Trails Through Daybreak Review: Summer’s must-play RPG

A big step forward for the long-running series

NIS America/GLHF

They don’t make RPGs like Trails through Daybreak anymore. That’s not just some nostalgia-fueled statement, either. Larger studios such as Bandai Namco are shifting to AAA-style production styles and cycles, where it takes several years to see any new efforts come to life, and the indie RPG scene is still insistent on imitating SNES-era games after almost a decade of doing that same thing over and over again.

The story-driven, mid-budget RPG field is pretty empty as a result, and into that gap steps Nihon Falcom’s Trails through Daybreak. Despite being the 11th game in a 20-year-old series, Daybreak is a proper fresh start, a standalone adventure with new ideas, new ways of communicating those ideas, and a better sense of what it wants to be. It’s easily one of the series’ best games and a strong RPG in its own right, even if it is a little rough around the edges compared to its fancier competitors.

Definitely not shady / NIS America/GLHF

First up is a bit of stage setting. Trails through Daybreak takes place in a country called Calvard, two years after Trails Into Reverie and a continent-wide war that resulted in a draw and saw Calvard on the receiving end of significant economic reparations. Calvard is essentially the United States of the Trails world, a hodgepodge of different cultures that prides itself on supposedly being a democracy, but where populist fervor runs rampant and immigration and economic boom and bust cycles are hot topics.

Underneath all the rapid societal changes and seething unrest is Van Arkride, a fixer for hire and Daybreak's protagonist. He does any job that suits him, even if it's not particularly legal, and one day, a young student turns up with a request: Help her find her great-grandfather's antique heirloom that was stolen. When people start dying, a mafia group gets involved, and even the national government shows an interest, it quickly becomes evident that this heirloom is no ordinary trinket

That might sound like little more than a plot summary, but the fact that things like immigration and economic policy are even in the plot is part of what makes Daybreak such a strong RPG. Few games dig into social, political, and economic theory to build their settings in this way, let alone create entire narratives around them. Those that do, even previous Trails games, tend to focus on building a complex narrative over developing themes, but Daybreak is different. Unscrupulous politicians using immigration, racism, and economic uncertainty as tools to inspire fear and whip people into a frenzy so they’re easier to control – it’s hard not to see parallels between Daybreak’s broader plot and modern problems across the world, and Falcom, surprisingly, doesn’t hold back here. 

Falcom opted for a theme-based approach in general with Daybreak, foregoing its usual style of making big events the central narrative focus in favor of ideas. Loss, acceptance, and connections are at Daybreak’s heart, underneath all the politics and social issues, and it grounds these broader themes in its characters, their perspectives, and their personal stories. 

Those two figures in the background might look familiar if you've been around the Trails block a few times / NIS America/GLHF

That sense of thematic unity and its ties to the bigger picture help make an already-strong cast of characters even better. Falcom threw the genre’s traditional character and relationship archetypes out the window in favor of something more interesting and unexpected. For example, there’s a love interest, because of course there is. But the relationship is already strained and broken when the game begins, and the sour feelings between the two people involved end up tied to one of the story’s bigger mysteries. The two core characters are wildly mismatched in personality, a setup that gives Falcom room to pen some of the series’ strongest character development arcs.

Daybreak even bucks some of the series’ usual trends. Trails has a habit of giving dangerous weapons to small children engaged in criminal activity, and while that’s still true in this one, Feri, a young mercenary-in-training, is unique in that she hasn’t actually violated the Geneva Convention. Well, not yet anyway. She just wants to do right by her family, even if “right” is highly subjective and probably involves violence.

The common thread that ties these people together is that they’re a bunch of outcasts on the fringe of society in one way or the other, and that outsider’s perspective on the world gives Daybreak a strong identity. You’re not just getting a do-gooder’s take on life and its problems, with easily identifiable heroes loved and supported by everyone. Life and people in Daybreak are messy and difficult, with big problems and few clear answers, and that setup lends itself to scenarios with more emotional depth and stronger storytelling in general.

Boom / NIS America

It’s worth noting that Daybreak also makes an overdue change in how it presents certain characters. The series’ relationship with LGBTQ+ topics hasn’t always been stellar, especially in the Cold Steel games, where Falcom gleefully embraced the trope of making a lesbian character an oversexed pervert. Daybreak handles its characters with much more sensitivity, which goes a long way toward making it feel more thoughtful and well-considered. The ideal is, obviously, not writing bigoted scenarios to begin with, but the next best thing is learning from mistakes and improving.

It helps that the localization and general writing are as good as they are, too. I’ve never had a problem with NIS America’s localization work on the series, outside a small handful of awkward segments in the Cold Steel games, but it’s safe to say Daybreak is the team’s best work yet. Dialogue feels so natural that you’d expect to hear it in an actual conversation, and it’s clear a good deal of effort went into understanding character personalities and getting the most out of them in the English script. 

The main cast’s voice acting is also top-notch, though that highlights the return of an annoying pattern in the series and RPGs in general – inconsistent voice implementation. Some scenes involve several characters, but only one is voiced, or everyone speaks, but only their first line is voiced. I understand there are reasons behind these kinds of decisions, but it doesn’t make them any less jarring.

The field of battle looks a bit different this time / NIS America

Daybreak introduces welcome alterations to a combat system that’s previously changed little in 20 years. Each character has standard attacks, skills called Crafts, and magic abilities called Arts. What Arts are available depends on how you customize a character’s Orbment – yes, another proper noun, but this is an RPG after all – and that flexibility means you have plenty of room for experimenting with builds. That’s all the same as usual.

What’s different is that these Orbments come with built-in skills that influence your character’s actions under certain circumstances. You might activate a special buff that increases everyone’s attack, for example, or one that reduces how much damage a specific character takes. It fills the place left absent by Cold Steel’s Brave Orders, but the buffs and skills are a bit more complex than those. It adds an extra layer of strategy to which characters you use in battle and how you use them, and it’s a refreshing change from just choosing the same few passive skills in every major encounter.

Each character also has a boost meter you can activate to buff their stats, but Falcom also tied it to another longtime staple – a character’s S-crafts. These are high-powered attacks you can use once the character has accrued enough craft points and the inspiration behind Honkai Star Rail’s ultimate abilities. In previous games, you could pull them off whenever you had enough points, but in Daybreak, you can only use them if your Orbment also has enough charges.

Shard skills grant passive buffs, so it's a good idea to plan your customization / NIS America

Using more S-crafts increases the number of charges you can hold, and if you plan well, you can create an extended burst window where your party pulls off multiple strong attacks – or end up with nothing if you boost at the wrong time. That level of strategy is absent in pretty much all of the previous Trails games, and its inclusion here adds a satisfying rhythm to encounters that keeps combat from turning into a chore.

That’s a good thing, as you’ll run into plenty of battles. Outside of storytelling, Trails, including Daybreak, is closer to a crunchy dungeon crawler than an RPG with complex puzzles and elaborate environment designs. Every dungeon, without fail, is little more than a series of long corridors filled with monsters, detours, treasure, and light puzzle solving. Daybreak does, admittedly, throw a few new puzzle varieties in the mix, but spelunking is definitely not a strong point. I don’t see Falcom changing this aspect of its philosophy after 20 years, but I still wish a bit more thought went into dungeon design.

On the bright side, you’ll get through these hallways fast. Daybreak has quick transitions in and out of combat with no loading screens, which sounds basic in 2024, but it’s hard to overstate just how smooth it makes the experience. You also have the option to engage in simple, real-time battles against standard enemies, and while it’s certainly not the most exciting or engaging way to fight, it does help keep the pace going.

Trails through Daybreak might not have the wow factor of modern, big-budget RPGs or the nostalgic pull of a retro Final Fantasy, but that works in its favor. Sure, there's room for more polish and meaningful evolution. But instead of chasing trends, Daybreak is just confidently itself, and it's much stronger for it.

Version tested: PC

Trails through Daybreak review score: 9