Recent reviews by ChaosBuster

✅ One of the best isometric ARPG
✅ 9 classes offer 9 completely different playstyle
✅ Dual class system (although this is less useful than what it seems)
✅ Dark gritty graphics and environment
✅ Combat is very fun
✅ Auto loot system
✅ Heavy loot based gameplay
✅ Stash is pretty big, hoarders shouldn't have problem hoarding
✅ Search function is extremely useful
✅ Fast regen outside combat
✅ Buffs are automatically activated (this is a pretty big QOL I've seen in a game like this)
✅ Extremely high replayability value
✅ Still getting updated even after all these years

❌ No manual save option. This highly discourages you to tinker with new builds or trying out new things
❌ Save points are too far in the game
❌ When you die, you directly respawn all the way in town. This makes it extremely painful to go back to your current position
❌ When using a controller and a melee weapon, your character does stationary attack and does not go to attack the target enemy. Titan Quest does this way better as your character automatically moves to attack the targeted enemy
❌ Enemy boss can sometimes automatically restore to full HP. I found this to be extremely annoying
❌ Rare materials that are needed for crafting powerful relics have hopelessly low drop rate
❌ When playing at odd resolution like at 1600x900, game repeatedly says on startup that 'controller is not supported' at this resolution even though it does
❌ Location markers are not shown until at a certain distance
❌ Healing values are not shown

Gameplay system shares a lot of similarities with Titan Quest. I'd recommend playing that first.

An unnecessary sequel to an otherwise great game. There's so many things wrong with this game and it's a disgrace to the first game.

❌ The game's extremely broken, you've to apply various fixes to even play it properly. It's like they didn't want people to play this game because of how bad it is. If you plan on playing it you must check this excellent guide (kudos to the person sharing it): https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2038838545
❌ Story is a complete mess. It excessively uses time-traveling like it's the most normal thing in the world. It leaves so many plotholes it's mind-boggling
❌ Horrible performance
❌ Looks somehow worse than first game
❌ Crystarium system is way worse than the first game
❌ Puzzles were so stupid
❌ QTEs were so unnecessary
❌ Main quests/Side quests were occasionally unclear at times
❌ Only 2 playable characters. You can't play with any of the characters from the first game and this was massively disappointing. They just appear in the story as NPC
❌ Combat didn't feel enjoyable as the first game as there's only 2 playable characters and the other one is for monsters which I didn't like at all
❌ Leveling up monsters felt a chore as they work too differently than the playable characters
❌ Random encounters were a downgrade from the first game

✅ Classic style JRPG
✅ Charming graphics that looks so good
✅ You can tame monsters (similar to Pokémon)
✅ Open world to explore

❌ Recently something happened to the game that has broken combat - it's not possible to properly fight in combat. This has now become a game breaking issue. Currently to workaround this issue, you need to download a Steam community controller config (it's still not an ideal solution)
❌ Game has too much stuttering issues
❌ Monster capturing is completely random and you've got absolutely no control over it. It's an extremely horrible design that just becomes infuriating because you can't easily recruit the monsters you want to tame
❌ The way the game works, if you recruit evolved monsters later on in the game, they'll have terrible stats and it makes them completely useless to use
❌ Enemies are ALWAYS freaking faster than the player. They'll easily outrun you no matter what and force an encounter that becomes so annoying. What's also makes it worse is that they can also easily detect you too as well
❌ Running away from battles fails too much
❌ Enemies does way too much damage later on
❌ Story is very weak
❌ Player AI SUCKS so bad they've got no idea what they keep doing. Occasionally I kept killing the AI's in most boss battle because they were making things difficult

✅ Astonishingly good graphics
✅ Fluid fun action combat
✅ Great character design
✅ Photo mode is very good
✅ Allies can revive you suddenly when you die and it felt awesome
✅ The powers felt pretty cool to use
✅ Good soundtrack

❌ Slideslow cutscenes ruined most of the charm of the game. Come on, this was such a cheap trick to use for a game like this
❌ Story changes direction drastically few times throughout the game. The plot deviates so much it just felt illogical. It starts off really well but for some reason story changes so much and it becomes really bad in the end
❌ Story leaves too many plotholes
❌ Anti-Aliasing has extremely bad ghosting. I strongly recommend to use this mod: https://www.nexusmods.com/scarletnexus/mods/8
❌ Farming for materials was a huge headache. Materials doesn't seem to spawn consistently and it was frustrating
❌ Sidequests were extremely lackluster
❌ Human bosses were too hard

The game had so much potential but they really messed it up.

✅ Text-based game with insane amount of choices
✅ Choices shape the outcome of the story. The outcome of choices are displayed before you select it which turned out to be very useful
✅ Can easily rewind a chapter
✅ Highly replayable with several outcomes and endings. Each outcome gives you achievement so any route you take feels rewarding

❌ Black and white visuals looks unappealing
❌ The visuals sucks
❌ No Steam cloud support which is a deal-breaker

Trails into Reverie is the 10th game in the Trails series and it ends the Crossbell and Erebonia arc. Cold Steel IV had so many things gone wrong, and in my opinion, it left a sour taste in my mouth, but Reverie turned things around and ended the arc perfectly.

Reverie did things a lot differently than previous games. We now get to play as 3 different routes with different protagonists, all story occurring at the same time. There were no sidequests which was a first as well. Story was fantastic and it had such a mysterious twist which turned out better than I expected it to be.

The main star of the show in Reverie is getting to see almost all the characters appear in Reverie from the previous 9 games. The appearances and interaction between the characters made it all extremely worthwhile to play all the previous 9 games, and as a Trails fan, I couldn't be any more happier. The new mysterious character 'C' is easily the most likable character in the game, he has been given such an incredible character development.

Instead of sidequests, Reverie has a pretty big endgame content which has been incorporated so well that allows you to play with almost any of the characters across all 10 games. With over a massive roster of 50 playable characters, Reverie makes it possible to form your own dream team.

Reverie brings back the familiar doors from the 3rd game, now called Daydreams. The Daydreams does extremely well to flesh out the characters and how some of them deals with the aftermath in CS IV.

Overall, I can say Trails into Reverie ended the saga strongly. With a glimpse of the future and what's to come, I can't wait for the next game. All eyes will be on the Calvard arc.

✅ Massive amounts of content
✅ Different classes with different playstyles
✅ Great ARPG
✅ Combat is very fun
✅ Heavy loot based gameplay
✅ Game can be sped up than normally possible (really helps with how huge the game is)
✅ Steam Workshop support

❌ Performance is extremely terrible with occasional stuttering and even huge lags sometimes
❌ Inventory and transfer storage is extremely small and it's not enough for a hoarder. There is an external software which can be used for more storage and definitely worth looking into if you're interested in hoarding: https://github.com/EtienneLamoureux/TQVaultAE/?tab=readme-ov-file
❌ No manual save option. This does not allow you to tinker with builds
❌ Skills have too long cooldown
❌ Epic items cannot be enchanted which is really weird
❌ Loot is lackluster until end-game
❌ No debuff icon is shown on enemy units

✅ Choice-driven fantasy visual novel
✅ Charming romancable girls
✅ Choices can be extremely hilarious
✅ Eye-candy 'jiggle' physics
✅ Fully voiced dialogues

❌ Mini-games sucked and felt out of place
❌ Uninteresting story
❌ No Steam achievements

Spoiler-y review

Having played Yakuza 0 (which is a masterpiece), this game felt extremely inferior

🔴 Nishikiyama becomes a completely different person. I won't accept this impostor being the same friendly guy as in Yakuza 0
🔴 Majima becomes a crazy ♥♥♥♥-freak. His incredible character development in 0 has been just thrown down the drain. Game needlessly wants you to beat him up probably 50 times which is ridiculous. How did he turn into such a pathetic sadistic guy is beyond my comprehension. I can't believe people are obsessed with this unhinged guy
🔴 Combat is terrible. Boss have this stupid regeneration thing they can use multiple times
🔴 Too much random encounters. You can't avoid them using money like in 0
🔴 Sidequests were lackluster
🔴 Story has a filler chapter
🔴 Story felt rushed and underwhelming
🔴 Almost all the characters were killed off, and it happened so fast and I didn't even care about them at the end

🟢 Better graphics than first game (Guardian of Light)

🔴 Apart from graphics, everything else feels way worse than the first game
🔴 Forgettable story that's been mostly re-used from first game with different character names
🔴 Boring characters
🔴 Terrible dialogues
🔴 Puzzles are way worse
🔴 Very short game