Grinding

 

I define grinding as “repetitious combat whose primary goal is to increase various statistics about a character ”. It is most commonly associated with RPGs; Players grinding for character levels, items or currency is a natural part of these games. Here, I will discuss some bad and good examples, with various other aspects of a game related to grinding, like experience systems, side bosses, combat systems and so on. Spoilers for Undertale, Persona 3/4, Trails, Withcher 3 ahead, only discussed as minimally as possible.

Definition

Dragon Quest(1986) has set the basic template for console RPGs. Games made of same cloth are somewhat simplistic in terms of mechanics and presentation. The main activity in those games is to get through various dungeons and grind a lot to defeat the next set of enemies. The games not only require grinding, but it is the bread and butter of these games. On the discussion of games, “grinding” is sometimes used to refer any amount of dungeon exploration, or exclusively in a derisive way. In contrast, my definition of grinding is more useful, as when I say a game “requires grinding” or “grindy”, it means the game asks or heavily incentives the player to spend a non-trivial amount of time to engage in repetitious encounters for a certain reward, and for some games, this is part of the appeal.

Emphasizing the appeal of grinding helps us to distinguish it from “padding”, where the game slows down player’s progress arbitrarily. Certainly, badly implemented grinding might feel like padding but the earnestness is the key distinction: Grinding Magikarp or Abra in Pokémon Red(1995) might be rather monotonous, but it clearly is designed to foster a “training hard to get strong” mentality. More cynical designs grind the game to halt to compensate for lack of content, likely because of troubled development. Or something far worse, strong arm them into buying microtransactions. I have nothing but contempt for this kind of design. Some say “Oh it’s not a big deal. Actually it’s kind of nice to get some experience boost”. No! The game is designed to require the boost! It is the worst gaming design trend alongside with making the players gamble with real money. Ever. I will never entertain it as an artistic decision. Stuff like this doesn’t require much discussion, moving on...

Also, while grinding is no doubt an important part of MMOs, everything here pertains to single player only, because I don’t play multi-player RPGs. My brief experience with them is not very good and many of them also guilty of “skip grinding for money” nonsense, but they feel like a whole separate realm on their own and deserve more than my limited viewpoint.

Avoiding Grinding

As games became more sophisticated, they began to reduce or outright minimize grinding, instead moving towards rewarding player’s ingenuity or softening the gameplay to put the rich story or presentation in the center stage. Final Fantasy 7(1997) is an example of both; there are lots of items, spells, special moves that turns the game into a joke; but even without going all out to become god-like powerful, the game is quite gentle, as it is very focused on telling a grand cinematic story, filled with lots of set pieces and mini game. (In other words, it is the prestige game of it’s time) Some games tightly control how much player can progress. In a character-oriented RPG like Fallout: New Vegas(2008), overwhelmingly large portion of experience points and valuable items are gained from quests, combat exhausts non-trivial resources and the player can make a character that can get out of situations without (much) combat. Witcher 3: Wild Hunt(2015) is constructed very similar sans having non-combat builds, but in this case the approach fails and renders the game bereft of any sense of progression. There is a skill tree, but it mostly offers minor stat bonuses: Geralt(the player character) can make their force shield slightly bigger and start to breathe fire at thirty hours in, not exactly the most exciting thing in a fantasy game. In F:NV, leveling up gives cool perks and gimmicks like: getting stronger with radiation, being able to carry a lot, splattering enemies into guts or unlocking gay energy. In contrast, Witcher 3 feels like it is an RPG only to justify its huge open-world, Geralt starts an ace monster hunter and remains an ace monster hunter; what do levels even convey to the player?

Some games use intuitive leveling systems to nudge the player away from grinding too much. Trails/Kiseki series are quite great at this. The amount of experience earned in a battle is much higher if the characters are at lower levels. Conversely, after passing a certain threshold, fighting similar enemies will start to yield a much lower amount of experience. This is quite easy to follow because the experience gained may drop to half just after going up one level for example. Players are spared from worrying about being under or overleveled both.

Some games even turn into a mini-game of its own. It’s fairly common to have special enemies which are tricky to find or defeat but will yield a lot of experience points if done so. Dragon Quest has the famed “metal slime”, Trails in the Sky: FC(2004) has a creature named “pom”. A different and more energetic approach can be found in Trails of Cold Steel(2013). During a battle the game rewards certain actions with experience point multipliers: Doing combos, hitting multiple enemies at once, being first one to hit, using weaknesses etc. This is a really great way to making players seriously pay attention to regular battles without making them excruciatingly difficult.

Some games employ a set of measures to dissuade or outright prevent the player from grinding. In Persona 3(2007), players get through a singular, humongous dungeon. However, it is not open to exploration in its entirety from the start, instead it is gradually opened as the story progresses. Spending too much time in the dungeon will literally make the characters tired and insisting to continue on will make them sick, making them unable to come to dungeons for a few in-game days entirely. At times, they will refuse to come along for personal reasons. Also, in-game days have limited time slots and there are often other activities to do instead of going to dungeons. Ideally, the player should go to dungeon only when it’s necessary. This makes sense narratively too, as the dungeons are not exactly pleasant to be in, conveyed both by it’s visual design and characters talking of it’s oppressive, sickening atmosphere. To ensure that players won’t feel pressured to grind too much, before the day of mandatory story fights, the characters will not complain about being tired; so that players have always a last-minute chance of grinding as they want. Also, the mandatory fights will be always easier than their counterparts in the dungeon. Therefore, being able to reach the limit imposed by the story will ensure that players are more than capable for the story fights.

Level-scaling is a common anti-grinding feature: Instead of enemies becoming stronger as the game progresses, they become stronger as the player gain levels. In theory, it allows a consistent level of challenge without players being too strong or needing to grind. Unfortunately, this method is often implemented in rather problematic ways:

• A common issue is that games do not tell that they have level-scaling. Players can often divine it only when it becomes too late. Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion(2006) is quite egregious because of this. The game has a overly complicated (or insufficiently explained) class/skill system. It’s quite possible to end up with a underpowered character because of this. It doesn’t help that there are a lot of at-best-situationally-useful non-combat skills, even basic activities like running might cause the player to level-up depending on the build. [1]

• When the level-scaling makes the game more difficult on higher levels, some players avoid leveling. In Oblivion, there is a somewhat counter-intuitive[1] way to make a low-level build. In Final Fantasy 8(1998), mandatory fights do not yield experience points, so the method is to avoid non-mandatory fights as much as possible. Doing this makes the player unable to access certain content; in Oblivion some quests and powerful items are locked behind levels, in FF8, the player will only have access to basic spells. Ironically, level-scaling doesn’t even reduce grinding. In fact, it might even cause more grinding in Oblivion. [1] And in FF8, the time spent in battles do not really decrease because the player still needs to farm magic [2] from enemies, which is, quite frankly, much more monotonous than simply defeating monsters in battle.

• Fundamentally, level-scaling dampens the sense of becoming powerful. Things like turning a previously annoying adversary into a joke, seeing a previous boss demoted to a regular enemy, realizing that I am able to make just a little more damage are what makes RPGs so satisfying. Level-scaling also makes the game world feel more artificial, as it is quite obvious when random bandits start to wear golden armor just to match up with the player.

Level-scaling can be successful however. It works in Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim(2011) quite nicely as it is subtle enough to be not noticed by many people, I have learned its existence only after reading about it as well. First, instead of continuously growing stronger, enemies and dungeons have their own unique level ranges where the player can still be too weak(bears) or strong(basic undead) for them. Second, there is some degree of randomness so that occasionally the player might get weaker or stronger enemies. Third and perhaps most importantly, the game’s skill system is intuitive and the game is forgiving enough that players are unlikely to find themselves in a considerably disadvantageousbuild. (It also helps that Skyrim doesn’t really pretend that skills like “speech matters” at all). This results in a game truly beautiful in it’s simplicity. It’s kind of wonderful to just walk around the world without ever worrying about being prepared for a fight: If something is big and scary-looking or throws lightning bolts, all needs to be done is to go away and come back later. There are only a few end-game bosses that warrant any kind of planning, everything else just blends into one seamless adventure, it’s very likely that when player arrives somewhere they will be already strong enough to take whatever they encounter. The game can do this while also still being able to make the player that they are actually getting more powerful. This is a not a trivial achievement for such an open-ended game.

Harsher anti-grinding measures can be effective if the fantasy of becoming stronger can be achieved in other ways. Demon’s Souls(2009) and its sequels are among the few Action RPGs series where “action” and “RPG” parts are both important. While grinding is a long process with diminishing returns due to level-scaling, one way to beat any kind of enemy is just responding to their attack patterns. So, the game dilutes the more traditional, statistical progression of RPGs and puts the player’s gradual mastery of combat in its place. The game also features lots of different weapons and equipment, there are a lot of hidden ways to get really powerful. It’s also possible to summon NPCs or other players to help out with to deal with bosses. The game never outright forbids grinding but takes great lengths to make sure that the player adopts a mindset which rejects grinding and accepts challenges head on. Which would be absolutely dreadful to play personally, but it is quite interesting to watch how it affects other players’ behavior nonetheless.

As I discussed in previous posts, when a game has unconventional or counter-intuitive mechanisms it’s very important to seed the correct mentality in the player. Undertale(2015) is famously very anti-grind and this is woven into the very core of the game. Amazingly this doesn’t actually trivialize the combat in the game, player is merely guided against trying to gain experience and can only get the happiest ending if they avoid gaining experience entirely. If the player goes the opposite way however, they will find the that that they have rendered the area they are in completely devoid of life. If they choose to do this from very beginning and continue on the path of sin, the game will enter to a state of constant, dreary, bleak tone. Most encounters will be total pushovers, expect for exactly two. The first one, while isn’t that difficult, catches the players off-guard and more importantly makes it clear that player brought this upon themselves. The second, more famous,difficult encounter takes this up to eleven. While reportedly not being exceptionally tough for a regular of bullet hell games, it is still not only quite difficult for anyone who isn’t accustomed to, it is difficult in the most player-unfriendly ways. The game will begin the fight in the middle of a conversation, feign mercy, mock the player for dying and after a long fight abruptly stop to trick them into quitting. Moreover, every hit only causes 1 damage but they also drain all hit points until only 1 left, so health and armor is useless. The enemy has only 1 hit point, but they will evade all attacks until the very end, so attacks and weapons are useless. In other words, all grinding is utterly meaningless. And, if players persevere through this fight and reach to end of the game, all they are rewarded with is a blank space to stare into, have game crashing to desktop indefinitely or an offer to start the game anew (which by one interpretation, will not even cleanse the evil) The entire game is an elaborate joke on the very concept of grinding. However, it’s important that the game does not tut-tut the player for playing an undesired way but rather it challenges them to question their motivations: Did they reach to the end just because they could? Is that worth it? Perhaps grinding is actually a waste of time sometimes, perhaps not every game needs to be “completed”.

Side Content Grinding

Save for a niche section of games, RPGs of the 2000s and 2010s tend to allow players to get through the “main story” without too much hassle. They will rather put more time-wasting things on the side, such as things to collect; quests to finish, and of course, optional enemies to defeat. “The legendary epic sword of coolness” isn’t for defeating the final boss, that would be an overkill no, it is for the ultimate secret boss. Unfortunately, despite how I can enjoy long RPGs and grinding, Undertale is right about this kind of content: I am often unable to muster enough motivation to care about these extra bosses. They seem to only exist for the sake of completion with hardly any larger context. What does defeating “Emerald Weapon” mean in FF7, that problem fixes itself in the end anyway. Or “Dark Valefor” in Final Fantasy 10(2000) for that matter, it literally comes out of nowhere? Why bother with “Satan” in LİSA: The Painful(2014), he is just some dude whom the players will not even see unless they go out of their way to find him? Such extra bosses often drop remarkable loot but why would someone who already defeated the toughest enemy ever need that? They further serve to highlight how much this kind of content only exist to be bragged about; both for advertising “hours of extra content” and to satiate the drive of completionism alike.

In theory, if something is fun then it’s just fun but even modest embellishments can really make things quite interesting. “Death” from Persona 3 is a fun extra boss because of this: “Death” essentially serves to make sure that people won’t linger on the same floor for too long. It is not only visually striking with its imposing body and over-sized revolvers, but hearing its approach with growlings and rattlings of the chains on its body is appropriately eerie for a creature that will crush the player party easily for a long, long time. Towards the end of the game the player finally becomes barely strong enough to turn the tables on it. Sure, defeating it won’t change anything narratively but it is actually more thematic that way; after all “Death” is a manifestation of the fear of mortality, obviously it won’t go away completely. And, it just feels nice to get some personal revenge and have an opportunity to realize how far I have come. Facing death is what all characters do in P3, so it puts a neat bow on that theme too. More importantly, defeating it doesn’t require shouldering mountains, it only demands the correct strategy and some luck. It is also an interesting inversion of most extra bosses. Instead of being there to justify grinding, it rewards the ability to grind more when defeated. It unlocks extra floors of the dungeon. While it isn’t necessary for finishing the game, it’s still quite neat: It gives the player something to do in the last stretch[3] of the game, allows them to easily reach the level cap(addressing a pet peeve of mine) and gives the opportunity to access and use absurdly powerful end-game Personae[4]. This system both actively enables completionist players by rewarding their efforts by making the game easier to complete and can guide the usually-not-so-completionist- players(me) into completing the game just by just having fun naturally. In contrast, in Persona 4(2008), Death is just a hidden boss in the “new game plus”. It just exists, with no relevance to anything else in the game. Players can get a strong item by defeating it, I guess. Whatever. At least it makes a good showcase for the argument that, difference between a great and an alright game indeed lies in the details.

Another obstacle to create meaningful motivation to grind is that games tend to have narratives in conflict with the idea of grinding. Combat is often something that just happens to the characters, no matter how many is slain by character’s hands. Characters tend to be either against or indifferent to combat; and if the game has a serious narrative concerning loss of lives, explores non-violent solutions in its role-play or has a degree of urgency in regards to “saving the world”, it then feels quite dissonant to ask the player to take time to gather a hundred monster toes for the perfect armor. This is one reason why some RPGs feature eager, fledgling adventurers as their protagonist. Fighting repeatedly makes a lot of sense when the player’s party also enjoys doing them. In Trails In The Sky, fighting monsters is a part of main cast’s job and in Trails of Cold Steel, basic battles are an important piece in worldbuilding, showing that the authorities are neglectful in their promises of defense. A lot of characters in both series have a deep relationship with combat, everything from the weapons they use, why they fight, their strengths and weaknesses are all part of their character. When a character is able to jump in the air and do a cool sword move, that’s just part of the world. While it is obviously unrealistic, the series has mostly consistent and subtle rules on whether a battle will be deadly or not. Slaying gods is not uncommon in video games but they don’t usually explore as to what it means that main character is able to slay a god or single-handedly prevent an apocalypse. This actually weakens the power fantasy somewhat. It makes just a little more difficult to care about min-maxing stats, much less about actually taking on some random overpowered boss. In contrast,feats of main casts in Trails games feels much more impressive precisely because it's made clear that they are not even among the strongest warriors, they are just bunch of brave young people.

Combat

While motivation to grind is certainly important, it’s secondary to the quality of combat itself. The combat should avoid banality and hair-splitting difficulty both at the same time. Even a basic damage multiplier or rock-paper-scissor weakness system goes a long way to stop battles from being sleep-inducing. The stat gains by combat should be at a reasonable pace. Increasing levels or advancement in skills trees should give a palpable sense of improvement but also the overall time spent in combat loops should not be too long. Navigation in menus, the time it takes to execute commands (being able to automate them or turning off animations), the rate where the player needs to re-stock resources to continue grinding. Of course, as I discussed earlier, allowing player to be smart at leveling up certainly helps even when grinding is inevitable.

Let’s analyze Pokemon series from this viewpoint then. Motivation for grinding is implicit in the series: Whether the player desiring to just having a full team in the final story mon, training a late-found or new-born mons or preparing for competitive battling, one thing to be sure is that there is no convenient way to level up fast, some games allow to battle with same trainers more than once(which gives more experience than wild pokemon), there are some items which helps, traded mons also get experience faster but… overall, it’s quite slow. [5] It’s certain that if the player wants battle-ready mons, they will have to spend quite amount of time, defeating same mons over and over. The one alternative is to leave it them to day care and let them level up automatically as the player walks around the world but not only it’s quite limited and slow, it requires constant checks if the player doesn’t want to lose certain moves. [6] However, what makes grinding in Pokemon so dreadful is that not only the battles are so mindless, they also require frequent backtracking to recharge their moves. There isn’t even an auto-battle system. And sure, player can just watch or play something else when they are doing it but… why? Like I play Pokémon because, I want to battle with fun pocket monsters. Why I need to put hours and hours on this, why I can’t just catch something and have it be active member of my team without having nonsensical concerns? And people actually train mons for competitive battles, lots of ones, without using some sort of emulator turbo? This is probably my primary psychological block to play a Pokemon game. I just want to play with various different mons and have fun for couple of hours, that’s often impossible to do without using some kind of generator.[7]

Thankfully, newer generations made some improvements on this issue. The most important of them is that battles finally grant team-wide experience. Wow. On the one hand, it still has grinding, especially one is serious about competitive play. On the other hand, being able to grind six mons at once is still massive and more importantly, the player is now wholly free to experiment with different mons as they like.I am forever baffled at the people who whine about this. Oh, it is too easy, they say. Too easy. Tackling this aspect of the series is outside of this post’s scope, but for now, if I may, allow me to say this: I am still in utmost sadness and pain that Gayme Freak dumbed down this hardcore series for the peasants but having to level up a Beldum was never quite peak gameplay, so it’s not all that bad, dear gamers.

Conclusion

We have examined different approaches to tackle the question of grinding. Classic RPGs are very openly grindy, but they are understandably primitive in their design and this might make sheer monotonousness of such games rather hard to swallow. As the depth of mechanical, textual and audio visual elements have increased, games began to favor livelier and crunchier designs over long-term, gradual satisfaction. Some games have extensive side content, but they tend to be lacking in appeal. There are games with excellent combat mechanics, addictive game-loops or a narrative that strongly contextualizes gameplay but there really doesn’t seem to be any game that tries to strike at the very heart of grinding. There are repetitive games with astounding quality, but never a game has been astounding because of it’s repetition…

Well… no…

There is one….

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[1] On character creation, players picks certain skills as “major”, the other becoming “minor”. Skills are developed by using them, growing enough causes a level up and grants boots to the stats which are related to the skill player has developed. To prevent leveling, it’s possible to pick irrelevant skills as major, this way player can grind their skills while also keeping enemies weaker and don’t have to deal with keeping track of their skill growth. This might actually end up increase grinding because players will miss the starting boost to major skills, which can be rather problematic to magic-using characters.

[2] In Final Fantasy 8, the main method to obtain magic is to literally absorb them from enemies using “draw” command. Having magic is also the main way to boost the character stats, so having them maxed out is optimal for every character. Only a small amount can be drawn at a time so this process is quite long, especially if the player also uses the magic for attacking and needs to re-fill every so often.

[3] In last month of Persona 3, the only grand story event left is to wait for the last confrontation. The player is likely reach to end of the dungeon long before the month ends and has already completed most of the other side activities; often, only thing to do with free time is to skip to the next day. Given the rather melancholic tone in the game, having more dungeon to explore is a genuinely refreshing alternative.

[4] In the game, “persona” refers to the physical manifestation of one’s emotions, in the form of various mythological figures. Characters fight by summoning their personae

[5] For a detailed look: https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Experience

[6] Mons learn new moves on leveling up and can learn only four at a time. Normally, the game asks you to whether swap the new move with an old one, however; in day care, new moves are automatically sapped with older ones top to bottom. Recovering forgotten moves is not trivial, actually impossible in some cases, particularly in the older games.

[7] Aside from regular cheating devices, there is software called Pokegen which can create Pokémon, items and other stuff inside an existing save file. It’s rather fun to use, and especially useful to facilitate unusual playthroughs.

This article is written thanks to my dearest Patrons and special thanks to: Acelin, Laura Watson, MasterofCubes, Makkovar, Morgan, Otakundead , Sasha and Spencer Gill.

Game Difficulty

“Challenge” is not a inherent part of video games. Games can be toy-like, relaxing, simple, casual. Target demographic matters: It’s weird to complain that a game for children is child’s play. The hardware matters: It’s unfair to demand mouse-like precision when playing a console game. The design goals matter: Developers often rather have the players see end of a game. Challenge also cannot be separated from rest of the game design.: Some games are open-ended, focus on giving the player a lot of options. These games fundamentally rely on player agency, and have a hard time creating controlled environments for challenges, they are often more suited for self-imposed challenges. Nevertheless, a well-considered, tasteful level of difficulty can embolden core strengths of the gameplay, push the player out of their shell, and make them approach the game with a more sensitive eye that appreciates little nuances. It’s still good to have options however, because there is never a one-size-fits-all level of difficulty for everyone. There are also certain methods of difficulty that cause frustration more than not, and should best be left optional.

Medieval 2: Total War(2006) is dreadful to play on higher difficulties. All of your neighbors attack me on first opportunity, usually ignoring any other neighbors. When I try to play defensively and expand slowly, they will send armies over and over, there are times I have fought more than a dozen battles. It’s a most unwise way to play. The game isn’t unbeatable however, one just needs to play aggressively. The more aggressive, the better. The faster I conquer provinces, the more enemy becomes deprived from resources. I gain loot by capturing them and I get more taxes from new cities every turn, thus having even more armies to crush anything on my path. AI is completely helpless against this snowball effect. However, this isn’t too much fun either. This makes me too strong too early, and there is no time or need to use any sophisticated units. No guns, no heavy infantry, no elite archers. Just mercenaries, basic town units and general’s bodyguard can conquer the world. No need to any fun diversions like assassins, I can steamroll anyone before I can train one useful enough to kill a general. No need to care about religious mechanics or happiness in cities, I can just exterminate the population. No need to merchants, general traits, or most other mechanics. Even if I play recklessly and lose couple of cities, I can easily conquer more faster. The first time I did this, it was mildly enjoyable but the fact that I had to play like this every time made me soured any interest to play more in the future. Then, one day, I asked myself: “Why don’t I lower the difficulty?”. And I did. This made me finally remember why I liked the game so much once. I could play slow; develop large, bursting, happy cities and. build armies of elite soldiers. AI wasn’t obnoxiously aggressive and didn’t back-stab me in every chance. The game was pleasant, not stressful. I could play the way I wanted. I did not started any wars, merely retaliated, I released any prisoner I captured, never resorted the cruelty in conquered provinces. nurtured honorable and heroic generals. Diplomacy is bare bones in the game, but I still tried to keep my reputation as high as possible, because I could. I had so much fun when the game didn’t force me to optimize my behavior.

A common complaint about Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim(2011) is that the game is too easy, but such remarks hides the true grievances. There is a difficulty slider in the game, but the only thing it does is to punish the player for playing a magic-oriented build and make even the simplest encounter last 5 minutes. The game has difficult bosses, but the only real difference from easier ones is the amount of time they take to be defeated. As I have stated before, Skyrim is truly beautiful as a stroll in the forest. Whenever it tries to challenge however, it can only become a facsimile of better games. People don’t really complain that Skyrim is easy, they complain that it is a game that detests being hard. The fact that players and modders need to alter the gameplay so drastically to make the game even slightly challenging in the way most expect from similar games is a testament to the game’s inherent allergy towards difficulty.

In Trails of Cold Steel (began in 2013) series, the hardest difficulty "Nightmare" gives enemies more health and makes their attacks considerably more powerful. Protective abilities are costly and slow. Many bosses can heal themselves to full or make devastating attacks that pierce through any protective spell. If the characters are not fast enough, the enemies will get more turns and attack more. The only way to defeat the bosses is to be fast and strike hard as much as possible. Thankfully, the player can achieve really big combo attacks with correct builds. And, it works so well! The exhilarating rush of overwhelming the enemies with a well-planned chained of moves is superb, the game is able to create feeling of a flashy, bombastic arcade game within a turn-based combat system. Sure, it restricts the player options; as in one can’t approach the battles in the manner of classic RPG boss fights where the player slowly dwindles the enemy while trying to survive. This is perfectly fine, because the play style the game is pushing me is much more interesting. There are countless RPGs with “war of attrition” bosses. By punishing slow play, the game is able to guide the player into its unique and interesting features. And the beauty of difficulty options is such that, a player can always play on lower difficulties if it is too much for them. When it comes to linear gameplay, merely tweaking some numbers might be enough to make a game that’s just right for everyone.

A couple of difficulty modes can really enhance the game. I am bad at action games and when I saw Bioshock Infinite(2013)’s fast-paced, frantic gameplay, I knew I had to play the game on easy. And thankfully I did, it made the game quite tolerable overall, otherwise I cannot ever imagine tackling those sloppy gun-fights seriously. I like Starcraft(1998) quite a bit but, it’s Brood War expansion was way too brutal. There are no easy options, I am simply not good enough. And this is a inherent weakness of the games with unforgiving difficulty. A game won’t lose anything with having some cheats or a story mode. It will only win people who would otherwise give up on the game. Moreover, there is no reason to have the game resent the player for playing on easy. No locking main content behind harder difficulties, no fake endings, no mockery or passive-aggressiveness. Instead, it is much better to acknowledge and reward skillful play instead; with harder levels, enabling different ways of restrictions and so on. A game can’t and does not need to cater to everyone, but even a little seasoning can make it much more approachable to lots of people.

Beyond just different game modes, there are couple of noteworthy and, notorious patterns of difficulty I encounter in games:

Undoing huge amount of progress:

This is quite nasty. Old games did this a lot with limited lives, but the thing is, they were outdated even in Super Mario Brothers(1985). And that game was aware about this, it gave lots of extra lives and short-cuts so that players wouldn’t be too bothered by dying. I really like when games allow me to build to grow and be stronger, and don’t like when it demands me of re-take the challenges over and over to satisfy an arbitrary level of excellence. There is a case to be made about games with permanent death mechanic however. I am not too sure, because I have never played a game like that, but perhaps, because the game sets the player up for the end from the very beginning, it fosters a different kind of mentality than simply forcing them to making no mistakes. Otherwise, perfect runs can be offered as an optional mechanic.

Locking the ability to save:

I hate it, I really do. I should be able to save as much as I like, full stop. I don’t like checkpoints too, but I can tolerate them if they are numerous enough. This is the worst way to mess up with the player’s progress without openly trolling them. There is one fairly ubiquitous reason tampering with saves: To prevent “save-scumming”, in other words, loading old saves over and over to get a favorable outcome, as it usually bypasses the challenge to a certain degree. Here is my answer to this: Save-scumming is a response to faulty game design. It is usually not that fun. I would rather not do it, and I feel a lot of people wouldn’t too, but players don’t want to lose progress. Save-scumming happens either when something crucial is dependent on luck or the challenge is too demanding to take on at once. If the player is expected to embrace randomness, the feeling should be instilled very early on and the cost of failure shouldn’t be unbearable.

Europa Universalis 4(2013) is a game whose gameplay is heavily in the hands of fate. Battles, sieges and quite a few actions are influenced by dice, there are random events having positive or negative outcomes, there is at least a little randomness in almost every part of the game. Some of these random elements can be mitigated, a stronger country can weather more bad outcomes and, but even playing as a super-power, player is still sailing a boat on a raging ocean. And I get it, while it is frustrating sometimes, trying to recover from bad luck has its own charm. However, this completely turns on its head when trying to get difficult achievements. Now, not only I am only interested in optimal behavior, because of higher requirements or weaker starts I need to deal with, there is little room for failure. Obviously, for a “true challenge”, you are not allowed to load older saves during gameplay. Also obviously, I save-scum by quitting the game from desktop before it auto-saves. I am not going to risk hours of gameplay because of something random, ( or I misread the game’s not-ideal UI or it gave me wrong information or a glitch occurred or…) Randomness and perfection do not mix together.

Most games often do not have a graceful difficulty curve, there is usually that one place players fail again and again. And, it’s very understandable not to want to overtake a difficult challenge repeatedly just because of a single mistake. As I said before, demanding perfection can make players optimize themselves to boredom, and this is perhaps the most common way this happens. Again, having options help here. More tips, easier modes, cheats, perhaps allowing to skip levels are all better solutions than limiting saves. Besides the specifics of game design, the other solution is to avoid pushing players into perfection all together. Some games evaluate player’s performance at the end of the level. Missing a good score might be thing that pushes players into save-scumming. To prevent this, players shouldn’t feel like the game is screwed out of feeling complete. Giving player’s opportunities to recover from mistakes or dividing the challenge with checkpoints might convince players to keep going instead.

However tedious save-scumming might be, it’s always preferable to the anxiety of spending long stretches of time not being able to save. Some games try to be more experimental about save points, treating them as resources. for example. LISA: The Painful(2014) has one-time consumable save points, thankfully as an optional difficulty mode. Ori and the Blind Forest(2015) has limited saves, but the game is generous enough about them, and they actually serve to choose the re-spawn location. In most other cases, I don’t like deviations from convenience. This might seem narrow-minded, but I feel this is an issue beyond any issue in gameplay, it is a matter of fundamental user-friendly software design. Games are already time-consuming as they are, frankly they have no right to be so callous about player’s progress. There might be a troublesome glitch, a power outage, some sort of emergency, or player simply just wants to quit and continue later. I cannot ever see a justification of such entitlement to force players to play for an arbitrary about of time other than “People have adjusted themselves to a bad tradition.”. And as I said, I truly believe if save-scumming alone actually ruins the challenge of a game, that game’s design is truly flawed. Look at Trails in the Sky(2004), does it restrict saving and loading at all? No! Because, it’s a good game that is confident in it’s design.

Hiding Necessary Information

A boss turns out to be immune to the attack. The useless item from the beginning is maybe vital to get the best ending. Sometimes there is no map and there is no clue about what to do next. The intention is to give to player a sense of uncertainty and mystery. This can be used to great effect to make the player feel more adventurous, or heighten the sense of horror, but usually it just makes me to look up a guide. Game guides are fun, I love to learn about a game I enjoy as much as possible. and I even enjoy stumbling into secrets as much as anyone, but at the very least the game mechanics should be transparent as possible. Doing A yields B, getting X needs Y. I am not really sure what makes game devs so hesitant about this. Perhaps they are scared of their game looking too complex or maybe it’s assumed showing too many numbers break immersion in “cinematic experiences”? If the enemies in the game has level scaling for example, isn’t it much better to know that from the start? And surely it would be nice if player could make educated guesses about how their builds fare in the late game. Thankfully, at least as far as contemporary games are concerned, lack of information is never severe enough to stop players from soft-locking their game, but it’s still perplexing and occasionally frustrating that games are reluctant to explain themselves.

I love games which are honest about their challenges , rewards me for the progress I make and appreciate when they try to accommodate different levels of skill. I am also well aware that media is not produced tailor-made for me and respect games aiming for niche experiences, but I never look highly to games which are openly disregard user-convenience or accessibility to create challenges. Moreover, a game aiming for being difficult does not give it a blanket protection from criticism on it’s difficulty. One can desire a good challenge and can still find what’s offered overwhelming, tedious, or unfair. It’s always better to have an honest discussion on design instead of mocking people for playing badly. No one has to be good at the games and super majority of games are intended to be beaten, most anyone can beat a game if they put the work on it, but sometimes people just don’t feel it’s worth their time.

This article is written thanks to my dearest Patrons and special thanks to: Acelin, Laura Watson, , Makkovar, MasterofCubes, Morgan, Otakundead and Spencer Gill.

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)