Not as good as Trails in the Sky, but still a competently put-together jRPG. It largely just fails to reach the high bar set by Trails in the Sky, having a slightly less charming cast(I genuinely could not care less about Elie), and the writing is simply more... *anime.* If you love anime tropes, you'll love this more, if you find them tedious, you'll love it less.

It also lacks that warm feeling of Trails in the Sky where 90% of everyone you met was a nice person and you regularly found yourself helped by... entirely normal people, where it felt like everyone's contribution across Liberl's society was important.

Lastly, I know that Trails in the Sky had a few "you won the battle, but actually he's still pretty strong, so you have to run away/an NPC bails you out," but in Trails from Zero it genuinely felt there were more boss battles that terminated this way than there were where you actually won. It got a bit silly, eventually.

Still, not a bad game, just not as good as what came before.

Also the soundtrack rules, an all-timer, but that's kind of par for the course for Trails games at this point, the soundtrack team always knocks it out of the park.

amazing

10/10

In case you don't know you should start this franchise with Trail in the Sky.

Coming from trail in the Sky, Zero is a fantastic new arc:

+ Great story
+ Stellar Cast
+ Lots of fan service with returning characters and all
+ Rewarding combat system (if you plan Hard or above)
+ Lots of Quality of life options

- easiest game in the series to this point
- still no access to the menu inside combats

9/10