Back again for another chapter of Trails in the Sky SC! We've got some real good plot development this week, and there's so much going on that I'm going to have trouble picking out a few to write about. Anyways here we go!

As always, everything below are going to be SPOILERS!

Previously in Trails: Que music Proof of a Hero.

Chapter 6

Back to back with last week's amazing chapter 5, this was another juicy chapter! Just as I thought, they're doing the same thing as the previous game, where all the visible plot development is jam packed in the second half of the game (though I do appreciate some of the nods to the previous events).

I'll skip the intro bit in Bose, since I don't have quite as much time this week, but a few notes: While I did complain about the side quests in the previous week, they do still offer a lot of interesting story bits, exemplified in this chapter. We had a chance to get a glimpse of Lila's (Mayor Maybelle's maid) past, which turned out to be surprisingly tragic. Her quote that goes something like "Rennie (her childhood name) is dead, resting somewhere in these lands with her parents" was weirdly moving to me. Also, we had a quick trip into the Ravennue Mines that lead us to some mechanical drones roaming around, with a special little cutscene that foreshadowed a "menacing figure from the heroes' past"... which we meet shortly after. It appears that this hidden side quest can influence a short piece of dialogue later on, which was pretty interesting.

Let's get back to the main story, which starts with a pleasant little vacation for our heroes at Valleria Lakeshore. I always love these kinds of short breathers in a story, where literally nothing threatening is happening... and considering its placement, this late into the story, seems like the game's telling you "Shit is about to start moving. Rest up while you can!" I'm all for it. We also have Kevin joining our heroes for the vacation, who reveals that he'd been researching the Tetracyclic Towers and thus missed the dragon commotion. I wonder if this means he will finally be joining the team for good? The way he drops in and out of the team has made it difficult to invest resources into his character building, which has had... adverse effects towards his performance in battle (though then again, nobody else is coming close to Kloe's ridiculous magic damage output and Agate's S-Craft spam).

However, our heroes' rest is short lived, as that very evening, Kurt pulls a Kurt and shows up half dead drifting on a boat (why is it that Liberl's supposed No.2 Bracer is always treated so harshly in this story...? Same category as Zin I suppose). Turns out that Ouroboros had been setting up a secret lab near the lakeshore, camouflaging themselves from the air with a huge hologram (oho chapter 1!) and from the surface with a thick fog (oho chapter 4!). This leads me to wonder if the whole bit about using the Gospel to cause earthquakes, power tanks, and control dragons is going to come into play later. Anyways, the team heads into the lab to face Ouroboros, but finds themselves in a largely empty building, only guarded by conveniently possessed Bracers from Kurt's team. What JRPG is complete without fighting some friends possessed by evil mind tricks? On a side note, the enemy characters' resistances to status ailments is starting to get really annoying, and kind of turning out how I feared in the beginning... Even human mini bosses (who I would imagine isn't performing at the peak of their capabilities) is STILL immune to every single status effect...? I know that's a pretty common thing in RPGs, but it's still pretty annoying. Let me use my whole kit! Anyways, finally, as the team makes its way to the top floor of the lab, they're met with....

ROBO JOSHUA! Well I certainly didn't expect that (well Anelace's description of "familiar clothes" was a dead giveaway, but I certainly didn't expect the silver robo-face). The fight itself was fairly interesting too, with three Robojoshes and being surrounded at the beginning. You also realize how dangerous the AT Delay status effect can be (again, LET ME USE STATUS AILMENTS AGAINST BOSSES FALCOM). I mean, the game isn't all that difficult to begin with... why not let me at least feel smart about my wins? In my case, I was lucky enough to get all of them in fairly close proximity, letting me wipe them out with the Kloe Cannon (i.e. Diamond Dust in this case). To no surprise, Weissmann and team were watching the fight, and gas our heroes to knock them out. To some surprise, he leaves them all in place except for Estelle, whom he has Loewe carry out as they escape into their....

BIG RED FLYING FORTRESS! Well damn, the scale of the conflict is getting bigger at each plot point. Also the orange-red coloring and yellow emblems totally give off a Char/Zeon flagship vibe, and I am SUPER into that. I'm usually not too impressed by the vehicle designs in the Trails franchise, but this one's pretty cool. Which reminds me how I'm also kind of fond of the smaller patrol ships that are on board the Glorious; They look like dumb little lobsters and are kind of cute (screenshot at the end!). Here, Estelle wakes up to Renne offering to take her to Weissmann's cathedral, where she will get a chance to talk to the big bad and get some of her questions answered. Surprisingly, Weissmann offers Estelle a position within the Ouroboros, starting as an Enforcer; She'll be able to give Joshua a reason to come back to the Society. Now I don't know if the Joshua bit is the sole reason Weissmann would extend such an offer, but it is an interesting curve ball of a plot point... though I can't see any purpose other than keeping Estelle as hostage against Cassius and Joshua. Also going a little off course... OF COURSE Weissmann would greet Estelle at his cathedral playing a pipe organ. OF COURSE. Let's just check all the stereotypical "JRPG smart bad guy" boxes, shall we. (I like it.)

Still captive and back at her room, Estelle talks with Loewe about his past - The truth about Harmel Village (my apologies for the last post, calling it Harlem), where a mercenary group attacked and slaughtered the village while carrying Liberlian weapons, conveniently used by the Erebonian Empire as an excuse to start the Hundred Days War. It was there that Loewe and Joshua had lost Karin Astray, Loewe's love interest and Joshua's older sister. In terms of tragic anime backstories, having your village burned to the ground seems pretty standard, but it's still fairly reasonable that the event would cast a heavy shadow on the two survivor's hearts. Loewe vows to "test" the world that has been so cruel to him by joining the Ouroboros's sinister plans, while Joshua claims to have been broken by the event, becoming an empty husk of a human. (It still is kind of cringey the way Joshua says it though) Anyways, Estelle makes up her mind that she is going to decline Weissmann's offer, and stages a daring escape, in what is possibly the coolest shit she's ever done; Breaks the window, waits for the guards to come close to the window to check outside, swings down with a dropkick to one of them, and quickly dispatches the other with her staff. DAMN girl.

She doesn't get far, however, until she's caught running by a group of armed guards, where we learn that the "menacing figure" in the intro bit was none other than.... Gilbert the former secretary to the mayor of Ruan! ................ Yes me too Estelle, I didn't remember who he was during that earlier cutscene either. However, having a little comedic relief thrown in doesn't make the next fight any less difficult, as you get a bonus of 5BP to the quest reward for defeating the gang of 5 within a certain turn limit (now this is pretty cool). I ended up retrying a few times, finally settling for a brute force strategy of equipping Estelle with enough quarts to learn Titanic Roar, a decently powerful and easy to equip Arts that hits the whole screen. The defeated guards stand back up, claiming they have been modified to be able to extract even more potential power from their bodies, and surrounds Estelle to capture her for good (I feel like it's pretty lame that winning the fight didn't lead to her actually winning the encounter, but oh well). And just as it seems like it's over for Estelle, a familiar voice: JOSHUA! And this time it's fleshy Joshua! Gotta admit, that was a pretty cool entrance for our emo boy. Them having to spend the next 30 minutes trying to escape the ship in relative silence kind of seems like a pacing issue (like maybe it would have been more natural for Joshua to show up right before they escape), but I for one liked the awkward/embarrassing doki-doki-ness of the awkward silence until then, at least on Estelle's side. Anyways, after a bit of a chase through the ship and some skirmishes with some patrol robots, the two manage to escape the Glorious by hijacking a patrol ship and losing their pursuers with some unexpected help from the Capua Family.

And now for the emotional payoff. The two end up on the beach near Ruan, where they abandon the ship and spill their hearts out. Joshua, being the little emo shit that he is (btw I'm only kidding, as I'm sure losing your entire village will fuck anybody up), still tries to push Estelle away at first: His heart is "broken," unable to feel any real emotions, and Estelle being around him will neither help him or her. But as many players may have noticed, he has a tendency to blame his "brokenness" to every single one of his faults and past traumas even though he has shown over and over that he is capable of humanly emotions, and badass Estelle realizes this too. She puts her foot down, and tells it like it is: "Naw mate, you aren't turning your back on me because you think you're broken. You fucking love me too much and are scared shitless of losing me like your sister because you think I'm took weak. WHO DO YOU THINK I AM" (excuse me for the non-literal but totally true translation). Estelle bitchslaps the edgy attitude out of Joshua, brings the sparkle back in his eyes with a warm hug, and goes, "GUESS WHAT MOTHERFUCKER YOU OWE ME A REDO ON THAT KISS" (excuse me for the non-literal but totally true translation). I. Fucking. Love it. (btw Estelle is much more gentle and caring than how I wrote it, in case it needs any clarification.) Honestly this whole scene may have been the most satisfying moment in all of my gaming years in terms of an in-game relationship coming to fruition.

Not gonna even go into the whole Joshua harem slowly taking shape with Josette still waiting for her moment on the sidelines, but there we go, another solid chapter in a great game. On more surface level plot concerns, the central conflict is finally starting to take shape, with Weissmann and his gang arriving at the Tetracyclic Towers and starting some kind of summoning ritual to get a hold of the Aureole, though we still don't quite know what that entirely means. It looks like the next chapter is going to be a boss rush of the previously introduced Enforcers, so it'll be interesting at the very least in a battle perspective (Though cramming that into one chapter probably means that Zin is going to get shafted yet again and won't be given any real character development. 'Tis a tragedy). We'll see what's coming next, hopefully by next Monday! Signing off with some extra screenshots below: