The Best Excuses to Not Play Trails

There’s never a better time to start a new jRPG series. They take so long to play that if you don’t start now, you’ll probably never finish them. Seriously though, what’s up with Trails? It’s the kind of series that makes the term hidden gem ambiguous. People who’re really into jRPGs are aware who Falcom are and what’s particular about the Trails brand of world-building so for the sake of world-building that it’s impossible to not admire. But then I get a feeling that outside the genre fandom, even Ys is somehow more prominent, probably thanks to weirder naming. And maybe it’s okay if it stays this way?

So I’ll invent excuses for myself to not continue playing the full version of Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter, the most recent remake and allegedly the perfect starting point, after a very impressive and lengthy demo.

It’s the 1st Out of 13

In a genre of Final Fantasies and Dragon Quests, it’s a weird excuse, but hear me out. They’re all interconnected! It won’t pretend it’s a new eerily similar world every time, it’ll only occasionally jump from one time and space to another. And I’m the kind of the person who’d watch The Rise of Skywalker again if I were marathoning the whole Star Wars saga, so Trails feels like a recipe for more backlog guilt. It’s going to take me what, 500+ hours to beat them all? Thank you, I’d rather invest 500+ hours in a productive activity, such as procrastination of developing and playing video games.

Battles Are Repetitive

Let’s stop pretending jRPGs should be this way! It’s grinding! Grinding isn’t okay! There’s nothing fun about executing the same attack sequence for the hundredth time! Braindead victories are not real! Battle themes are less fun to listen to on the 1000th time compared to the 100th time! Excessive mana management is never that engaging! Speeding up boring combat sequences doesn’t solve the problem! I want to enjoy a game at 1x, not avoid playing it at 4x! Exclamation marks are the most underrated punctuation marks!

There Are Too Many Words

For someone who loves feeling up paragraphs with words until they feel beefy enough, I can’t help but admire the fan-fiction quality of how jRPGs revel in character chatter. But the toughest Trials challenge for me is all the lore dumps that start very soon and never truly hit pause. This is the game I’m supposed to enjoy for backstories as much as forestories, but it means screwing up the pacing and going through hours of learning all the Important Capitalized Words before I get the full grasp of what’s going on. And luckily, it all comes down to the most reliable excuse to not play Trails.

It’s all anime bullshit. That’s what makes it great, and that’s why I’ll be missing out! For now…