The Legend of Heroes: Trails Into Reverie

This game was provided by NIS America for review. Thank you!

The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie is the next entry into the acclaimed JRPG series. Offering 3 different perspectives from Lloyd Bannings (Trails From Zero), Rean Schwarzer (Trails of Cold Steel), and the masked character only known as "C", you will follow 3 different arcs that all intertwine. Not only will you be able to switch between them at any time, but you will be able to experience side episodes to flesh out the characters. On top of that, you can also test your skills in the True Reverie Corridor, a randomly-generated dungeon where you can recruit characters from across the Trails series.

Before I get into it, I highly recommend that the other games in the series are played before this one. The Legend of Heroes series is known for having characters and stories that cross over into the other games, and while this game does have summaries for some of the games preceding it, I believe playing the others will heighten the experience above and beyond.

Trails Into Reverie is one of the best JRPGs I have played in recent years. The story is fantastic and finds a really satisfying way to culminate and close both the Crossbell and Cold Steel subseries. The game also includes an interesting way to swap between the 3 different perspectives playing out as well, which you can do at any given time. This allows you to really enjoy the individual stories, but also see how each one can affect the other before coming together in a wonderful finale. There are a lot of characters at play here and unless you play the other games, you may miss some of the wonderful popups, but because of the amazing pacing the game has, each one feels like they get just enough limelight to stay satisfying.

The game sports a turn-based system that emphasizes teamwork. The gameplay here may seem a bit complicated, as there are many ways to attack and defend, but it gets significantly easier the more you play. I felt right at home after playing through a couple battles and seeing the differences of the abilities. There is also some pretty heavy customization, using a quartz system to augment abilities and stats to dig more into what they can do. You can also change how you look aesthetically, but a lot of those will actually come from the True Reverie Corridor, a randomly-generated dungeon where you can utilize all the characters from each perspective, as well as some exclusive to this mode.

I could go on and on, but this is by far the best game in the The Legend of Heroes series. The story and gameplay hit all the right beats, but the nostalgia and familiarity with the characters really make this game feel extremely special. Again, I highly recommend playing the games before as the experience will be one of the best you have had. And the best part about all of this, it plays extremely well on the Steam Deck!

The Legend of Heroes: Trails Into Reverie - Steam Deck Performance

The other games in the The Legend of Heroes series play very well on the Steam Deck and I was so happy to see how well Trails Into Reverie was able to run! Without changes, the game could almost lock to 60 FPS at medium-ish settings on a TDP limit of 9. This does work, but the game can be optimized further to really get those long playing sessions and a fully stable 60.

One thing I will note: Trails Into Reverie performs significantly better in dungeons and closed areas. I saw a huge drop in battery drain just from entering a dungeon, saving almost 12W vs 22W on the quality build. This

By turning a couple settings down by one, and turning off High Quality Postprocessing, we can get a solid 60 FPS at a TDP of 7, with around 4 hours of battery life, without the game looking much different compared to its out-of-the-box settings. The visuals look very close thanks to the small screen of the Deck, but with a fully stable 60 and significantly lowered battery life, this is a fantastic compromise!

After finalizing this build, I decided to find a maximum quality build to push as far as possible with the game looking beautiful. My goal was to make sure Anti-Aliasing was at least MSAA and Higher Quality Postprocessing was turned on. Thankfully, I found a group of settings that include both of these with the only tradeoff being it has to stick to 50 FPS. The game still feels incredibly smooth, but it can't hit 60 with both of these settings. I also elected to keep TDP limits turned off to make sure it stays stable, but that does mean some areas can hit up to 23W.

I did also notice some slight stutters here and there when going into new areas, but these dissipated once the areas were loaded.

Trails Into Reverie does support 16:10 resolutions, so no black bars here, and it has full controller support. The game also has cloud save support, though it doesn't say it on the Steam store page.

Conclusion

The Legend of Heroes: Trails Into Reverie is hands-down the best JRPG in this series and quite possibly one of my favorites this year. The story, its pacing, and the gameplay mesh well together to create an unforgettable experience, especially when you have the knowledge and experiences of the past games. It was heartwarming to see the characters I grew with interact with each other in such fulfilling ways while getting closing arcs for two fantastic subseries. With it also running fantastically on the Steam Deck, I am happy to continue saying how this series is best played on Deck!

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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