Trails in the Emotional Connection

Growing Disconnect

A temple at the top of a hill. A light breeze, green leaves dancing gently. No voice of a living being. An old wise woman sitting in absolute silence.
Eventually, the wind stops and the woman opens her mouth:
"Should video games always have to be fun?"
An angry mob of people rushes to the hill, armed with blessed swords, runes, bottles of holy water and the burning hatred of demons. They speak of a witch who cast an unforgivable curse, summoning of an unholy monster, whose name cannot even be uttered A monster that will destroy all fun in any video game it will touch. They say, it is the smallest sibling of the demons , each possessing an unfathomable curse. The middle sibling would give Dark Souls an easy mode. And the eldest demon would force people to think about basic feminist theory in every video game.
The woman stands up and confronts the angry mob, unfazed: "I have summoned no demon. If a monster exists, it only resides inside your hearts, remember when you wished games like Fallout 4 didn't sacrifice storytelling for more combat loops. Yet you deny yourselves, dismissing anything that is not conventionally fun as bad design. Haven't you ever felt sad at a video game?"
She shakes her head: "You are spoiled brats; you want games to be full of emotions yet also demand to gameplay to be fun regardless of any context. If you don't feel what players characters feel, is it really succesful interactive storytelling? There are lots of many games with sad narratives where gameplay is designed for maximum level of fun? Does this disconnect never make you uncomfortable?"
The mob is anxious: "Cease your lamentations! The demons are hearing you. We don't want to be forced into playing tedious video games."
The woman grows impatient. "No one will force you into doing anything, you are not the only people who play games!"
The woman lifts her arms wide to sky. A vision appears in front of the angry mob, a string of letters can be seen. It is read as:
"TRAILS IN THE SKY THE 3RD"

Re-connection

Games take various approaches at the emotional disconnect. For example, the first two Call of Duty games fully acknowledge the disconnect, accept that the games don't represent the real WW2 experience and remind the player that using anti-war quotes on death screens. On the other end, there is Undertale, which responds to player action so perfectly there is almost no such disconnect.
For a lot of JRPGs, this tends to be problem due to the usual detachment between turn based battles and story. However, turn based battling actually have an advantage here, because they lack in high immediate engagement, it is actually easier to establish a certain tone to battles. Still, tthe fact that you are enjoying the battles while the world is getting destroyed usually doesn't change, often it doesn't get serious enough to felt by player on a personal level. This problem can even be encountered in Trails games, despite amazing music and good design helping to alleviate it to a certain degree. But in Trails in the Sky the 3rd, this changes a lot.
The plot of the 3rd is about being trapped an alternative plane and confronting deeply personal issues, somewhat similar to Persona 3: The Answer. This leads a story where characters clash out of sheer necessity rather than enmity. Characters usually express satisfaction and even some delight in battling, no hard feelings, no conflict aside of the one which created the whole situation in the first place. It feels just right to enjoy the battles, at least most of the time, sometimes it is even openly encouraged by the story.
However, the opposite of this also exists. Uncharacteristic to Trails games, there is a one area where I found battling actually tedious.
One of the side-stories, Star Door 6. It is about the grueling training process of Ruan delinquents; Deen, Rais and Rocco. You have no access to magic, just a set of crafts. You can only get a few items, your only option of recovery is at the beginning of the dungeon, which requires a lot of backtracking. If you play this on Nightmare difficulty, there is no option but to grind as much as you can. Enemies are able to freeze you, which you can do nothing about and boss battles involve a good level of luck. There are few tactics that can make the process easier but overall you just have to be patient, grind, force your way through and pray to Aidios that you won't get frozen or Agate won't go too hard on you.

(not my screenshot, but I definitely had similar situations)

When I was playing the section, I became somewhat bored and even got angry. There isn't even much actual plot in this side-story, it's mostly about an endurance test.... Then it dawned on me, it is indeed an endurance test. It was tedious for me, but it was tedious for the characters too. By sacrificing the immediate satisfaction, the game delivered a better video game narrative.
It needs to be said that this is likely not intentional. The devs most likely wanted to craft a different type of challenge, taking the player from their comfort zone, not to make things intentionally tedious. When strictly viewed at this perspective, this is indeed bad design. However, whether by accident or not, this ended up connecting the player and player characters emotionally, which is important for interactive storytelling. This is why, even if I am not looking forward to play this part again in the future, I started to appreciate it a whole lot more. I have enjoyed the dungeon design of Persona 3 in a similar manner.
Obviously, no one is forced into liking anything. But before dismissing everything, ask yourselves: If you find video games a good place to tell stories, isn't there more potential than just gameplay and story being presented seperatetly? Is there truly nothing wrong when gameplay and narrative trying to elicit opposite emotions from player? There are even ethical concerns; like games using real life struggles for cheap feel-good moments, Detroit: Become Human being the most recent example.

This article is written thanks to my dearest Patrons and special thanks to: Alexandra Morgan, Laura Watson and Spencer Gill.

Trails in the Heart

Trails in the Sky series has a one overarching theme: Everyone deserves a second chance and can achieve to be a better person. This is supported by three pillars: unyielding optimism, collective achievement that is born from genuine faith and solidarity of people, and the game's ability to go truly dark without feeling edgy or making the narrative feel too grim  And the game excels at this so well that if told without context you wouldn't even probably believe those moments are from the same game.  Let's have a deeper look at game's main narrative themes, how it is able to keep an emotional balance throughout story and what really communicates to me personally . Obviously I will give away minor spoilers but I will avoid giving away very specific details and twists. And my concern is once again is on the first two games.

Optimism

Obviously, redemption comes with an inherent belief of people doing good. But optimism in Trails in The Sky is not just implied, it is vowen into the every part of the universe, such a degree that makes most far-fetched things seem reasonable.

The Protagonist

The optimism is reflected in the protagonist herself, Estelle Bright, even signified in her name. She is a pretty much optimistic-energetic-girl archetype, but the writing plays up this so much, her character becomes completely relatable and admirable. She carries the theme of hope and redemption all by herself, and is succesful at making people around her happy, succesful at making other's find their good sides; exactly because of her naive beliefs. Modern narratives love to torment such characters and make them more jaded, but here, no matter how much dirt is thrown at her, and a lot of dirt is thrown at her as time goes on, she is always bright. Willing suspension of disbelief rarely becomes that literally willing, because even most pessimistic among us wants to believe, at some deep level, there is a possibility of better things. Playing archetypes straight until to point they became endearing is one of the greatest strengths of the writing. A literal beacon of hope becomes a fully fledged character, as the game never shies away from evil, the ugly realities and complexities of reality, yet the ideal is also always reachable. Dawn follows the darkness.

Sincerely Good Church

Anti religious themes are pretty common in RPGs and it makes sense considering the main audience of these games. The corruption, the fanaticism, the outdatedness, the inherent abuse in a strong hierarchical organization like the Church, gods being jerks, rebellion all are well established narratives. Trails in the Sky is unique in it's depiction of religion, not only it is a mostly force of good, but also without implicit endorsement of its stinky parts. Septian Church, the dominant religious organization in the game is like, even better than most religious organization wants to be seen in people's eyes.

• Despite being the dominant religion, no intolerance towards minority religions is to be seen. Even full syncretism is fully welcome, and when the lack of existence of a religious war at lore is taken into account, it can be safely assumed the religion is at least has spread mostly peacefully across the continent of Zemuria.
• Priests mostly are sincerely fatherly and wise, less interested in how an individual lives their religion and more in spiritual guidance and help.
• "Heresy" is not about mere theological disagreements, it is only reserved to genuinely evil magic and wanting to reach to divine power, which is proven to be dangerous to  the very core of the world itself. The only character that called "a heretic" so far is also the most irredeemable character the series.
• The doors of the churches are open to everyone and people just pray at their own accord, no pressure from their community or an inherent guilt tripping in their religion.
• The church is sincerely helpful to people. Handling the early education, medicine, a support network in times of crisis, uses it's influence to peace between nations.
• While being fairly rich, being somewhat secretive and having much cultural and social influence, they strictly don't hold, nor aspire for any political power. What makes this really idealist is that this doesn't stem from a history of secularization like in real world - quite the opposite, by the start of the game their actions in their recent wars actually increased their influence - they are just plain not interested in politics whatsoever besides advocacy of peace.
• Unsurprisingly the only difference between a pious person and less pious person is how often they attend prayers or how much they mention Goddess in their speech. religious conservatism doesn't exist here. The Church is not interested adherence of strict gender roles, how people dress, how much beverage they drink or even homosexuality in any way. On the other hand, there are no characters that dislike religion either, everyone is just chill about it, in general.

The Septian Church is a representative of how series treat politics in general. Generally liberal view of the world but not from compliance to status quo or ignorance to structural issues, but trusts individuals to overcome this issues with solidarity and giving people a chance. In fact, if it took its observation to the neccesary conclusions and didn't trust individuals that much, the game could be much radical.

Economics

But the series chooses the commitment to redemption, and ends up being painting a profoundly liberal world. Liberalism is dominant political system so it's not surprising that so many works just accepts it and this usually just makes me roll my eyes, but here it doesn't feel ignorant, just naive and hopeful about power of people.
For example, Liberl is ruled by a constitutional monarchy, this doesn't create a problem. Royal family is just good people who work hard for their nation and become an image of solidarity,  and not in usual in-the-blood nonsense, they have the environment to be good, game points out, and they become good, even the more jerkish ones among them becomes better in time. The royalty never too unapproachable, always has a humility and grace.
Let's contrast this with another story that has an idealist depiction of a monarchy, The Lord of The Rings.  The lore of Tolkien shares the same ideal of selfless monarch but its kingdoms are destroyed by the strife that monarchies are naturally bound to. Tolkien accepts the problems in monarchy but still insists on his ideal somehow, effectively breaking his own ideal. Trails in the Sky doesn't fall into that, its main assertion of individual goodness results in acceptance of monarchy. The game is more idealistic about humans than any system itself and just happens to be idealistic about things in the setting.

This is best seen in economics. The game's great technological breaktrough, Orbal revolution is an idealistic version of the Industrial Revoultion. Orbal energy is much more efficient, capable and clean than anything in real world, the technological progress of two centuries is achieved in merely couple of decades, even sometimes more advanced than our world despite dominant early 20th century aesthetics. We never see any harsh worker conditions, sure some people are richer than others, but we never see true exreme poverty either, most people are able to afford a decent life. The good capitalism myth truly is actually realized here.

I mentioned a few paragraphs earlier that, the story could be easily more radical. We can see for example Bracers Guild being mostly horizontally organized. There is no singular upwards organization, there are different ranks you can get sure but, you don't really gain any real administrative power, you will just get more difficult tasks and your personal feats will be recognized. Local chapters are interconnected but autonomous, overall no one is truly coerced into do something in there. Similarly, the main factory in the Zeiss city has a traditional organization nominally but it's far more relaxed, produces for genuine advancement over profit and has well ethical standards. What I am getting at is, with even slightly more radical outlook and slight tweaks, Liberl could be easily written as a socialist utopia. This is why it makes me slightly sad in retrospective but at the same time I can't get angry at developers: As I said in the monarchy section, the game doesn't really assert system of capitalism as an ideal, nor says religion in itself is good or bad, but just takes this as a given and believes humans can achieve good, if they just believe in each other any system can be good. Personally I find this type of idealism endearing, and it also serves the game themes well.

Collective Achievement

The main thing that makes this idealism endearing is the games' emphasis on collective effort and reward, which is rare among RPGs and even games in general. Power of friendship is a commonly used trope but here it's taken one step further: the power of solidarity, solidarity of not only your party, but your entire organization, everyone you know and even entire country at large. This achieves a few important things.

• First, it gives your accomplishments a sense of weight, and makes non playable characters feel fleshed out, as I talked more about it here.
• Second, it really makes overall peacefulness of the game more grounded. This is best seen in the cliché of being able to walk into people's houses freely, it totally makes sense here; you aren't taking anything anyway and people don't have much reason to distrust each other. Liberl is, overall a peaceful country. I mean, even its aristocracy relinquished their titles peacefully. This also achieves that when the game becomes more darker, it's disruption is seen more directly like a stain on a bright white cloth attracts more attention than large amount of dirt on a grayed out one.
• Third, this really what sells the narrative of the game. No matter how lighthearted, even cheesy the game can come across, inherent belief in people makes its optimism grounded and even realistic. It's easy to get idealistic when your game revolves around only few characters and when you can look at isolated cases which is deliberately built to make player think in a certain way. But by basing it's optimism into a real source we can both relate and continuously search in our everyday lives, people. When people stand together every crisis can be solved, any adversary can be defeated, no matter how mysteriously and inhumanly strong they are.

Mixing Up Dark and Light

All this is well and good, but you need events to redeem from to talk about redemption. Despite how optimistic the game is overall, when the game takes its own gloves, it really does get dirty, on a personal level, without any shock value from graphics, just through character's deeply relatable issues. How well the game is able to play with your mood, and how it can talk about child abuse realistically and make you read a book about how to talk to cats in the same game is achieved with such tricks:

• Gameplay rhythm. Dungeon exploration+battle/story/some quest cycle really gives a breather room to the events. The pacing of narrative is just dense enough to give you tension and relaxed enough to fit to gameplay speed and give place to warm, funny, wacky side events.
• Relatedly, the progression of events also fits the change of moods. The game starts very humbly, as a very low-tension adventure which might feel slow to some players, but how the game increases the tension is important to achieve an emotional balance and keep the optimistic air, and when you stay around enough to game becoming truly serious, it will pay all the more because you spend so much time with characters, twists feel all that impactful when the game made you use to the peaceful atmosphere, your adventure feels truly grand when you actually went to your more low-key everyday life.
• This combines with good character writing, and especially good minor NPC writing, it really feels good, as if you are in a slice-of-life story sometimes, great adventures are cool but, sometimes personal stories even small anecdotes can feel tingle your heart-strings. Sometimes you just want to laugh and cry alongside them. Even saving country can feel just a part of witnessing character's lives rather than "main important thing"
• The length of the game also contribute to this. Personally I like dense, to-the-point stories quite a lot, content-oriented narrative design in contemporary gaming started to feel old when I spent 100+ hours on Skyrim. But here, extra content feels all the better, not only Liberl is a nice place to be in and the characters are interesting enough to spend more time with them, everything you do feels so integrated, from gameplay, to quests. Also the harmony between different elements in the game makes everything you do much more connected and less just for the sake of game, or even worse padding. It's really delightful to see that the developer's actually respected to the players times and was careful to make your every action meaningful whether that action is slaying snails, talking to a minor NPCs in a house, fishing mini-game or uncovering a massive conspiracy. Trails games are one of the few series that is so long - each passes 60+ hours - and deserves every single of hours it demands.
• Of course, we can never discount music. The soundtrack truly excels at guiding your mood, as I talk here.

The End of The Arc

These three main pillars serve to really serve to make all the redemption arcs (the game as a whole is a redemption arc, will just throw that one out) effective, rewarding and warm. And in turn, the importance given to redemption feeds into the optimism itself, rather than relying on "inner good" or "inner evil", the game values being better over anything else, which also really ups the quality of character writing; the characters are really the product of their environments as much as their inner personalities. This is above all else, what makes the game truly uplifting. At its core, Trails in The Sky series is a long poem to praise the human heart.
When a piece of media wants explore the human society and still come of as idealistic, how can you achieve it? Most media will just lean on status-quo, which makes either their exploration or their idealism superfluous. So the other path is embracing ugliness in its totality, like in A Song of Ice and Fire series, and still be careful to not to give in cynicism and overall be hopeful about change. But, as we saw here you can make your shine like a sun and still keep your vision open. Trails in the Sky might not have the sharpest political commentary, but it makes you feel good, it makes you hopeful. This fundamental feelings often miss today when so much of media devotes themselves to "greater" issues, genuine warmness is just as much as art as deep ideas, and one a lot of people needs more.

Trails in the Books

All video games perhaps save for the oldest arcade and Atari 2600 games, wanted to have a world coherent at least on a basic level, mostly to make the gameplay feel more engaging. But soon settings that existed for their own sake started to emerge, at the same time when role-playing video games started to emerge out of tabletop games. As their offshoot JRPGs too enjoyed a great deal of world-building themselves. however, while never quite above "throwaway" worlds, the worlds of most JRPGs (honestly most games outside of some westerTrails in the Battlefieldn RPGs) stayed tied heavily to narrative, where the world mostly born and died at POV character's journey. This isn't a bad thing of course, Undertale isn't a lesser game because we don't know the creation story of monsters or the biography of the Annoying Dog.
But Trails in the Sky had different concerns. It wanted a world that felt truly alive and it didn't want it just for fancy advertising like many games do today or even appeal better to lore nerds like me. Even the world itself serves the themes of the games. Now, let's look at this world,  what methods the series used for presenting it. Once again, my main interest will be the first two games.

Linearity and Progression of Time

It is generally assumed that if you want true world-building you have to make your game open-world. After all, it is an easy way to let people explore the world, see the world in its organic way. But when doing this, they often sacrifice the feeling of time. And static medieval or highly technologically advanced settings don't exactly help. In Trails in the Sky on the other hand, the world is truly moving on.
In Zemuria, the continent game passes on, an event called "Orbal Revolution" occurs 50 years before the story starts, a phenomena which mirrors the Industrial Revolution, but with a source much more efficient and easier to use than coal. By the start of the game, the whole continent is going through a massive change, new technologies are built everyday, old and new things are being used together. Feudalism is dying and getting replaced with a (highly idealized) capitalism.
The world of Trails in the Sky is also moving with the narrative too. Every time the main story progresses, majority of NPCs you can talk change their lines. Their lives are moving on and they react to things happening. This is something so many games with proclaimed alive worlds misses. It's not very important whether NPCs of Skyrim have daily routines or not for example, they always repeat their dialouge: People in their town may die, a dragon may attack their city, a major civil war can happen, you can be in 150 hours into them, people are still saying same things. What Trails in the Sky did with its dialogue is a heavily daunting task of course and it's far less marketable than a city that looks alive for the first five minutes you are in, but just like with the soundtrack it's that excessive effort what makes the series truly special.
And there is also little touches, like minor changes in scenery, newspaper that narratives the current events, books that look like random stories but actually are related to the events in the game are just icing on the cake. Time progresses and the world changes, in both miniscule and gargantuan ways possible, all thanks to careful linear design.

The Role and Impact of Main Characters and NPCs

The main purpose of heavy world-building in a video game is giving the sense that world is larger than player's story, that it exists when player looks away. This is often conflicted by the desire of making the player character feel the most important and powerful, which implications is rarely even mentioned.
In Trails of the Sky however, player characters are not the strongest and this is made very clear. Even with all you achieved at the end of the second game, you are far from something that brought down gods, quite the opposite, your victories are not just spoils of a few people, the achievements belong to at least several dozen people, and partially to all of the country. This doesn't invalidate anything you do, far from it, the series is a better power fantasy than actual power fantasies, main characters are truly aware of their capabilities and see the impact they are making. The player controls both exceptional and totally ordinary people at the same time. Not only this feels more empowering with a sense of scale, it also avoids the questions like "How would characters just turn back to simple lives when they are able to slay strongest creatures in the universe?"
This is tied of the two themes of the series: Solidarity and everyone having their own stories. The second theme is also why the game has so much dialogue. Majority of NPCs, no matter how trivial they may look have their own stories. Their dialouge usually doesn't serve the player or main story.  They talk about their own lives. Daily stuff, sometimes reacting to events, sometimes a little problem. The dialouge in this game is, simply put, frickin' excellent. NPCs have so much character, considering just how many of them are in story. The game is able to avoid the feeling of exposition dump, finding subtle ways to tell about the world and it's pass. They are more memorable than some main characters than in some games. In fact, they are a bit too good, they become the standard I search for in games, which unfortunately most don't deliver.
Playing this series made me realize how important NPC dialogues are. They are the single most important thing for world-building in my opinion, more than having highly detailed 3D cities, models with high polygon count, voice-actors... they can be all top-notch, but if your NPCs still repeat one line for the entire game like it's 1980s, your worlds will never get rid of feeling gamey.

Gameplay Integration

I talked about how battle system interacts with the setting here, so I'll talk about quest design in this game instead. While the game is linear, it does provide some freedom with its sidequests. They are often lighter on quest design, just beat this enemy or bring that item, but they have much more narrative substance. They are designed to encourage player to visit most places and talk with NPCs as much as possible, the main purpose of them often is to give a chance to observe NPCs' lives. You will also get items, recipes and even some secret quests. The devs made sure that players would want to go through all that dialogue they wrote. And, they were succesful, at least on me. It's one of the few series that I wanted to 100% complete, not out of getting a Steam achievement, but a far greater reward of experiencing more of that quality writing and getting a little more of from the world.
The Visuals 
The games use 3D models plastered onto isometric 2D backgrounds. They look both aesthetically pleasing, detailed and just abstract enough to have entire dialogue on text without being weird at the same time. The art direction is able to give the feeling they want. Homely, classical, industrial, breathtaking, alien, ancient... While the game is light on animation outside of battles and doesn't use environmental storytelling too much, when it does use it, it's successful.

(image from https://lparchive.org/The-Legend-of-Heroes-Trails-in-the-Sky/Update%2026)

(image from http://www.trailsinthesky.com/sc/welcome.html)

(the image is my screenshot)

The Music

I talked extensively about how music affects the setting here. I once again stress it's something you should experience for yourself.
Trails in the Sky has more than a decent narrative and story. They certainly didn't have to go to this effort, yet they did, just like they did with the music. But putting that effort distinguishes great games from good ones.

Trails in the Battlefield

Turn-based battle systems are pretty much as old as role-playing video games themselves, and still holds an important place among gameplay mechanics with their unique strengths and weaknesses. This article will examine these unique qualities while looking at Trails in the Sky series in-depth, how well the games play into the system's strengths and avoid its pitfalls. Please note that I will mostly talk about First Chapter and  Second Chapter here, as I didn't finish The Third yet.

The Battle Rhythm

Obviously turn-based battles can't feel intense or fast like an action battle, but such a direct comparison misses that turn-based systems have a rhythm of their own, at least they should be. Most design improvements on turn based battling have been about creating and fine-tuning a unique rhythm. So, let's look at how this rhythm is created and maintained in Trails in the Sky games.

• Fast transitions: As soon as we crash into an enemy the battle starts, no long whoosh effects, no long introductions. Quitting battles is easy the same way. Just a short victory pose then statistics slide in, then the battle ends. And thanks to coming out to PC more than ten years ago, loading times are almost non-existent, controls and menus are responsive and smooth. While being a technical issue rather than design, loading times can really render a turn-based game unplayable, as seen in infamous PS1 port of Final Fantasy 6.
• Quick moves: Battles themselves are quick as entering them. No normal move, whether enemy's or yours, take more than 2-3 seconds, even special moves take 10-20 seconds at best, and in later versions of the game they are even skipable! Furthermore, battle animations feel smooth and lively. Although unskipable absurdly elaborate moves has their own charm, a good battle rhythm is definitely invaluable.
• Losing battles and loading is easy: Long game over sequences are real pace-brakers, and while this might be beneficial sometimes, it kills the rhythm when you have a high amount of short battles and sadly it still is very common in famous turn based RPGs. Trails in The Sky on the other hand has a 3-seconds of game over screen which is followed by an option to restart the battle or loading an old save! If player wants to take a break and reflect, they can do that as long as they wish, and start battling as soon as they want! Additionally, you can save and load anywhere you want and very few enemies have more than one form, making the game both very humane and much easier to pick up, despite it's very high amount of dialogue.
• Battles are fair and right amount of challenging: You can see the order of moves and how many turns a move will cost in a sidebar. You can also see when a luck based event will happen, such as critical hit or HP restore. You can manipulate your luck by timing yourself correctly or bypassing the move order with your special moves! You can see enemy's elemental weaknesses easily and unlike a lot of RPGs, using bad status moves is highly encouraged and you have a fair chance of preparing against enemies' bad status moves. You can access all information regarding battles with an in-game guide. Healing is not very difficult and game makes you aware when an important battle is close. All of these feature ensures bad surprises rarely screw you over and combined the easy loading, it really takes a lot of chore out of difficult battles. 
• Lack of Hit Sponges: Even in higher difficulties you will rarely have a "Die already!" moment, you are sometimes even encouraged to finish enemies as soon as possible, not by an external timer but through the design of enemies themselves. This is one of the things that can go unappreciated unless you experience hit sponges yourself, such as more than a few enemies in Final Fantasy 10, and all story bosses in Persona 4.
• Good Level Design: While some dungeons are fairly maze-like, most of them are kinda simple. But this simplicity adds to the rhythm of the game. You can see the enemies on-screen allowing you to ambush or bypass them as you like. You have a decent moving speed and dungeons never overstay their welcome,  especially large dungeons have adequate warp systems and you can usually retreat from dungeons fairly easily.
• Easy Grinding: The amount of experience you get scales inversely with your level, which means lower-level characters will level up easily and you will be soft-blocked at certain point, which gives you a nice indication whether you are good enough to fight the next boss. Money and items will be just in right amount as well, you will get valuable items while exploring the dungeon and if you fight enemies at a normal pace, you are quite ready for the important fights. Grinding is even easier with specific hard-to-defeat monsters giving you absurd amount of experience and sepith(the stones you get your magic from). Even in very high difficulties, you will rarely need to walk around just to level up more.
• Music: As I analyzed in-depth here, the music in this game, adds so much to the rhythm of the battles. For a negative example, we can look at Final Fantasy 10, where while a good track, main battle theme just feels too grand and starts to wear on you for the quick encounters game wants, and despite vivid and lively animations, the battles feel too slow.

Of course, with regards to the battle rhythm, you can also take a complete opposite approach. You may want to make sure every enemy encounter feels memorable, battles are slow and methodic, and player is open to bad surprises, but you will only have a few dozen battles over the course of the game.  This approach is used frequently in tabletop-based RPGs. Dynamic frequent battles and methodic sporadic battles both work very well, depending on the game but please commit to one of them fully.
The only potentially pace-breaking element might be Craft Points. They are used for character specific moves and high damaging special moves. Unlike health and magic however, CP doesn't easily filled by healing. Instead it is mainly filled by attacking and getting hit, which nudges people to fight and grind, and is fairly well at it too, but it ended making avoid using CP outside of boss battles most of the times. Thankfully, as series went on, more ways of restoring CP was introduced.

Versatility, Tactics and Challenge

Turn based battle system allows you to simply focus on thinking, you can easily turn battles into puzzles and create deep system involving a lot of numbers. The pitfall here is it can be either too complicated to the point of requiring material outside of the game, or the game might be too simple that simply using your greatest attack and occasional healing are only things you do entire game. (Pokémon is a marvelous example of falling into both pitfalls at the same time.) Of course, how challenges and how complex your system should be depends a lot what type of rhythm you want your system have.
In Trails In the Sky, you have three type of moves; default attack(which is not a throwaway), Crafts, skills that are unique to character and Arts, modular magic spells similar of Materia in Final Fantasy 7. Although characters have different limitations on what type of Arts they can use, the system achieves both giving players a lot of options and making every character feel truly unique.
Arts themselves are interesting because unlike most games, high-sepith magic doesn't usually result in higher damage, it increases the area of spells and gives different status effects. This means the fireball spell from the beginning of the game is often just as useful against late game bosses. Early Crafts too, usually don't become useless as time goes on. So, pretty much you are compelled to think about utility vs. cost whenever you are using a spell. When the time cost also enters the equation, especially boss battles selecting which moves to make isn't a trivial question. You also really don't have huge attacks that destroys bosses in several hits, you need to be efficient in your resources, using status effects actively is encouraged.  The system overall works very well except in three cases.

1. Some spells aren't just worth it. They are improved or just removed all together as the series went on.
2. "The Earth Wall" spell might be broken. You see, it's a spell that makes all of your characters under a small area immune to one attack, any kind of attack.  On the one hand, If you can be fast enough, you can just spam that spell and make even the most terrifying enemies unthreatening. On the other hand, if you don't use that spell some bosses might be really difficult, especially on higher difficulties. The designers knew how to get around that spell and some fights are still hard with that spell too, but it can make a non-trivial amount bosses a cakewalk. Yes, they improved on this too.
3. Chain crafts don't work. It's a system that allows more than one character to attack at the same. It's cost is too high to be actually useful. It looks like the prototype of a similar and better system that was used in the later games.

Overall, I would say in terms of difficulty, First Chapter is alright, Second Chapter is challenging, especially if you go for full completion. Third is from what I have played so far, might be the hardest Trails games and one of the most difficult JRPGs I have played, designers went really all out to test the player, however the game is still pretty fair. Most importantly all three games just feel good to overcome, it's one of the few games that made me want to go for the hardest difficulty.

Abstraction

Now, let's think about what we are actually doing in turn based battles: We can use swords, bows, machine guns, football ball, baseball bat, chair... We may fight against wolves, enemy warriors, zombies, mythical monsters, deities, manifestation of emotions, houses, pots, pirate ships, toys, cacti... We can also utilize things like elemental magic, psychic powers, can summon planes to blast the entire area, throw cookies that hit way too much damage, can simply withstand planet destroying attacks... 
What I am getting at here is reminding you how outright bizarre can turn-based battling can be and how well we all accept this. Even today, it is incredibly difficult and hardware-demanding to simply develop a real-time battle system that can allow such events, and impossible to looking outright absurd while doing it. This is the price of being highly visceral, we want to feel like we are in the battle. Turn-based battles can instead simply hide in abstraction, despite the graphical quality, it can simply leave the messy details to the player's imagination.
A good example of the stark difference in perspective can be seen in Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind. You can attack from first person perspective but still may miss your attacks despite visually hitting the target. "Missing belongs to a tabletop RPG", players often say when complaining about Morrowind, they exactly mean such abstractions belong to a turn based(or at least a pausable real-time) battle system.

For JRPGs, Trails in The Sky games are surprisingly down to earth. While especially Special Crafts can give a nice spectacle, neither you or your enemies are too absurd. The well balance the games have allows them to achieve something often misses from JRPGs.

Integration into Setting and Narrative.

It is often said that turn-based battles simply feel too detached from the story. Although it is not true that the designers don't try to mitigate or circumvent this, it's not a unvarranted criticism either. Abstraction, when mishandled, can become a great pitfall from the games, it might make player feel like battles don't have a presence in the game world.
Games have different ways to avoid this pitfall: In Shin Megami Tensei games, battles are often set in partially or entirely fictional worlds that has necessary conditions to be able manifest them. Final Fantasy 4 have humble enough battles that make sense for their worlds. In Undertale, everything is so well-integrated that even abstraction make sense.
In Trails in The Sky series, characters sometimes use Arts and Crafts outside of cut scenes and act like they would in battles. This is such a small but effective measure to make battles part of the universe. In Trails universe, it's totally natural that people gain powers like jumping several meters in the air to cut the enemy just by training, just as natural as they have hair colors like purple. And its magic has an already important place in the lore.
This makes establishing narrative place of battles quite easier. Young adventurers as protagonists is a well-known RPG cliché, but it is a cliche for a good reason. It's a safe but sure way to ensure characters have energy, free time and reason to fight so many random monsters and leveling up to have narrative weight. In Trails in the Sky games, your protagonists are not only young adventurers but they are also trying to become a part of an organization which composed of adventurers defeating monsters and protecting people.
A good example of failing at this is Final Fantasy 10. The battles and story are really neatly completely separated outside of story battles, almost nothing that happens in battles has a weight in setting(Except in the style - For example Wakka using a Blitzball ball because he plays Blitzball) Having random battles, leveling up, various mini games, secret bosses, item hunting have nothing to the story of going on a tragic pilgrimage to stop the impending apocalypse. As much as I love RPGs and turn based battling, I have to say Final Fantasy 10 might have worked even better as a non RPG.
Is this really that important? Yes it is, even outside of me being a huge nerd, it is important. The mistakes in Final Fantasy 10's design are standard practices in AAA games now. Look at yearly big-title releases. They all have to have "RPG mechanics", you need to have "content". So much content, so many mechanics, "so much thing to do", like a kitchen sink. Indie games on the other hand keep reminding us well-focused design is important and how well games can be when every part of the game works in harmony. The difference in design perspective are the reason I tried to complete every quest the Trails in The Sky series and bypassed most of the side content in 3D Final Fantasy games.
No game mechanic should be added to a game, without a clear objective and consideration of how well they integrate into the other parts of the game. And turn based battle systems should be approached with this seriousness, because they can achieve much more than being "the thing you put when you make a handheld or mobile RPG".
(screenshots mine)

Trails in The Hymns

Dungeon-crawling turn based story RPGs(Which I mean most JRPGs but this is more descriptive and I will use JRPG when I mean that) put generally a lot more attention and effort on music over other games. This is not just about the individual quality of the soundtrack, they put a lot of effort into how much the music is vowen into the experience itself. I see a couple of reasons for such a focus:

• They demand a lot of time from player. Not only overall playtime easily can pass 60 hours, Gameplay loops have longer intervals,each can last minutes and are distinct from each other. Explore the area, go into a battle, repeat for grinding, bosses, story progression in between, rinse and repeat. Which means you will listen most of the soundtrack repeatedly and for a longer time. The music needs to be kept you on the mood and not be tiresome.
• The usually low action, low attention demanding nature of the games puts music forward.
• In especially older ones, more minimalist 2D or primitive 3D graphics, lack of cinematography outside of cut scenes, lack of voice acting and extensive sound design puts the music even more forward as music has to handle most of the atmosphere.
• The above reasons is why they have to use silence and low-key background music quite sparingly.

Contrast it with a fast action game, that has very short intervals of fighting, moving and item management that easily blends for each other. High action puts music into the background and. You only need music to differentiate between levels or specific conditions, such as a boss fight with a high spectacle. No matter how excellent the soundtrack is it doesn't get much attention on itself, because music blends into the action, it can feel replaceable. But in a JRPG, music can define the scene, the atmosphere, the setting itself.
When game devs actually put this much focus and nails it, not only it results in a feast for the ears, it elevates the game experience beyond better polish. Despite years after playing it, I can't separate any scene from Final Fantasy 7 from music that plays at that moment, even when I don't enjoy that specific track that much in itself.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails in The Sky games are in many ways classic JRPGs which perfectly embody such a design focus. Let's listen some pieces together and examine:





























https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCzkJ1PfFMg&list=PLPDoxoGA-MPQX6G_praYBdPDpM4VEbvdR&index=57
This piece itself says so much.  It sets up the overall tone of the soundtrack; violins and light guitar rhythms dominate this game, sometimes helped up by piano, trumpets and flutes. It almost summarizes the game itself; An humble, optimistic adventure in a peaceful country, without any grand narrative. Compare this with the Second Chapter's menu theme.



























https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WH51t8SNmU
It trusts on the player's familiarity with the setting(as it really doesn't make sense to play this one first), so instead it just gives a slow, not glooming, but incredibly bright mood. It reflects the wide contrast between two game's moods, instantly reminding the player of the overall situation.
Now, let's look at the battle theme. This is the most important theme of the game, as you will hear the most, no matter how amazing some other pieces are, the game just won't feel right.
























https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHpzhJ5O2Cs&list=RDxHpzhJ5O2Cs
Oh. my . Gosh. This is just perfect.  Dumms, little piano beats and whistle like flutes flow with battles perfectly,  it never gets old even when you listen it the millionth time. It's lively, doesn't intend you make you feel powerful and it's even a little relaxing! It delivers your purpose of battling so elegantly: Rookie teenagers trying to become better; just like you, they grind, learn and grow on the road just like you do. It also reflects the light-hearted nature of the fights. The monsters you fight aren't scary or most of the time aren't that malicious, you aren't trying to survive with all your might, and while the game is not 100% consistent about this, you aren't even killing the monsters most of the but, but regardless main character is having fun while battling, just like you. If you can guess it, I love this song so much, it's one of my favourites, not just because it sounds great, but just how much it synergies with the game!
Most music in the game enhances the narrative's mood at that moment, but there are some music that can wake you up in a split second. Let's have a look:




















https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VROFKShvlw4
It instantly gives a feeling of urgency and being cornered, that's right, it's the music when you get low health at battle, and if I recall correctly, it can play in almost every type of battle. It is just breaking into the scene, telling you should worry and it can do this without being annoying, unlike, say, annoying low health sound of Pokemon. And it's structured in such a way, after the beginning fast notes, flute and piano starts to make an energetic dance right until along 1:20, then the notes rises up again to remind you once more you should do something quickly. When you quit the song get back into the normal battle theme or even boss themes, it feels just more relaxed and you feel a little more okay.
When our fight is done, what happens, we gotta celebrate it of course! Some games can saturate their victory themes too much and some do too short that loses most of its energy after first few seconds. So let's listen:
















https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkF1YfiWjeA&t=3s
It flows with he victory screen perfectly. Trumpets congratulate you while character is doing their victory pose, then it switches to proud by low-key enough tune that blends with the sounds of counting your experience, items and leveling up.
Now let's look at some examples of the series making their cities alive:













https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGTldvD3PZk
Rolent is the first city you see in the game, it's a fairy small and mostly quiet city. It fills you with a sense of familiarity and belonging. A safe place unlike in every other city where something grows wrong. I love the dialogue of the flute and violin here, while guitar just chills in the background. It's relaxing and lively at the same time.











https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fr1uU9iKRZk
This is a classic sea-side themed music but it has the soundtrack's touch that makes it truly energetic.  The clicks and low-key chorus chants mix so well together to provide a great atmosphere full of wonder and energy, which part cities feel like when they aren't full of traffic, noise and pollution.









https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cANh9TZGalM
You wouldn't expect the capital of a monarchy to be so humble, but I guess when the country is so peaceful and humble itself, it's bound to happen. The music really gives the feeling of an old, classic style city, but without any grandeur, it's still down to earth
Obviously while we are traversing between cities, we need to use the roads. How exactly Trails expresses this in music?







https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnlX39kvWwg
By now, you probably understand I have a violin bias but just listen... It's so great capturing the feeling of adventure. This is especially important because the roads don't have the most complicated level design, yet you can still remember them by the music alone. Two young adventurers, with various people tagging along with them traversing around country to solve problems. This is the music of their growth and little memories of their footprints and it happens to be one of the best road themes ever.
And now, let's look at something that feels completely different.





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gmX63w55Zw
Towers are a cliché in JRPGs, but in Trails in the Sky they feel so out-of-place and deliberately so. They are unlike anywhere else you visit in the series, besides some quests that just happens to be there, they feel so unconnected to everything and this sentiment is shared by people who live in the setting. They feel so mysterious and alien. And if you want to make a song about strange, slightly creepy but awe-inspiring towers, yeah, you need to study this. It's amazing that a soundtrack that is so warm and peaceful across the board excels at feeling so alien and startling, in more than a few tracks too. Especially in Trails in the Sky Third, they were able to make a soundtrack out of mostly mysterious songs and still make them perfectly memorable as everything else.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpjEJD4pcwI&t=2s
The first time you hear this music, you are in a dense forest, just somewhat away from your home town. Monsters are stronger than usual, fixed camera angles and large trees makes it hard to see. It's generally dangerous, stressful and confusing place and unlike anywhere you have visited so far. Just another instance of Trails in the Sky OST  perfectly blending with story progression and level design. Unfortunately it doesn't work as well second time you use it, when you are on a passage in the woods, the monsters aren't that threatening and you just walk a straight path in a hurry, the song' s effect greatly diminishes. Still it keeps the spirit of the wild forest intact and a few other times it is used, it's more succesful again.
While classic-style violins dominate the game,  a few times it switches to rock. And ok, I will spare you the obvious pun but, it's great!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ok9bzDzaS0
One of the best battle themes ever, precisely because it has so much weight in the story. Main characters are fighting in tough battles that has deep personal connections to them, with enemies unlike they have encountered with yet so familiar. It directly contrasts to the themes of peace and forgiveness, dictates that you cannot escape the fighting, you have to face them, here and now. The song paces itself to the rhythm of the battle nicely, when it hits the 1:30 mark and changes tone, the enemy is likely doing their special move, which amplifies the feeling of dread unless you are prepared. One of the clear advantages of turn based battle system is that allows room for such dominating tracks, In an action game Fateful Confrontation would be little more than cool rock strings.
As they consist of three long RPGs, the soundtrack of Trails in The Sky series is deservedly huge and has too many great examples of narrative and atmosphere building songs. Examining them all is simply out of my reach but you still ought to treat your ears by some great pieces: Blood-pumping A Challenger Invited, bleak and ominous The Black Orbment,  mysterious but silly Peace Given By Darkness, violin's total conquest of all senses The Merciless Savior, the fighting for survival in an unknown world Determination of Fight. and the series' signature song which deserves a small article on its own, Silver Will. Of course they shine the brightest while you are playing them and you shouldn't miss out on that experience! And Let's hope that more games will care about the relation between music and the other parts of the game beyond presentability.