olivia

okay i'll hang out with Estelle all day then. ungrateful bitch.

tita's bashful victory sprite... i would die for her

I finished Chapter 2 of Trails in the Sky today! It's still weird to think that this game ended up kicking off a whole franchise and two sequels because not much has really happened in 20 hours. It's not a sprawling fantasy epic, it's a goofy JRPG about two teen cops getting into misadventures on a road trip. Sure there's a conspiracy brewing in the background, but I could easily see the world where this all got wrapped up in a single game. It'll be interesting to watch how this expands out into a franchise and how I feel about it once it does.

Chapter 2 was the most "anime filler episode" the game has felt so far. Estelle and Joshua went to a resort town and helped out some orphans while getting involved in a crossdressing school play and a real estate conspiracy. The hijinks were fun and Estelle has says some pretty gay things to some schoolgirls, but at the same time this is where the game really starts dropping hints about the Estelle/Joshua romance, which I'm really not into. It's not the WORST weird het romance I've ever seen in a JRPG, but the writing seems to almost emphasize the whole "basically brother and sister" thing. It got to the point where I had someone on twitter tell me how that part of the plot goes just so I can steel myself for whatever happens lmao.

Mechanically at least I have no complaints. The game really opened up in this chapter and forced you to engage with the expanded systems by taking half of your party from you at the start. The early section where you just have Joshua and Estelle is rough, and it forced me to really start getting creative with my orbment builds and accustom myself to using high level magic to make it through fights. You can unlock some wild spells with this system but you really do have to sit down and devote ten minutes just to fiddling with your placements. Thankfully I am a builds sicko and this is the stuff that I crave.

I will probably just keep rolling through to Chapter 3! If every region of Liberl (still really funny that they live in the Liberal Kingdom) gets a chapter then I think I am about halfway through the game. Looking forward to how this game develops and also maybe having four party members one day.