The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure

This is a game I deliberated on for a while when writing this review. I can completely understand both sides where some people consider Azure the best game in the series. That being said, I don't think I quite got to that point where I could say that myself. What's so weird about this game is that the highs are so so so unbelievably high but like its just shy of being negated by the unbelievably bad lows. In the past few reviews, I think each entry reasonably could be said to be positive or negative but Azure sits in this weird middle ground where It genuinely does so many things well that make me think "Oh yeah that's why its praised as a masterpiece" and then it does something that kills that notion a while after. What carries this game is the SSS (and co.) In general, this game despite adding a few new faces, it does not take away from the core 4 narratively speaking, their characters are more fleshed out and compelling. I thought Randy was the best example, I loved the arc with him at the end of Chapter 3 and him just clearly maturing and unlike a lot of the reveals in the series, I think his background fits with his character, and actually recontextualizes certain scenes beforehand, even in zero. Wazy was another great example of this. [spoiler] Him being part of Gralsritter actually properly explains things that were left a mystery in zero, numerous examples I can think of but the best being his knowledge of the Auction, not to mention his holy motifs most obviously. I also think his bonding event was phenomenal and I think its such a shame that such an important part of his arc was locked behind an optional bonding event [/spoiler]. Noel was also a surprising standout into Azure. Her conflict during the course of the game was very strong and I loved the [spoiler] Conversation the SSS had with Osborne and her steadfast nature during the talk [/spoiler] And I think it linked super well to the central themes. I also really really loved the [spoiler] Prison break sequence as I think it casts some humanizing light on Garcia from the first game [/spoiler]. Falcom do a really great job in creating compelling main casts but they really did a great job here. Not even mentioning how amazing the setting of Crossbell is, The place itself is very compelling and unlike in CS2, the stakes are felt here because they do such a good job of showing the pressure that the city is trapped under and you almost feel helpless about it. This is where Azure's strongest themes come from, where its about people who become so desperate to protect something that they become radicalized about it, they had some good material going where they could have put some nuance in the idea of people not being good or bad but about people who have the cities interests at heart but come to wildly different conclusions about how Crossbell can prosper. Once again I think one of the strongest ideas comes right at the end with the conversation between Lloyd and [spoiler]Guy [/spoiler] [spoiler] The notion that Lloyd could have the thing he wanted back, the thing that drove his actions and indirectly responsible for the events of the story, undoing years of grief and growth only to reject it because doing so would invalidate everything was genuinely such a good idea The problem is that I found myself connecting more with the idea than the scene. I genuinely understood what the game was trying to say but it didn't land. I think its because in Azure it suffered with this problem at parts where the concepts were great but it struggled to give them the space they needed [/spoiler] This kind of segways into the biggest issues I had with the game. The ideas were amazing, but I found the execution lacking. At some point, its like Azure had this sick fetish on just stacking on villain after villain upon twists, Like you think you have the main dude and there would just be some surprising twist that came out of left field, and killed the tension. Unlike what I would consider good twists, I didn't really find myself looking back on previous scenes with the character and situations and see them in a different light, It should have felt surprising in the moment but inevitable in retrospect Imo. But unfortunately I really really did not feel that at all. [spoiler] Mariabell [/spoiler] and especially [spoiler]Mr Grimwood [/spoiler] were genuinely the worst offenders. A recurring issue I've had is how foreshadowing is handled. Azure unfortunately pushes this criticism to the limit concerning the antagonists of the story. The problem isn't necessarily that they were villains (kind of) Its the fact that the reveals didn't feel weighted or coherent in the first place. Like both of them felt like they were given major roles as an afterthought than what their previous appearances in the story made them out to be. The former: [spoiler] The game ends with her basically being revealed to be the actual puppeteer culminating in her becoming an Anguis, which on paper is a huge plot point, and I'm assuming this will be used in future entries. The problem is I look back on the story I don't see some different character that recontextualizes stuff, I just see new information thats like Oh yeah so that happened cool. There was no setup. [/spoiler] The latter: [spoiler] This is arguably even worse, The motivations on paper make more sense (losing his family leading to radicalization or whatever although I felt this wasnt really executed well) but the reveal of him killing Lloyds brother was just something that came out of left field, and also being the puppeteer and the clue the game tries to sell is that hes a lawyer and therefore hes got connections everywhere, It didn't land and It felt like they just used a dartboard to choose the antagonists from the NPCs with portraits without bothering to make convincing buildup. [/spoiler] Theres a lot more I could say but ultimately, my issue isnt with ambition or ideas, Ive already said but I genuinely believe that it has some of the strongest potential and thematic writing in the game but the problem is for me its paired with execution that doesn't fully land for me. I still highly recommend the game. Even with the arguably bad flaws imo, the strengths are so strong and the game as a whole was crazy engaging. I sunk almost 50 hours into this in less than a week and considering 100%ing the game, which should say more about the quality of the game than any of my criticisms here.

I really liked this game! It takes a while to really get into the swing of things, and the Second Game Syndrome hits really hard here. Exploring the same overworld and opening the same chests again is incredibly tedious when there is very little to differentiate from the first game, outside of the story itself. The story is very good, though. You're left in the dark for such a long time until the pieces finally click, and the way its done is really cool. The motivations for the main villain is like, whatever. I don't care for the "secret twist villain" thing that this series clings to (especially after its done twice in this game) but regardless I found the way that the Main Mystery from Zero is resolved to be satisfying and good. The finale with KeA and the final few scenes were absolutely amazing and heartbreaking, I applaud them. In terms of gameplay, this one is tricky. The overall boss design is very same-y and not unique (for the most part), but there are a few standout fights that were especially good. Both of Sigmunds fights were good in seperate ways, and the same can be said about both of Arios' fights. The Arianrhod fight completely sucks because it requests you to use one specific ability (that only one character has access to) in order to counteract her gimmick of instakilling your entire team. This sucks, unfortunately, and doesn't feel like it has a place in this game due to the fact that it feels very unimmersive, especially considering it requires an amount of cheese. The fact that you aren't supposed to ACTUALLY beat her makes sense, but I still just do not like this fight. The same can be said about the Final Final Final boss, because it also has the capacity to instakill you without warning (or if there was a warning, i couldnt figure it out after 5 seperate attempts where it snuck up behind me each time). Going through the motions of doing side quests constantly is really tiring and I wish I could just skip them entirely but I can't, because they're canon. I feel as if this game's finale was too long even if I don't know how to make it shorter. It just drags a lot because it uses the same formula for the entire chapter, and the final dungeon was repetitive (even if i think it is visually stunning). I think overall the pros outweigh the cons of this game, so I can excuse my problems with the gameplay. Despite this, there is a very big elephant in the room that comes with the localization team. They reuse phrases and words so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ often that it quickly becomes grating. Reading "Haha." over and over again does something to the brain that is not good. The localization is pretty dated and uses a lot of pseudo-modern zoomer lingo (like the term "bruh moment" or "taking dubs") and it clashes with the fact this game released 10 years before it was properly translated. Still, I like the game. I hope Cold Steel is good.

I played the series in a very unorthodox order, going through all of Cold Steel, Reverie, jumping into Trails in the Sky remake, and then ran the Crossbell arc. I think that Zero and Azure is where Trails shines best; it has amazing plot twists, plenty of world building, and characters that are memorable. As with any Trails game it has slower pacing but the payoff is immense.