5/5 ★ – Elesh's review of The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak II.

The Trails series features a long-running tradition of the second game of each arc one-upping its predecessor in every way. Every single arc so far has featured an okay first entry and a great second entry, where all the groundwork laid by the exposition of the first game pays off in an epic culmination that really makes it feel worth it. They decided to go in a different direction with the sequel to Trails through Daybreak. It seems as though they wanted to tell a bit of a downtime story with Daybreak 2 - a story more focused on making you really care about the characters and on developing relationships and wrapping up some loose ends on a personal scale for certain specific characters. And to that extent, they used a multiverse/time manipulation mechanic to really explore character behaviours and relationships. And, for me at least, it worked so incredibly well. Daybreak 2 had some of the best character development in the series, with both the characters in your party and many NPCs having some truly spectacular moments that culminated in some fantastic growth for the cast. There are so many moments I can think of that were transformational for how I see certain characters. While I will acknowledge that this character development came at the cost of a larger scale story that really moved Calvard - or Zemuria - forward, I do not think the game's pacing suffered from that at all. Daybreak 2 kept me interested start to finish by making me care about the characters, and the payoff for that was an ending that left me a blubbering wreck. But that's enough about the story - I don't want to end up spoiling things for you. Mechanically speaking, this game is a clear refinement of the hybrid system they pioneered in Daybreak 1, fixing nearly all the issues I had with the first game's combat. I genuinely enjoyed the field battles and found the turn-based shard battles strategic and well balanced. This is exactly what I was looking for when I said, in my review of Daybreak 1, "I am hopeful that future entries using the same system will refine it and make it more fun". They have lived up to the promise, and while it still isn't perfect, they made improvements to every issue I had - the timeline being hard to read, the disparity between melee and ranged, the inconistencies - they took a fantastic system and made it a stellar one. I can't wait to see where it goes from here. Before I wrap this up, I wanted to take a moment to just give some love to the soundtrack. This game has one of my favourite soundtracks of all time, with nearly every track being at least good and several of them being absolutely phenomenal. There are so many good tracks that it's hard to pick a favourite, but I will say that any time I wanted some good background music to just idle to, I'd fall back on the Blacklight District's theme. I love that zone's music and I just kept singing its praises every time I went there. I've heard all the complaints about Daybreak 2, and I won't try to pretend those critiques aren't valid... but I think the long and short of it is that if you aren't turned off by the time manipulation and are able to enjoy Daybreak 2 for what it is rather than what previous second games in the Trails series may have led you to expect it to be, you'll be in for a real treat. And you'll leave with a newfound love for these characters and a renewed excitement for Trails Beyond the Horizon, where - hopefully - all of the hard work they've done making us care about the cast will pay off in something truly magical.