The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak II (PC) Review

The Legend of Heroes series (known more widely these days as the Trails series) really is a special breed of game, even amongst its peers. While there are plenty of developers that have matched the level of output or quality over the years; I struggle to think of any that even come close to matching the consistency and depth of Falcom’s worldbuilding and character work. Each game in the series takes place within different parts of the same continent, and each game brings all that’s been established with its people and places directly into the next. In the games space, it’s all too common to see soft reboots after a certain amount of time has passed; or to see sequels gutted of referencing anything too obscure from their predecessors in the hopes that you’ll believe them when they say something like “Mass Effect 3 will be the perfect game to get into the Mass Effect series with!” Trails thrives off the concept that you’re going to remember that one guy who invented marketable tomatoes in a side quest 8 years ago, and it’s beautiful! When it all comes together in those little moments, it actually feels like what the gamers are talking about when they say “a living breathing world”.

A few years back I started accelerating my playthrough of the Trails games almost entirely because I started seeing Japanese social media posts of what we now call Trails through Daybreak. I was already effusive and enamored with the world I had seen gradually be established through the Trails in the Sky trilogy, but they were showing a guy turning into a damn Kamen Rider and doing kicks and driving a truck??? It felt like a gateway into another world, even with my then-limited exposure to the more technologically advanced entries in the series with Cold Steel and Zero. While I didn’t fully catch up before its release, I still rushed towards new protagonist Van Arkride’s silly adventure and had an amazing time, even without knowing all the ins-and-outs of what happened in the last couple Cold Steel games. 

What I loved about Trails through Daybreak, outside of your standard JRPG staples like aesthetics and cast, was an actual compelling take on a modern contemporary setting for the series. While games like Cold Steel and Trails from Zero had a degree of modern sensibilities, they were both very interested in being period pieces of sorts (Cold Steel leaning into a lot of European Imperialism and the gradual alteration of class systems, and Zero representing the 80’s-90’s internetification of everything). Daybreak bases itself on countries like France and Canada, and takes on all sorts of subject matter that a Persona game thinks might be too scary. It’s a JRPG that talks about White Supremacy, the treatment of diaspora in culture, actually acknowledges gay characters and even has the main character at one point ask a party member what pronouns they should be using. In a sea of Metaphor ReFantazios and Final Fantasy XVIs, seeing just straight up representations of actual world events without contrived pseudo fantasy racism or a both-sides message wrapped up in plausible deniability was a breath of fresh air.

So with all that in mind, I was super excited to get into Trails through Daybreak II, the follow-up game Falcom released rather quickly back in 2022, and that NIS America has managed to put out an English version of just a half year after Daybreak‘s official translation. I had heard conflicting things about Daybreak II in the years since its original release, and most of it leaned pretty negative. There were critiques about how it seemed like an unplanned sequel (meant to fill a gap while YS X’s development was delayed out of 2022), and how its unique time-loop centric narrative was too redundant for its own good.  While both of these consistently recurring complaints were definitely easy to see in spots throughout my 52 hour playthrough of the game, I still found a lot to love, even if it falters in ways its predecessor didn’t.

Trails through Daybreak II takes place a few months after the end of Daybreak, with Van Arkride finally freed from his six garrulous children party members, and seemingly back to just taking it easy as a low-key private eye. Unfortunately his rest is short lived, and he quickly finds himself entangled in a real Shadow the Hedgehog situation with a mysterious crimson doppelganger of his Kamen Rider-esque Grendel transformation going around blowing up military bases and mafia hideaways. As Van and his ex-girlfriend Elaine investigate, they quickly find themselves, and the rest of their colleagues, wrapped up in an incredibly bizarre and complex plot that continues on from the big hanging plot thread left at the end of Daybreak. 

The structure of Daybreak II is more analogous to 2020’s Trails into Reverie, following an act-based structure with each act broken up into multiple parts with different protagonists. As if to drive home even further that this game is basing itself largely off of the format of Reverie, characters Swin and Nadia make an appearance as deuteragonists, closing the loop of their introduction into the series being an extended teaser for Daybreak at the time. In general I think this sort of broken up format is great conceptually for allowing multiple protagonists a chance in the spotlight, but without the “doors” format pioneered by Trails 3rd for these more low-scale sequels (wherein each of the characters have various side-stories they can tap into over the course of the game where they’re fully front and center), the structure ends up leaning towards favoring the protagonists and antagonists of each act more than a group as a whole. This is exceptionally unfortunate to bust out for a second game of an arc, where you’ve only just gotten into the dynamics of this newly established group, only for the return of Swin and Nadia to steal the story away from some more meaningful development for your core party. 

It’s also an unfortunate situation because while I like Swin and Nadia, their entire story arc in Daybreak II comes across like a shonen anime filler movie. Their happily ever after was taken from them…and the tragic trauma of their past comes back in a pretty unnecessary way. It ultimately comes across as a bizarre detour that the series hasn’t been a stranger to as it’s gone on (later Cold Steels are infamous for spending a whole lot of time on reiteration and repetition), but really sticks out here by virtue of just how much I want to be spending time with the new characters and their more novel and interesting problems. Again, I enjoy Swin and Nadia as a character dynamic (how can you go wrong with the twisted silly girl and her straitlaced knight), but especially as the game goes on, and their main antagonist is introduced, I came away thinking they could’ve cut the game in half without any Swin and Nadia sequences and ended up stronger for it.

The returning cast of Daybreak however, is just as perfect as they ever were. A JRPG lives and dies from its party members, and Daybreak has perhaps one of my favorite parties in a game because of its sheer diversity and originality. Van Arkride isn’t too unique on the surface, a gray-area fixer is a JRPG staple with characters like Tales of Vesperia’s Yuri Lowell, but his obsession with sweets, customizing his car, and his irresistible motherly aura that forces him to go on life changing journeys with every struggling person he meets makes him a fantastic lead (especially now with his renewed love of life). Aaron is the quintessential fuckboy, but his experiences growing up in the theater scene and spending time around women as a cross-dressing actor makes his crass demeanor come across as much more real and considered than the stereotypical misogyny you’d see similar characters fall into, and Daybreak II specifically getting into how defensive he feels about the various women in his life comes across as a natural progression of his feelings. Risette, the low-key combat maid, doesn’t get much in this game, but her subtle frustrations at having lost most of her life to illness and is only just getting a chance to try and live within the world, while everyone around her has rich backstories and relationships with others, especially resonated with me. 

Judith is consistently a stand-out, a world famous actress who doubles as a phantom thief, but mostly lives her life day to day as a complete failgirl. Everytime I see Judith in game, I think about a conversation she has in the first game, where she’s crying and whining about how her family is always shaming her for sex scenes in her movies, but that it’s not her fault, only to have a conversation with her agent chapters later where they’re bemoaning how Judith is the one putting sex scenes into all the movies because she thinks they’re improving the drama or romance of the films. Throwing her grandmother into the mix this time around really amps up her failgirl status, and her continuing relationship with her “rival” (read:girlfriend) is really fun to see. 

As a different breed of failgirl, Agnes is really fun to watch as her crush on Van Arkride continues to grind her soul into dust. I’m not usually a fan of these sort of unrequited age-gap stories, but the way that Van completely shuts her down into the daughter dimension at every turn is both painful and incredibly schadenfreude to witness. This girl is trying so hard. She’s trying so hard. She thinks if she believes enough eventually she’ll have a beautiful malewife but she doesn’t know that she’s permanently in the “haha oh you” head pat dimension. It’s so painful, yet so satisfying, and as an old man enjoyer I understand her plight. 

It’s even more brutal with Van’s ex-girlfriend Elaine getting a full-on party member slot this time, and she is not giving up no matter what. I’ve always spoken on my issues with romances in media, where the “getting together” aspect seems to be the only part that’s ever built up to, and then so many stories just end after that, so having an actual ex in this game, bringing all that baggage and yearning into the mix…it’s so good. Elaine shoots her shot like three times in this game, she’s trying to be cool but you can see the “PLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASE” behind her gaze everytime she tries to get her guy back but he’s too scared and emo…it’s an incredible dynamic. When you throw in Agnes in the background watching them hang out with the most terrified expression a girl can have…no one else in the JRPG space is on this level, and it’s especially refreshing after the conservative chasteness of the Cold Steel series. 

Speaking of conservative chasteness, and moving past it, Quatre gets a lot of really great in-depth work in this game that expands upon his issues with gender expression and body issues in Daybreak. A really charming thing Van did in the last game was go out of his way to find ways to help comfort Quatre and make sure he knew that it was okay to be himself, going so far as to arrange things like private rooms at hot springs and hotels so that he doesn’t have to awkwardly dance around his (implied) top surgery scars in front of everyone. This goes even further in this game, as more of Quatre’s more fantastical past is revealed, but unlike most Gender Non-Conforming party members who end up feeling completely divorced from the realm of relatability, the writing goes out of its way to make sure you understand No This Is Very Much Meant To Be Analogous To Real Life Situations. There’s a fantastic bonding event near the end of the game where you get to have a genuine conversation with Quatre, after Van’s walked in on them VTubing, where Quatre talks about how he wants to experiment with presenting as female because he felt like he’s never even had a chance to do it in a way that felt healthy for him. It’s something that’s incredibly refreshing to see, and a reminder that ideology continues to progress and influence even those it doesn’t directly affect. Also it was incredibly funny to have Van Arkride being like “Transgender? Oh that’s fine, I know about that, but this VTuber thing is existentially terrifying to me, we didn’t have cell phones until 5 years ago”.

The only real party member miss is Feri, which isn’t a surprise since JRPG children are some of the hardest characters to nail. How can you do a meaningful arc for a character who’s going to be going through it for the next ten years you know? How can you really get into the headspace of a kid that barely has any idea what’s going on? My only advice to the writers is that her brother Kasim, the guy they’ve decided is the strongest guy in the entire world because he has a railgun (which albeit is a compelling notion), kind of needs a little bit more going on if they want me to find myself invested in their family…drama? Responsibilities? Unclear even what’s going on over there honestly.

The new party members, who functioned as either guests or bosses in the last game, are all pretty fun for the moments they get, but I would’ve liked to see a bit more. I’m extremely happy that the Aura Farming Power Scaler of Shizuna Rem Misurugi has moved past being the representative “we love Vergil from Devil May Cry” anime girl, and is now just around making everyone upset because she’s really annoying and wants to quit her job. The obligatory members of the church Leon and Celis are once again great, I’ll never turn down a spiteful twink and girl who says shit every 5 seconds, and their evolving relationship with Van Arkride as they realize he’s not the edgy kid they knew him as years ago is really promising for the future as the story moves more into a realm where the church will matter more. Renne Bright returning once again as a graduating high school student…what else can a Trails fan say…that’s oomf.

There are some other new characters I could talk about, two new assassin children to fulfill the weird evil character quota, the aforementioned antagonist created for Nadia and Swin’s storyline, and of course the seven million NPCs the series is famous for consistently updating as the story progresses. However the only character left I want to really talk about, is Ellroy Harwood, The Thousand Oathbreaker, who is the funniest guy I have seen in a game in a really, really long time, and maybe my favorite member of antagonistic faction Ouroburos they’ve ever made.

Every scene The Oathbreaker is in, he eats it up, he just completely dominates the screen presence. He’s a weird old man who uses neurotoxins on people, and he has a horrible blue feathered coat that he probably thinks looks so cool. He’s voiced by Takaya Kuroda (Kazuma Kiryu) in the original Japanese dub, and Keythe Farley (Thane Krios from Mass Effect 2) in the English dub, and both voice actors are perfectly encapsulating his horrendously enrapturing vibes. This is a guy who sucks, everyone hates him, but he’s constantly trapping people in situations where they have to overcome weird situations or traumatic events alongside/against him and he loves every second of it. When he finds out that this game is all about the protagonists going through time loops, he just starts killing everyone (including himself) randomly because he knows that it’s just going to work out fine…incredible. Daybreak II has one of the longest Intermission chapters a Trails game has ever had, and while it lags at parts because of it, I was eating up how incredible the concept of “Everyone goes to a guy called The Thousand Oathbreaker’s private island and absolutely nothing could possibly go wrong” was.

I talked a lot about the characters here, but they are the lifeblood of what makes the Trails games so good. These characters will keep coming back, they’ll keep growing and changing, getting new outfits and all that. If you’re the type of person who loves thinking about all the different ways characters can interact with each other, or thrive off seeing emotional payoffs for character arcs that are games long, then you probably already know what’s great about Trails. The main narrative of Daybreak II is on the weaker side for the series, more like a Reverie than a proper full sequel to Daybreak, but these character interactions are what makes it enjoyable in spite of that.

I would go so far as to say that the major failing with Daybreak II’s storytelling is that it doesn’t connect its core plot with these character dynamics in a particularly impressive way, making things feel pretty disparate at times. The first Daybreak felt natural with the ways you got your party members and did things with them; i.e. of course you get Quatre in the Silicon Valley area and his storyline revolves around technology and the sociology of grant-based research firms in a capitalist society. Now, while you have these great moments with characters like Quatre, they feel untethered from a logical progression of events, and more of a “hey this would be cool to see right now” type situation. There are times where they definitely could’ve tied things together a little neater, and it would’ve made the story stronger because of it. One specific example being a main villain’s rant about how HIS ideology will rise from the ashes and solve society, that doesn’t explain what that ideology is at any stage. This could’ve been a chance to work in what had been going on in other aspects of the narrative! But instead it reads as yet another weird detour. 

As a game about timeloops, Daybreak II is inevitably about a lot of weird detours in general, but for the most part I actually didn’t mind the structure. Only near the end of the game, in the penultimate chapter, does it really feel like they’re overusing the concept of rewinding time for the sake of padding out the narrative. In the early game, the whole “going back in time to approach a situation differently” schtick works really well for a series like Trails, where they love having the mysterious Wuxia hero arrive from off screen at the last moment to save you. Having these situations where the party loses and has to go back and track down those characters to bring them along actually breaks the monotony the series has fallen into with this trope in a way I really appreciated. We already know oomf is around! We don’t need them to be a mysterious voice off camera every single time.

The story only really falters in its third act, where the rewinding mechanic is pushed to its absolute breaking point. While it’s fun to experiment with bad ends and multiple routes like a traditional visual novel would, it’s exceedingly exhausting to go through 5 different “what if your friend was THE BAD GUY!” scenarios back-to-back while you redo various sequences that aren’t really adding much in terms of character writing or plot advancement. I felt myself losing years off my life by the time I reached the end of Route F of Act III, and while I was mostly won back by some fun stuff at the very end of the game, it’s still a baffling format to go with, especially after the original Daybreak got a lot of complaints for its long and drawn out ending with similar issues.

Gameplay-wise, Daybreak II builds upon the original Daybreak in a way that…makes sense as a quickly released sequel. Combat is roughly the same, the real time element has ever so slightly improved combos and the addition of casting spells on a short cooldown every so often, while the turn-based combat is nearly identical, albeit with nerfed S-Crafts so that you’re not just spamming them to win every fight like you do in…far too many Trails games. They actually get into some fun things with the real-time turn based split too, as the game goes on, and unlike the more recent Metaphor ReFantazio which was praised for its hybrid real-time turn-based combat as if it was a wholly novel concept, you could spend most of the game in the real-time mode, and it wouldn’t feel that much worse.

Also new are mini-games, a series staple that Daybreak unfortunately lost as a result of being the first game on a new engine in the middle of a pandemic. Fishing is of course here and mostly enjoyable, there’s basketball, hacking, and the obligatory nightmarish card game. Though they’re nothing to write home about in a vacuum, I believe JRPGs are a genre designed for stupid arbitrary detours for the sake of making the world even more ridiculous at any given time, and each of these games fill that niche well. I weep at the sight of The Divine Blade of Silver Shizuna Rem Misurugi slapping the basketball out of a random street kid’s hand, absolutely sublime stuff.

Less thrillingly, Daybreak II adds in multiple stealth activities, things like tailing suspects, and using the loathsome detective vision originally popularized by Batman Arkham Asylum that has haunted far too many games over the years. Detective vision (called scanning here) involves rapidly pressing in the right stick to see hidden scent clouds or footsteps, and to find random goodies along the way. Conceptually a second form of sight sounds compelling, but in practice, walking around and just mashing the right stick over and over again to keep seeing the arbitrary trail you’re following is far worse than that yellow paint everyone complains about, it’s exhausting. 

Similarly wasting time, tailing is just slowly walking behind a guy, until you don’t anymore. There’s no depth. There’s no lines of dialogue along the way to cultivate a vibe or sense of mystique or urgency, just a slow jaunt down the street while you hide behind cars or, more commonly, just sort of crouch on the ground awkwardly. I get that the developers probably wanted to lean into Van’s private eye schtick, but it feels especially silly in a game where people have both cloaking and drones they can use at all times to solve any problems.

Trails through Daybreak II is annoying at times, but ultimately what it did best is reaffirm my love for the Trails series as a whole. Even when the main story falters and buckles under its rushed nature, I’m still completely enamored with the way these characters are written, and how Falcom is able to consistently engineer incredible scenarios for them to find themselves in. There’s a sidequest in this game where you stop a terrorism attack because someone is mad about the 90’s attitude given to a beloved mascot from another country after a local conglomerate bought their usage rights. You can watch an NPC from the first game continue their arc of trying to get their kid into public school despite issues with living in the seedier part of town that’s kept off the books. Everywhere you go that unique Trails magic is there, and if this is really some of the worst they can do, it cements exactly why I’ve come to adore this series.