You know, I always heard how amazing the Trails series was and that they were up there with the square SNES JRPG classics and I just couldn’t believe it. After finally playing the first and second chapter, I can say those people were absolutely correct. These games are fantastic and Estelle Bright has become one of my favorite characters across all fiction. Her eternal hope and optimism is why people admired and loved Luke Skywalker (before the non canon Disney movies). I rank these games with FF6 and Chrono Trigger if not better than those two games and I played both those games at release so I see them through nostalgia even though they easily stand on their own without it. It has as great a story with all sorts of twists and turns, great world building, great characters and matches those two SNES JRPGs with an incredible soundtrack throughout the adventure. I enjoyed the country of Liberl and its characters so much so that I talked to every NPC after every story progressing event. A lot of times I talked to them after bracer quests just to make sure I wasn’t missing anything. This version of the game has a double speed button so you can fly around the map and through battles which is very good addition.

The only slight negative I could see someone having is that the world and character building make these very long games with a lot of dialogue. But, I don’t even see this as an issue because that is what makes the world and characters so great. All that long pacing at times and dialogue is paid off in spades with great character arcs and overall story. So if you don’t mind games that don’t have AAA graphics, this is about as sure fire a JRPG as you can find. Highly recommend and bravo to the writers that brought Estelle Bright to life. Not only is this one of my favorite JRPGs now, it’s one of my favorite games (First & Second Chapter as one giant game) across all genres.