When I played the first The Legend Of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak game, I was so excited to experience a fresh start in an otherwise exhaustively long and inter-connected RPG series. The game introduced a really engaging new setting and cast of characters that I loved, and the incredible blend of hack-and-slash and turn-based combat is something I wish more people talked about. I was excited for the sequel to either expand on the original game with upgraded mechanics and expanded environments or utilize those same tools to take the story to even higher heights. Unfortunately, The Legend Of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak II doesn’t do much of either of those things, instead feeling like an over-indulgent DLC that provides more filler than anyone would be interested in.
The Legend Of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak II kicks off just a few months after the end of the previous game, and at first it drops us into a pretty juicy new dilemma for our smooth-talking protagonist Van. A string of sudden murders has occurred in the region of Calvard, and the only suspect is a crimson-coloured spitting image of the Grendel, Van’s transformed alter-ego. There are some further complications when old flame Elaine Auclair shows up in Van’s city, leading the two to reluctantly team up and get to the bottom of a murder mystery that has sprawling implications for plenty of other strange developments.
If you’re a fan of the series who’s familiar with all the over-arching lore of the dozen or so entries in The Legend of Heroes that preceded this one, you’ll be excited by some of the directions this story goes. Like Elaine Auclair, a lot of the supporting cast in this game are returning faces or debuting names that initially showed up in Trails into Reverie. As someone with a perpetual issue remembering the lore of this series, I was put off by just how deep into the weeds the last few entries got with the sprawling inter-connected narratives and endless callbacks. The Legend Of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak II does a good job of keeping things comprehensible if you’ve only participated in Van’s story, but it also provides a massively in-depth glossary system that helps shore up some of the muddier memories of prior games or obscure elements of the world.
In between lore-heavy callbacks and hunting for clues to the mysteries our protagonists are chasing, you’ll often end up having your cast of heroes split up and going their separate ways to find their own answers. This leads to a lot of arcs in the game being split into multiple chapters happening parallel to each other, and you’re given the chance to choose which order you play these chapters in as you bounce around the various groups that embody each one. It’s a really satisfying mechanic that keeps the pacing of the story fresh, but also allows the opportunity for characters to come and go in a natural way that’s honestly kind of a rarity for JRPGs. Early into the game, Van tells his incredibly young part-time assistant Agnès Claudel to stay behind and focus on school for a bit while he goes off to investigate things. Instead of the game contriving a call-to-action that forces her to stick with Van anyways, she just listens to him and sticks back to focus on school for that chapter!
Still, for as much fun as The Legend Of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak II has with the way it paces and presents the story, I wrapped up my lengthy playthrough of the game feeling like a vast majority of it didn’t really matter. Several developments throughout the game feel like they’re on the level of anime-filler, or are vaguely interesting ideas stretched out to occupy way more of the game’s runtime than they should have. A “bad-ending” time-loop mechanic introduced early in the story as a fun way to keep you on your toes quickly leads to repetitive and exhaustively frequent interruptions, while the final act of the game is occupied by a strange mind-control plot that rips out a lot of the tension of the experience.
I found myself tuning out from a lot of the story of The Legend Of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak II, which was fine since I still had a blast digging into the incredible gameplay. Combat is largely unchanged from the last game, which I couldn’t be happier about. You’re still able to get into Ys-style hack-and-slash battles as you traverse dungeons, although this time you also get to dish out new special attacks during these moments that keep things even fresher and faster.
You can also transition into turn-based combat at any time, and the real-time transition between the two never gets old. Being a huge fan of the combat, I was especially excited about the new Märchen Garten mode. You can dive into a sprawling series of side dungeons that allow you to mix and match party members who would never normally be able to team up in the story – or even play as characters not featured in the story at all! As you progress and earn currency, you can spend it on a smorgasbord of unlocks that I was dedicated to clearing out.
For all the narrative flaws of The Legend Of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak II, it’s still an incredibly fun JRPG full of charming characters, and it continues to house the most creative and impressive dual-style combat I’ve seen in a JRPG. I just hope the next game in the series – which was initially planned as a third Daybreak entry but has now been changed into an Avengers-style team-up to close the book on many of the franchise’s long-running mysteries – can improve on the lacklustre storytelling and lack of high-energy takes that plagued so much of this game.
