• Price: $59.99 USD
• Developer: Falcom
• Publisher: NIS America
• Release Date: July 5, 2024

I muddled my way through the Japanese demo for The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak last year using Google Translate a while after finishing the star-studded Trails into Reverie. With only one more month until Daybreak comes out in English, I’m back to play the Western version of the demo!

As with the Japanese version, you’ll be able to use the save data from the demo in the full version of the game, and continue from where you left off. I love how they include key terms and brief summaries of the previous Trails games; it’s not clear if we get any bonuses for having clear data from the other games.

Trails through Daybreak takes place in the Calvard Republic a year after the events of Reverie. A young woman named Agnès Claudel has come to ARKRIDE Solutions to meet with Van Arkride, who takes borderline illegal jobs that the police and guild won’t accept. Agnès wants him to help her track down something important to her.

She insists on accompanying Van around the city as he investigates, and eventually they end up in the monster-infested underground. There are 2 different combat modes: turn-based Command battles and Field battles with action combat. They’re trying something new by adding action combat in a Trails game.

You may remember how in previous Trails games, we could just slash an enemy on the overworld, and if it was weaker it would automatically be defeated. Well in this game we can continue to hack away at enemies in action combat and whittle down their HP that way. Or you can choose to switch to the usual turn based battle.

Personally, I still prefer to play in turn-based mode (pressing Y when near an enemy), but you can start a Field battle then change to Command mode by pressing Y. I like that each mode has its own range of difficulty levels, with Command battles having 5 and Field battles with 3.

I also like how the battle menus seem more straightforward/faster to use than the menus in some of the previous games. They added the “Shard Circular Linked Metafield” mechanic, which triggers link moves when party members’ fields overlap. You can use Shard Boosts for additional advantages.

I made my way through the prologue dungeon, and one key difference between the Japanese and English demos would naturally be the voice acting! I enjoyed listening to the English voice actors’ performances (and of course, the usual fantastic Trails soundtrack).

When the full game releases next month, Van will guide Agnès as she works at ARKRIDE Solutions, and we’ll earn Spriggan Points instead of Bracer, Academic, or Detective Points. Despite – or perhaps even due to – Calvard’s recent economic growth, shady dealings seem to be on the rise. “The night is darkest just before the dawn,” as they say, and Van and Agnès surely have a long and treacherous way to go before they’ll see daybreak. And I can’t wait to see how their story unfolds.