The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure

After finishing the CS quintology I had the urge to come back to this one and really put in a recommendation. If you quit the trails series at Azure, you'd still be happily unknowing and thinking the series is in a pretty good place, so maybe do that before you play CS games and ruin it forever.

Great story, great characters, great Trail game! Major gripe: too many "you're supposed to lose" boss fights after the halfway mark. I get it, it's to show growth later in the finale, but it feels terrible and pointless while you're actually playing. Major love: Fishing! Best fishing so far in the series, has its own story line with challenges.

I will never give positive rating to any game that forces me to play Pom Pom Party!

Great game. As with the other trails games, I recommend playing them chronologically. I find this to be the strongest entry in the series between 'Sky' and 'Cold Steel'.

yeah

JRPG obsession continues

The game has fun combat and like how is the story going so far

What a journey from start to finish. While Zero sets the foundation and context for the city of Crossbell and its characters, Azure brings the arc to its climax and its conclusion. We continue to learn about our protagonists and all of the characters that they come across. Villains show the expected and unexpected. Favorites break out of the mold and show conflict. And what an ending with twists and turns. Music is great as always. Gameplay retains the same. Several new areas and some you will revisit. 8/10

This game requires a playthrough of Trails from Zero to understand the plot. For the fifth Trails game, I seriously was worried when I wasn't invested around Chapter 3- I'd been dropping and picking the game back up over and over again... but around Chapter 4 was the point where I became completely invested and really wanted to know what was going to happen. After this point, there was no holding back anymore. While it doesn't hold a candle to SC or the 3rd's major plot twists, there's a lot to love here, and my 40 hour playtime shows just the surface of what you can get out of this game. The music this time around was stellar as always, though I felt like I heard more of Zero's OST reused than the new tracks from Azure, but maybe that was just me. A good 7/10 Trails game that will lead you into the belly of the beast: Cold Steel.

Its more Trails. I really enjoy Trails so I enjoyed this. Play Zero first.