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= Preface =
The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie is the epilogue for the series’ Crossbell and Erebonia sagas, which in other words means this game isn’t an entry point for newcomers despite the name not being related to any of the previous games.

• Minimum Experience: Cold Steel - Cold Steel 4
• Recommended : Sky Fc - Sky 3rd + Zero & Azure + Cold Steel - Cold Steel 4


The End of the Beginning

The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie marks the end of a lot things for the series. Like the end of the SSS’s struggle for Crossbell’s Liberation. Or the end of Rean and Co’s fight against the Curse of the Empire. But Reverie also marks a new beginning for the series going forward by wrapping the current saga up with the same heart, passion and polish that managed to draw me into the series in the first place.

The Legends of
The story picks up a few months after the climax of Cold Steel 4 where the effects of operation Jormungandr are still felt throughout the continent. And without going into any major details, Reverie's story will mainly be about resolving several conflicts and character arcs that have already been set up, and some are even from as far back as Trails from Zero. This is especially felt through the journeys of the game's three main protagonists: Rean, Lloyd, and 'C'.

The story is structured much like your typical Trails affair but since there are three protagonists this time around you will be using the newly introduced Trails to Walk system. Trails to Walk essentially lets you play through the story at your own pace to a certain extent by letting you pick which of the protagonists' stories you wish to go through yourself. I say 'to a certain extent' because you can't just blitz through one character's story while ignoring the others since you will eventually be progress locked if you were to do so. Still the system does its job well enough and whenever certain characters stories do overlap with each other at times it does make for some fun sequences.

Combat Tweaks
Reverie still adopts the Arcus battle system that was first introduced in Cold Steel 1 and it has never been as broken as it is here. Some new additions such as:
• Battle Gauge upgrade-able for up to Eight slots,
• Zero craft turn bonus,
• United Fronts, basically full party burst attacks that trigger certain bonuses and high damage when upgraded,
• Brand new higher tier of orbments,
These additions are much appreciated for the added strategy to combat and add some much needed help if you plan to play on Nightmare or higher like I did.

True Reverie Corridor
The True Reverie Corridor (TRC) is the game's central hub and will be where you are going to be spending most of your time grinding in. It is basically a combination of Cold Steel 2's Reverie Corridor randomly generated dungeons and Sky the 3rd's Phantasma activities such as summoning new characters, side story missions, and minigames. In the TRC you will also get to complete missions that will help you obtain new currencies that will help you unlock a variety of useful things for your adventure, like the previously mentioned upgrade-able Battle Gauge.

One of the main draws of the TRC I'd say are those side story missions where you'll get to experience short optional adventures with different characters throughout the series. Besides the popular picks you'll also get chances to play through stories revolving around some more unusual choices like Jingo or Freddy. Besides just being entertaining, some of these do contain a lot more surprises than I was initially expecting. Even at their worst they still do manage to add more of the series' signature world-building that we all know and love.

And now, in my opinion the biggest draw of the TRC is the fact that you'll be able to go nuts with all of your favorite characters (with proper builds of course). With the dungeon's randomly generated nature and the 50+ characters you'll be able to unlock, Reverie will still keep you playing it long after beating the main story.

Songs of Reverie
As I've said before I just can't ever review a Trails game and not talk about the music. If I had to describe it briefly I'd say it's better than Cold Steel 4's. Still doesn't have the consistency of the earlier titles but there are quite a few songs in the ost that do manage to reach those same heights for me personally. The epic 'Sword of Swords', the bittersweet 'Lapis', the awe-inspiring 'Perfect Steel of Zero', just to name a few.


The Beginning of the End

As a game that aims to bring conclusions to a myriad of long burning questions while also providing an action packed farewell at the same time, The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie succeeds on delivering on nearly every one of its promises. It isn't just a love letter to long-time fans but also to the characters that this series has developed since its 20 year long existence.