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The Legend of Heroes: Trails Into Reverie can be summed up with one word: Impressive.
As someone who only got into the Trails series as of the middle of last year, chipping away at it in my attempt to catch up in time for its 13th entry in the next half-year, I’ve grown beyond-attached to the consistency of its characters and world. It goes without saying that this is the last game you should be starting with if you have any remote interest in the series. Starting here would be akin to making Avengers: Endgame your starting point with watching the Marvel flicks. Don’t skip, don’t wiki-read, don’t retro-youtube-lookup. Just snag Trails in the Sky FC and let this series have its way with you if you have any remote interest in slow-burn, long-developing characters that are well-written, vibrant, and best of all: Fleshed out.
That last point is the heart of this series as a whole, and Reverie is no exception to this. If you are just tuning in from the perspective of someone who has finished the Crossbell and Erebonia games back to back, this game is the culmination of build-up both of those arcs setup and then paid off through serendipitous celebration. Side note: Please also read the in-game story “Three & Nine”. Don’t ask why. Just do it. The characters introduced from that novel are worth your investment. To put it simply, this game makes you feel nostalgic goosebumps regarding all of the characters’ appearances, repeatedly. I can’t imagine the feeling this game must have had for those who had to wait patiently for it, because even with my marathon of the series, I felt the nostalgia goosebumps, and they were hitting on the regular, given how frequently characters you’ve come to know and love throughout the past nine games kept appearing with the same consistency that they first started with. I see folks bringing up what their favorite and hated characters are.
Here’s mine: I don’t have a favorite because I love them all, except I hate Angelica so much that she was permanently given a mishy-head cosmetic. If you have played the previous games and felt a similar way by this point, then you will be happily thrilled with what you get out of this 50+ character extravaganza. And the best part is Angelica is delegated to cameo with how little she is involved, so feel free to enjoy that factor if you share my sentiments regarding her existence.
I want to emphasize more about these characters and why they sniped me. The best way I can describe the satisfaction I get from Reverie is to reference one of my favorite western RPGs, Jagged Alliance 2 (the recent 3 was also good). Without going into details if you haven’t played the JA games, they are turn-based tactical RPGs involving a giant cast of colorful, albeit simply-described mercenaries with their own established histories and love/hate relationships between one another. You can team up Wolf, Fox, and Barry and they’ll be besties who love working together, or you can put Lynx and Buzz together and prepare to watch your money go down the drain as they set a Hispanic island on fire just to neutralize each other. The only downside of this wonderful chaos is that despite their established histories, you don’t get to see them living their lives or fleshing out these characterizations through extensive dialogue apart from fun quips. You effectively get a tiny taste, and then a lot of what you know about them is just assumed and head-cannon’d.
Reverie is the anti-JA, in the sense that these characters do have love/hate relationships with each other and massive histories, but unlike JA, we know these characters, and we can regularly swap them around and just enjoy their banter in dungeon-crawls and story-dialogue. There is such an intense satisfaction to seeing the payoff of how they interact amongst one another. Seeing Lloyd and Randy continue their bromance, enjoying Agate squirm against his true final boss Erika, or even just seeing Tio and Tita nerding out over new-character Lapis. I could list hundreds of combinations of characters, and even in just running Reverie’s dungeon-crawls with any of these characters, I was being entertained by the combo-victory quips, practically swapping out characters all the time just to see what they’d say to one another after landing a link-kill.
You probably noticed I barely talked about the plot. That’s because the plot isn’t that important. It has its significance to the greater scheme of the Trails universe, but I have to keep emphasizing that I am here for these characters, and no matter how much fans want to fight over the value of individual plots in these games, the more the characters are emphasized? The more I am entertained. And Reverie, next to Sky 3rd, is the king of delivering on character-development. The side stories, in particular, are show-stealers that ended up being more valuable than any rare weapon/accessory/quartz could ever bestow.
If you have made it through the series, you deserve to play Reverie. If you have not played these games and have gained interest in it after reading all of this? You are not allowed to play Reverie. I forbid it. In fact, if you disregard that warning and play Reverie without playing the previous games, then I’ll just laugh at your utter confusion and frustration as you attempt to find meaning and joy from this unbelievably massive roster. It’s probably not impossible, but given how this series is consistent about not giving history-lessons about previous entry moments, it would be in your best interest to just take your time and give this series a chance.
It is now my favorite JRPG series to date, Final Fantasy, Yakuza, Nier, Grandia, and Xeno-series be damned. I can’t wait to finish my journey. I hope some of you will try the ride. It’s worth it.