There’s simply nothing out there like Trails and, with Daybreak here being the 11th game in the series, one could think that there’s no way Nihon Falcom could pull off a new entry for a new arc that is as incredibly good as this game but…well, here we are: Trails Through Daybreak is absolute peak, from start to finish.

Let’s talk PC Performance a bit: on my Ryzen 7 5700X and RTX 3060 Ti system, this PC port by PH3 runs, as it couldn’t be any other way, absolutely fantastic, while also looking incredible for a game in this series.
At a resolution of 1440p DLDSR, I can comfortably run the game locked at 60 FPS, at Ultra Settings, and also including 2x MSAA with Sparse Grid Super Sampling Anti-Aliasing for everything, Shadows included.
This makes the game look quite clean and crisp, with only some minor aliasing here and there, very hard to notice.
I can only observe minor FPS drops in really heavy scenes or some S-Crafts, but never below the mid 50s and just for a split second.

Moving on to the rest of the game here, well, I’ve just completed it and I really felt quite satisfied, still quite hyped up by that intense finale and last moments, but yeah, quite satisfied.

The new Characters are absolutely amazing, as expected, they’re quite varied in both their ages and personalities, and also when it comes to combat, particularly with their unique crafts, always fun to discover new crafts in these games, as it is one of my favorite things to see, because crafts give these characters a lot of flavor and usefulness.
Never felt any single character not worth using at some point, which in itself is a bit of an issue, because I wanted to use some of them a lot more but I know…it’s still the first game in a new arc, there’ll be time for a lot more, hopefully :P

Gameplay has changed a little bit here, now with the expanded Field Battle System, a very welcome improvement, truly, and the Command Battle Mode (Turn Based) is a good as it’s ever been, even though they have changed some mechanics, here and there.
We cannot steal AT Bonuses via S-Crafts, from enemies, for example and, without having the Turn Order displayed (can be done either manually or via in game setting), it gets a bit confusing, knowing those action orders…but thanks to the QoL improvements in this port, it’s no big deal.

Animation Quality has improved leaps and bounds over the previous engine, particularly compared to the Cold Steel games, because in Reverie we were able to have a little taste of some improved animations in certain special cutscenes, which was nice.
Daybreak boosts this quality and uses it in a very good amount of scenes, and even the regular combat animations are improved, over older games, quite noticeable.

Controls are also very responsive, both when using a Controller, and with Mouse and Keyboard, in fact this game plays incredibly well on the latter, as we can customize basically every action in the game and even have separate shortcuts for each S-Craft slot, saving us one key press.
Seriously, the game is completely playable on Mouse and Keyboard with no grievances or frustrations, something quite common in many (J)RPGs out there, it is really amazing the amount of work and refining PH3 has put into this particular section of the Settings.

The Soundtrack is astonishingly good, I always say this for every other Trails game I complete but, I mean, I can’t name a single track that I didn’t enjoy, with some absolute bangers just at the right moment, they never miss and it is one of the reasons why I love the series so much.
I will be listening to this soundtrack many, many times, that’s for sure.

The English Localization and Voice Acting is top quality, as usual, I don’t know how they do it…but they do it: every new entry, they manage to find the absolute best actors for each character and…what an absolute great job the Localization team, and the Actors, have done with Daybreak: congratulations for another incredible experience.

And the Story well…it’s incredible. I won’t mention any spoilers, but a relatively decent part of why I find this game so amazing, is the fact that I have played the other previous ten games.
I can see newcomers quite enjoying this entry, for sure, should they choose to start here, but as a veteran of the series…this game greatly delivered where it mattered, and it was awesome experiencing those special moments, which make Trails as special as it is.

All in all, this an spectacular JRPG, I loved this game, nothing more to say, really, other than thank you Nihon Falcom, NISA and PH3 for allowing this series to be experienced by the Western audience.