mouse and a keyboard too, I even prefer it due to the greater camera control. Knowing that Falcom never do or insert something into their stories that is “just there” because “they found it looked cool and that’s it”, oh no, nope : ) So yeah, a lot of stuff for future reference, for sure, and lots of theories from past arcs and games…basically have been solidified, for me at least, in Daybreak II, but I am left as thirsty for more Trails as I’ve ever been, after any of the previous eleven games, which is always a great feeling. To me, the beauty of good story telling, is when a game does not literally draws me a picture of everything that needs to “be explained” because, if every single thing is explained plainly, I wouldn’t have anything to grind my brain about, while waiting for the next game. The Gameplay in this game is also improved, compared to Daybreak I, especially the Field Battles, now with Quick Arts and Cross Charge attacks, it’s less repetitive, and more engaging. Still no Ys or similar types of games, combat wise, but it’s smooth, very smooth, and fun. Command Battles are great, as always, but now we can, once again, Steal Turn Bonuses, since they have separated the allies and enemies turn lines, much clearer. I love it, Trails is top number one JRPG series in turn based combat for me, and remains being so: it never gets old, even after 100+ hours. Having a place like the Märchen Garten, to do as much combat as we want, is also a valuable addition to me, who loves Reverie so much, even though the Garten here is not as fleshed out as the True Reverie Corridor. The new playable characters, both in the story, and the Garten, are excellent, great Crafts and Animations, absolutely loved them. The Soundtrack is, as usual, quite punchy and emotive where it needs to be, we have some tracks returning from the previous game, here and there, but also a lot of new stuff. I even saw a Tokyo Xanadu Ex+ track played at least once, and I had a big smile on my face. Voice Acting and Localization, as always, excellent. I’m not native English speaker, but…yeah, I love the actors and the localization. Hearing some well-known returning voices was a treat, and spending more time with those from Daybreak I was great. This game has some of the best Character Connection Events, and Side Quests, in the series, too. Some are highly emotional, for all time fans. Some of the stuff that happens in this game, made me think a lot of Sky the 3rd and the Crossbell saga, apart from everything else too, and that is so good, because those games are absolute peak fiction, and so has been this one here, Trails through Daybreak II. A certain character in this game, says: "I'd go as far as to say that making mistakes is all part of what it means to be human", and that perfectly summarizes what Daybreak II is all about. Falcom absolutely cooked with this game and it's going to be so important to remember that.