The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon is probably the most intimidating review I’ve ever had to do, simply because of its series’s long-runner status. Sure, Final Fantasy’s up to 16, but the games are completely divorced from each other: TBTH is the 13th and apparently final game in a series that has averaged a little less than a release a year since I first bought the original Trails in the Sky in 2011. My original plan was to play this once I had a chance to replay the things that have led up to it - which would take a minimum of a year if I started with the first game on the Monday after this review goes live. But I’ve jumped in halfway through portions of this series before, and the gameplay is good enough for me to enjoy while I’m speed-reading the Falcom Wiki to try and catch up.

The story picks up after the second Trails Through Daybreak game, with the world freaking out about an unmanned space launch that went off not only as planned, but ahead of schedule by a few weeks. The Daybreak hero Van and his group of “spriggans” (off-the-books investigators) have been summoned to a weapons trial where they have run-ins with the final protagonist of the Sky series and Cold Steel student/teacher Rean Schwarzer for a little friendly competition. Following the trial and a party, everyone returns home to resume their lives while the anticipation builds for the first manned launch, but forces behind the scenes have to bring the entire series together one last time to ensure things go off without a hitch. As happened with the previously mentioned Trails to Azure, there are some options to catch up on the story but I still found myself confused at times. (I last saw them with cars and online PC gaming as the big technology breakthroughs, but now we have ubiquitous mobile phones and potentially manned spaceflight in their 13th century.) The game will also frequently cut to monochrome character shots during cutscenes, so I definitely need to replay this at some point in the future when I know who that’s supposed to be and why it’s relevant. And am I the only one who’s still weirded out by a major research institution in the series being the Epstein Foundation?

Is it funny or disturbing if I mention the guy in this shot is a priest?

Apart from the cutscenes, there is a good amount of city exploration from a 3rd person perspective and plenty of options once engaging in battles. The battles can be either turn based or real time (called “field” battles), with the latter as the default but the former easily started with the Y button. However, the different systems do have some differences in how big moves are activated and you’ll probably have to dip into the tutorials even after the opening trial to remember how to get certain things to activate. The city exploration - especially important for Van and company since they’re looking for cases to resolve - does make things stand out, especially when a shop shows up as “new” because they’ve added some new wares.

A big feature of the game is the side story mode “Grim Garten”, which combines elements of dungeon crawling and standard combat in a way that is supposed to allow you to create whatever party you want. However, I found myself a little less willing to interact with the mode when I got stuck for a considerable amount of time during the part of the plot where completing a run is mandatory. Specifically, I had three objectives to complete in this run: activate five terminals in the map, and defeat one and five “large enemies” in field battles. The latter objectives were easy, but I did multiple laps around the area, picked up about six levels of experience from fighting mobs, and could not find the fifth terminal at all. It reached the point where I was declared to have failed the objective, but I couldn’t back out to reroll the area either. It definitely left a sour taste in my mouth once I did finally get past it.

While we're at it, defund the Irate Citizen's Establishment and jail everyone associated with it.

I predominantly played the game in handheld mode on Switch 2, but regardless of the mode I didn’t see any technical issues with the game. There will be a day 1 patch for the game that among other things enables transferring your save from the demo version, but it also should have text and technical fixes when needed. One oddity I noticed early on is that the party is generally voiced for cutscenes, but there were some times when I thought they should be voicing the text and they just… didn’t. I don’t know if this is a side effect of the localization coinciding with the peak of the last North American voice actor’s strike or just a decision by developer Falcom or localizer NIS America, but it did strike me as odd. The game looks good graphically, with the ginormous cast of characters each standing out in their own way, and the soundtrack is a solid one as well.

Eventually, I do hope to circle back to Trails Beyond the Horizon, with a nice full notebook and a character interaction chart that makes Xenoblade Chronicles X’s look small. The systems are fun to interact with - when they’re not trapping me in what is supposed to be a horror game - and I want to be able to fully follow what’s going on. Even if it takes me 700 hours across Switch 2, my PC, and a Steam Deck to get there.