The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky SC- Fin.
Let's start with the negatives.
The pace over the early bits of the game (roughly everything between 'Estelle goes of for intense training in the mountains' and 'Chapter 3') is just too slow, considering this is all a followup to an entire full-length RPG in FC. I get why it's built this way, they didn't want to utterly alienate new players, needed to give you a sense of how places had changed in the intervening months, and just let the player get that much more invested in everyone's daily dealie-do (more on this later). But since they ended on such a cliffhanger, and one of the main hooks is the mystery of all those last minute plot twists, getting such lean information on the same for such a substantial chunk of the game is a big downer. In particular you could reaaaallyyyy cut the entirety of chapter 2.
Chapter 2 stands out there because the only real thread you have to follow up through the end of chapter 5 is the Enforcers assigned to each region. And Walter sucks. And honestly due to some quirks of FC I kinda feel the least attachment to Zeiss of the regions if that makes sense. And unto itself reuniting with Tita doesn't have quite the same punch as reuniting with Kloe (shit, one of my favorite scenes before everything got serious was actually Kloe's heart to heart with Estelle about her own crush on Joshua). In contrast Bleublanc works pretty well for a first villain sort; you immediately get the sense that while he's probably stronger than your guys individually, him trying to take on the whole team depends entirely on him being able to set up. Good feel for this sort of villain. Luciola's backstory kept surprising me with how they played with it. I'm not sure if it's even in a good or bad way, but I largely decided to spend the extra time fucking around with party swapping in the final dungeon because I decided I cared quite a bit about seeing what they did with her full story. I feel like C3 speaks for itself. Walter though? He's every dumb wanky martial arts anime rival played perfectly straight.
Also sometimes the game can just be completely bullshit. I suppose with sidequests that's not SO bad unto itself, I mean it is optional. But then a few required fights do the same sorta stuff. Not always, there's plenty of perfectly good bosses in there, but there's also sometimes stuff like "this boss gets a sneak attack S-Craft with hit ID odds. Oh also she has 8 supporting units that spam rando-status lasers that like to petrify you." I mean, sure, you know which boss is at the end of that dungeon before you go, and you could reasonably surmise she'd specialize in instant death at least. But the medusa bots? Fuck off.
But god damn man. Everything else. I already unreasonably liked this cast of course, then people start finishing their character arcs? Yes please. More Anelace and Olivier joins in chapter 1? Yes please. A game in which the heroine is distinctly a heroine and the villain's 'goal' (beyond torturing people because that's the only way he gets his rocks off (and the divine guardian dragon says as much to his face man Ragnard is great)) is to create the libertarian-paradise world where "everyone is always rational and never emotional"? I laughed. They also did the Suikoden thing. Like, FC certainly made a point of mentioning that you can walk around Liberl in a few days because it was a tiny country that only stayed independent of much larger and more militarized neighbors through a crushing technological advantage. SC actually lets you see this in action. It leaves an impact to say the least.
The real kicker is C8 though. It's basically the Shadow Hearts-y "welp there's the final dungeon time to do all of the sidequests", except basically the final dungeon cripples the army and slows you way the hell down so you take the first step of trying to get civilization up and running as much as possible. So you see all those background events behind sidequests finish out and it's pretty fun. But of course it's actually a primer to the end of the chapter.
The march the villains do through the city (which boils down to "wait why doesn't the party just fight their way into town there's like two guards" actually being put into practice... except also it's clearly several platoons of royal guards) is honestly kinda horrific. This is the payoff for that whole "two games worth of emotional investment in the setting" thing. Like these dudes are just soldiers, but you spend so much time helping them out, or them bailing you out (or as you advance as a Bracer, coming in for cleanup and relief efforts after you take point) that seeing masses of them strewn across the landscape has an impact. And that's ignoring all the named characters involved to be as circumspect about RELEVANT spoilers as I can.
Oh, and building on Estelle's Estelleness. What fixes Joshua? He can finally cry. Because pretending things don't bother him is stupid. And thinking people are better off without him is stupid. And trying to take on everything by yourself because it's "your burden" is all of the stupid. Essentially, Estelle tells him to stop being such a fucking MAN and actually grow up.
But yeah that C8 bit was the main thing putting it over the top. 9/10
