The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond The Horizon Nintendo Switch 2 Review

I had a moment during a specific route in Trails Beyond the Horizon that knocked me on my ass. It wasn’t any particular bombastic storybeat (having said that, there’s no shortage of them), but just a realization that I’ve been playing these games for a decade of my life now. I grabbed Trails of Cold Steel based off a blog post I saw back when the English release dropped in December 2015. It seemed unassuming at the time, being a cozy tale of a young man who goes to a special boarding school. Before long, I was hooked and spent several years playing through the series across multiple console generations. I’ve seen the highs and lows, and have bonded with this setting in a way I can’t say the same for almost any other RPG.

Beyond the Horizon is the thirteenth game in the series, and the third game in the fourth overall “Calvard” story arc. I remember back when several games were left unlocalized, and there was always a two-year gap between the latest game coming out in Japan and the west. And after all this investment, all the hundreds of hours I’ve spent in these games, we’re caught up. It’s a very weird feeling. While Daybreak positioned itself as a fresh new start, we’ve very quickly circled back to pulling in the Trails series’ staggeringly large continuity. This game is not for the uninitiated and expects you to know the major players and lore of the continent of Zemuria, or you’ll get lost.

Horizon is the prelude to the final game of the Calvard arc, if not the setup of the grand finale for the whole series. If you thought Daybreak II was light on story, with nothing pushing the arc forward, then Horizon aims to correct that. While it might not seem like it from the outside in, every single moment of this game exists to set up an unannounced final game. Everything here feels like it moves things forward, no matter how small. Despite Trails loving to dedicate entire RPGs just to setting up sequels, I think Falcom has never done anything quite like this. It is by far the most engaging set-up game they’ve ever made. 

Months after Daybreak II, President Gramheart announces the first manned rocket launch into outer space. Every faction is making moves, anticipating what will happen because of it. Throughout the entire game, there’s a sense of anxiety, with that key mystery of “What exists beyond the horizon?” hanging over the entire cast. If you’ve been paying attention in the Cold Steel arc, you know there’s some seriously mysterious stuff going on in Zemuria. During the three days leading up to the launch, three main groups are investigating the strange behavior around it.

The stars of each of the three routes are Van Arkride (the protagonist of the Daybreak games), Rean (the protagonist of Cold Steel), and Father Kevin (one of the main characters of two of the Trails in the Sky games). Seeing an older version of Rean, and for Kevin to come back as a playable character after ages, was genuinely exciting. Rean brings Crow and Altina from his arc, and Kevin teams up with a reunited C Route team from Reverie (Rufus, Swin, Nadia). For those worried about them stealing the show, you should know this is still Van’s game ultimately. 

From my estimate, I’d say about 60% of the game is with Team Van, 25% is with Team Rean, and 15% is with Team Kevin. I don’t know a situation where you can have more Rean and Kevin without taking away from Van too much, but I’d love to see them try because I definitely left the game wishing they were in it more. Their stories have ultimately been told, but this game does set up a lot of interesting potential to take their characters in new directions that I hope the next game pays off more. 

The structure of Horizon is somewhat of a mix of the first two Daybreak games. The route system of Daybreak II returns, but it feels far less fragmented and all over the place. There’s no time travel gimmick here, so you’re just experiencing chunks of time on each of the three days. The chapters often feel like small, contained acts from the original Daybreak. You’ll start in the available area doing the rounds. You’ll get your handful of 4SPGs, check in with NPCs, do connection events, update your gear, buy items, cook, and run through some of the Grim Garten. New to this game is a food blog everyone fills out for Van of the snacks around the country, which is a pretty fun way to see the whole large cast play amateur Yelp critics. 

The side content is plentiful in this game, and the core gameplay loop of combing for 4SPGs might be the best it’s ever been. Calvard is a wonderful location to explore, and I never felt tired of revisiting locations I had seen dozens of times across a couple of hundred hours. The side quest writing continues to be solid, and there’s some good pay-off of how things played out in previous games if you transfer your save over. Without giving too much away, a particular side quest chain about a baby mix-up from a hospital got me tearing up like the grown child I am. I also thought the connection events had a great mix of vibes, from heartfelt to relaxing with your buds. Rean and Crow get a wonderful one where they share a couple of cold ones and just relax together. Seeing these two happy after everything they’ve gone through started to thaw my frozen heart. 

After you’ve done either the bare minimum or every last bit of side content available in a chapter, you can move on to the main story section where your route’s party will continue to delve into the main mysteries. All the new dungeons feel like they’re pushing things forward in the formula, either from the locale you visit or by throwing in fun new gimmicks like an entire dungeon where you can’t use the turn-based combat. I would have liked to see them go further with this experimentation, but it does make me happy to see Falcom not rest on their laurels with dungeon design. I hope every dungeon in the next game is able to feel inventive with the mechanics.

The Garten returns from Daybreak II, being a mostly optional dungeon you can run through to get more story. This time, it has been taken over by Ouroboros and titled the Grim Garten. There are a lot of small improvements here, like letting you bulk roll for items with the in-game gacha system instead of going 10 at a time. Sections of the Garten are now broken up more, featuring a grid to plot your path forward on each floor with a tiny Avatar of your choosing. It was probably good to cut down on the Garten given how long it was in Daybreak II, but I think the usual problems of map and objective variety being limited still hold. It’s fun to do while you listen to a podcast, at least.

Besides the extra costumes, items, and experience, the biggest reason to put time into this is the added story scenes. There’s a whole arc dedicated to unveiling some new key members of Ouroboros: Simeon and Ulrika. They don’t get too involved in the main route, but Ulrika in particular is a fascinating and fun character you just know the writers had a great time with. She’s a streamer who spouts endless lingo that only those terminally online will understand, which leaves all but Quatre confused whenever she shows up. The word “oomfie” is now canonical in the Trails universe, and I could not have laughed harder when I heard it. Besides these main story scenes, you can also unlock Memento Orbs that show you wonderful little stories to expand on the lore and backgrounds of the characters.

This is also where the combat is able to shine the most, which has received a pretty substantial uplift in so many small ways that it culminates in the largest mid-series leap of any of the arc. Every returning character has been refined to feel better than ever, and all of their battle and craft animations have been improved. The action combat is more viable than ever due to a combination of new mechanics and polishing all the animations. It is no longer just a way to get an advantage in the turn-based fights. You can even stop time with a new feature called ZOC, which allows you to build stun faster on enemies. 

Some characters even have a full-on boost mode, transforming them and letting them deal ridiculous damage for a short amount of time. It’s fitting that they unveiled all of these new combat improvements with the reintroduction of Rean, and then proceeded to give him the coolest moveset in the game. Popping a Spirit Unification, unleashing a flurry of attacks, perfect dodges, and then slaying every enemy on the field feels like nothing else. Hell, you can even carry this state into battle if you unleash your shards while in it. I was also happy to see each of the main characters get a boost state, with Van being able to use the Grendel out on the field. 

ZOC also plays a role in the turn-based combat, and it is activated by S-Boosting twice. This will give you two uninterrupted turns, best used for healing your party quickly if they’re all debuffed or casting Arts without waiting. Brave Orders have made their way back in as well, letting you give up some S-Boost meter to give yourself a temporary buff depending on the characters you have in your party. Enemies can use their own Brave Orders to cancel yours, so it becomes a tug of war that actually has you minding your resources more than ever before. Do you want to use that boost to get an EX Chain in, or do you want to save it knowing that one of the bosses can pop off their own Brave Order to negate most of your damage? I was strategizing more than ever during boss fights by the end of the game, when things ramped up.

The games have never felt better to play than in Beyond the Horizon, so much so that I even think the Sky 1st remake (that came out a year after this in Japan) feels like a downgrade in comparison. While that had to bring the unique mixture of action and turn-based combat back down to the level of the first Daybreak to match the older in-universe technology, this embraces everything the series has established and runs with it. The only downside that comes from all of these new tools is that you’re almost a little too overpowered. As someone who plays these games on Normal difficulty, I still felt there were some satisfying difficulty spikes in the second half, but you should adjust the combat difficulty as you see fit to keep you engaged. 

If they are seeking to push things even further with the action game combat in the sequel, I think adding an additional attack button in the spot of the Quick Art button would go a long way. Quick Arts are useful, but could probably be moved elsewhere on the controller to free up your abilities to be more than a normal attack and a charge attack. However, if they wanted to up the complexity of the turn-based battles instead to get people back to using those even more on the field, that would be great as well. I only really started feeling fatigue at the very end, so overall I think these mechanical changes are a big success.

I’ve talked about the quality of the port in my impressions piece, but you can rest assured that if you’re playing Beyond the Horizon on the Nintendo Switch 2, you’re in for a great time. NIS America put the resources necessary into making sure this didn’t feel like an afterthought, like so many Switch ports of this series have felt. It looks gorgeous, and plays smoothly with a variable framerate that can hit up to 120 frames per second. This is fully comparable to the other main console versions on PlayStation, and after a while, I didn’t even notice I was playing a version of the game Falcom didn’t develop themselves. It’s just the game, but on Switch 2.

That pleases me to no end, because if there was a game to figure Switch 2 ports out for, it’d be this one. This is perhaps the biggest leap forward in graphical presentation of a Falcom game ever, and they did it all without even changing their engine. You might think it doesn’t look any different from the previous two games, but study it for long enough, and the improvements become apparent. Their cutscene direction has improved substantially. We’re not just talking about the framing of scenes, or more voice acting than ever, but animation has also improved as well. There are several battle scenes that played out that had my jaw dropping, and what takes place in the finale had me stunned speechless. This is not the kind of Trails game where you go “Oh, okay, this is the part where they ran out of money.” I simply do not think they ever ran out of money here. You have to see it to believe it. 

What I think anyone going into Horizon with the intended context is truly curious about is the story. As someone who loved Daybreak and found Daybreak II to be a bit inconsistent, I had a lot of high hopes for the third game. Horizon largely succeeds in everything I wanted it to do, pushing the story forward while giving the cast plenty of moments to shine and grow. I don’t think everyone is consistently utilized, but their dynamics remain fun. There are also massive reveals for members of Arkride Solutions that completely change how I see the setting of Zemuria. Horizon has all the strengths these games have had for a while, and the highs are definitely the strongest in the arc. I have qualms, and they’re complicated, but the positives do outweigh the negatives overall. 

When it comes to the larger concepts, Falcom’s writing team has outdone themselves. The tension I alluded to earlier is felt in every single district or town you visit. Mystery after mystery stacks up for the player over the long runtime, with the reveals given to us having massive implications for Zemuria’s past and future. The sense of anxiety is felt more than at the launch itself. Falcom made the smart choice of having even NPC stories build toward their own personal conclusions. People are nervous about upcoming trips, love confessions, going on big trips, etc. It’s a really subtle effect, but it makes it so that you can’t escape the anxiety of the situation. I’ve never seen a Trails game pull off the mood of this game, but it adds a sense of drama and stakes to the launch that permeates even when you feel like you’re just casually making the rounds in the most mundane situations.

Just when you feel like the game might be easing itself into a lull, the tension releases spectacularly. New forces are making devastating moves around the country, and keeping our heroes busy just trying to maintain order. The pre-established factions are waiting for their moment to strike, hiding in the shadows. Every chapter has some kind of great threat brewing in the background, which continues to ramp up as you reach the end. They culminate in thrilling action scenes and emotional pay-offs, guiding the story forward in exciting ways. There’s a genuine conspiracy at play here, the extent of which goes deeper than we could have imagined and yet has been shockingly well set up in past entries.

I ultimately do love this game, but it’s not without faults. I think there are a couple of writing problems from past arcs that have begun to sneak their way back into Calvard. A lot of dialogue is to be expected in a Trails game, but there’s definitely more than usual here and not always in the best ways. The cast is beginning to grow to be unwieldy in size, and very often did I feel scenes get dragged out by the writers feeling the need to have every character contribute to the conversation. I noticed this a bit in Daybreak II, where characters almost feel the need to interject in the main scenes with odd compliments to one another. 

There will be dire scenes with supposedly high stakes, yet the cast will take longer than necessary talking to each other instead of acting immediately. Trails writing is naturally expository, but I do think that with events getting this serious, the next game might need to cut down on some of the fluff dialogue. The pacing kind of gets bogged down more than I would like, but never to the extent of Daybreak II’s third act. Instead of one large chunk of the game that feels like a drag, there are a large number of these little distractions that bloat Horizon as it goes. As a fan, I obviously am fond of Falcom’s long, self-indulgent writing in their Trails games. I would never want one of these to be rushed, but I definitely think a tighter story could have worked in this game’s favor since the entire thing is meant to take place across three days.

There’s also the topic of character motivations, and a big theme of the game is that we can’t really tell who the good guys or the bad guys even really are anymore. Conceptually, I love this, and it works well with the overall idea of the Calvard games being about moral greyness. In practice, I think the execution is inconsistent. It’s pretty easy to understand the intent of every scene, and it mostly works, but there were a handful of times when I was left confused as to why characters were behaving in contrived ways.

Kevin’s and Rean’s routes section feel this the most, and I think this is because Falcom felt that there needed to be some sort of antagonist in each chapter. Should-be allies find themselves temporarily against your party for flimsy reasons and will rejoin you shortly after they “tested how serious you were.” Since Falcom is keeping many of the most important answers close to their chest for the next game, I can cut them some slack. I have some worries, but they’ve done enough good to leave me hopeful. Most of the large reveals and double crosses hit, often leaving me shocked at how complex some of the motivations are in the grand scheme of things. The game got one over on me more than a handful of times, making my mind race to the previous two games to connect the dots and make sense of it all.

Despite all of my small gripes with the writing, Trails Beyond the Horizon sticks the landing to such a strong extent that I can’t help but respect the game as a whole. It has probably one of the best finales of the series. The note this game ends on is so out there, so unheard of for the series, so extreme, that it left me beyond excited for the future of Trails. This particular kind of ending can only be pulled off if you’re absolutely confident you’ve hooked your audience. I was told going in that this had the most egregious cliffhanger in the series, and even that didn’t prepare me. Despite all of the answers I got, I am left with so many more questions now. I don’t know how these will be addressed in Van’s final game, but it’s genuinely exciting to theory craft in anticipation for whenever it’s ready. 

I do not know how Falcom was able to pack so much into The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon. It feels like two games in one, easily being one of the longest games in the series if you’re committed to being a completionist. The massive reveals in this game have fundamentally changed how I view all the past games, and for the better. I don’t think it resolves any of my tiny issues with the arc, but if you’re this invested, those feel so minor once you see where Horizon concludes. The game is definitely just a bit too long and gets close to buckling under its own weight. And yet, it works, and I can’t help but be excited at what’s to come. Maybe the next game won’t be the perfect pay-off Horizon promises, but at the moment, I think they’ve earned my faith. The worst part of this game is the agonizing wait to play the sequel. This game feels like the reward for investing so many years of my life into these games, and I’ve never been happier to be on the wild ride that is Trails.

Version Tested: Nintendo Switch 2
Review copy provided by NIS America