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One year ago, Nihon Falcom and GungHo Online Entertainment released a remake of the classic RPG Trails in the Sky First Chapter worldwide. I played this remake, Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter and immediately fell in love with the Trails franchise. Throughout late-2025 and 2026 I must have poured hundreds of collective hours into playing through the series. So, needless to say, their upcoming remake of the first adventure’s second half, Trails in the Sky Second Chapter, has been one of my most anticipated releases of the year. Having been lucky enough to receive a review code for this game, I’d now like to dissect Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter piece by piece so we can make a judgement on how good this remake is and if it’s worth the time of both new fans and old fans alike.
A Blend of Turn-Based and Action Gameplay
The gameplay of Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter makes use of the same battle system which Falcom has been using since the beginning of the series’ Calvard arc, with the player being able to fight enemies in the field with either simplistic action-RPG “Quick Battles” or switching to more traditional turn-based RPG “Command Battles” with the press of a button.
Going over and fully explaining the gameplay of Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter in a review like this feels a bit pointless. As the title implies, this game is a direct continuation of Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter in all ways. If you enjoyed the gameplay of the first game’s remake, the you’ll enjoy the gameplay of this game.
That isn’t to say that there haven’t been any changes to the battle system at all, they’re just small tweaks that you’ll only really take note of if you’re looking for them. Such as smaller enemies like Poms being able to grab onto your character and slow them down in quick battles or breakable objects blocking the path of arts in Command Battles.
One of the oddest changes made to the game concerns the caves scattered around Liberl. These were added in the 1st Chapter remake as a means of allowing the player to quickly grind, as every time you entered a cave it would be filled with random enemies. The caves still exist in the 2nd Chapter Remake, but their purpose has been removed as no enemies will spawn in them. Instead they are filled with crystals that the player can shatter for sepith.
Considering that there is no shortage of ways to obtain thousands of sepith in this game, this change renders all of these cave pointless and makes me wonder what the point of their addition was in the first place, as they are the only real change made to the maps of Liberl in these remakes (Not counting the lack of loading screens as a map change of course).
Of course one can expect to also see all of the additions that the original Second Chapter brought to First Chapter in this remake, such as additional status effects, upgraded versions of every character’s arts, and additional S-Crafts for characters other than Joshua and Estelle.
So instead of spending too much of your time talking about a battle system which you have already experienced in 1st Chapter, let’s quickly move on to discussing the game’s visuals and then its merits as a remake.
Perfect Visual Design
Visually, Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter is one of Falcom’s best looking games, and certainly their best looking 3D game. The game’s visuals are almost identical to 1st Chapter’s, with each area being a faithful recreation of the original game’s but with each region of Liberl now being a single large map that the player can run around in without the need of loading zones.
Despite already experiencing it in 1st Chapter, it still feels magical to be able to see the Ruan region’s lighthouse from a distance and then be able to run to it in a single long sprint. The land of Liberl feels more alive than it ever has before, and I’d argue more alive than any other region in the Trails franchise currently.
It’s a small detail, but I love moving the camera upward while on the ground to see the jetstreams of various airships that passed by, literal trails in the sky, or looking down at the ground any time the party is aboard the Arseille and being able to make out the exact areas that you yourself were traversing earlier in the game.
Every character featured in this game looks the best they ever had with vivid facial expressions, beautifully animated crafts, and many fancy cutscenes throughout the game which go out of their way to show off how cool the cast of Trails in the Sky has always been.
Not every aspect of the original game’s visuals have made a clean transition to this remake though. Despite how limited the visual design of the original Second Chapter was, there were some moments which the 2nd Chapter Remake was almost destined to portray worse.
The first appearance of the Aureole is the chief standout for this. In the original game, the Aureole’s appearance had enough weight and impact that it changed the very format of the game briefly. In contrast the scene where it appears in the remake feels weightless despite mostly being a shot for shot recreation of the same scene.
When everything is portrayed with a slick and fancy cutscene, it’s hard for one of the few parts of the original game which were to feel the same way. It’s just particularly unfortunate in the Aureole’s case as that was one of the biggest moments in the original game.
A Classic Remade
When the topic of video game remakes is brought up, the first questions that come to people’s minds are “What did they change?”, “What did they add?”, and “What did they remove?”. To answer all of those questions at once, Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter is one of the most faithful video game remakes of all times.
Most of the changes made in this remake are minor enough that they’d feel like me stretching my word count if I listed them, such as one of Kurt’s Crafts having a much higher chance of inflicting deathblow on enemies here than it did in the original or Josette being controllable during the Bobcat heist. Everything you remember about the original game is still here, it’s just been made 3D and adapted to the modern Trails battle system.
As for what the remake has added to the game, that is also a very small list. Trails in the Sky Second Chapter was already a massive 80+ hour RPG with dozens of side quests and more hidden dialogue and NPC interactions than a single player can keep track of. There is almost no room to actually add anything in a remake of this game.
That isn’t to say there’s nothing new in this remake. There are a handful of new side quests added to this version of the game, which give extra screentime to characters such as Duke Dunan, but these quests are both few/far between and aren’t much longer than the game’s normal side quests, which don’t take that long to complete.
The only part of the game which has been expanded from the original in a way that feels worth mentioning is the game’s final dungeon, which is more than far enough into the game that I don’t feel comfortable detailing those changes in a per-release review.
No, the amazing part of 2nd Chapter isn’t the ways it changed or expanded upon the original game, but rather how much it hasn’t.
Attempting to discuss the ways that 2nd Chapter has been changed from the original game is almost a false start. Instead my amazement at this game came from how much of it matches the original version exactly. I don’t think this remake cut a single piece of the original’s game’s content at all.
Thousands of lines of unique NPC dialogue, a ginormous amount of unique enemy types, dozens of different arts to cast, hundreds of treasure chests. Everything that was in the original game is in this remake. No aspect of the game has been compromised for this remake.
Recent RPGs have made me and many other almost complacent with very little variety. It feels like every other massive RPG these days, both of the turn-based and action variety, only has about a dozen enemies types that get recolored throughout the game. So seeing a game like this where every other hour you’ll be encountering new things and enemies which function as both turn-based and action RPG encounters feels magical.
One specific aspect of the original game that I was certain wouldn’t make the cut in this remake was the status effect which makes characters fat so they can’t move as well in the battlefield. So imagine my surprise when I got to a certain boss who yelled out “Bibidi babidi BLOAT!” and began to inflict that status effect on my party.
Seeing nearly every aspect of the original game be faithfully recreated in this remake was a sight to behold, but it also made the parts that didn’t make the cut stand out all the more. Chief among these is the complete and bizarre removal of Agate’s Wild Rage II skill.
This skill of Agate’s in the original would see him sacrifice 70% of his HP in exchange for 150 CP, allowing him to instantly use his S-Craft but put him in grave danger of dying within the next few turns. Without the removal of this skill, players will instead have access to Agate’s Wild Rage I skill for the entire game, which instead has him sacrifice 20% of his HP for 40 CP.
That might seem like a reasonable exchange on the surface, but when one also takes into account Agate’s passive support skill which can give him an extra 40 CP at the end of his turn, then the math actually comes down to 20% of his HP for 80 CP. Because of this change, there is no deterrent preventing Agate from using his S-Craft every single turn.
This change and how it effects Agate’s role in combat is part of something which effects the entire game. So let’s take some time to discuss the difficulty curve of Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter.
Strange Difficulty Curve
The Trails in the Sky trilogy have never been particularly difficult RPGs, normal encounters rarely asked much from the player and you’d only need to start cracking out buffs and debuff crafts for late-game enemies and a few monster hunt side quests. Despite that, it’s hard not to feel like this remake of Second Chapter has been made much easier than the original.
Agate’s ability to spam S-Crafts every single turn is not exclusive to him, as I can count on a single hand the amount of turns I’ve had in this game where none of my party members had their S-Craft charged. A combination of support skills which automatically raise CP, the burst gauge giving everyone 50 free CP, or crafts which didn’t raise the whole party’s CP before now doing so has resulted in this being one of the most S-Craft heavy games in the Trails franchise.
By the end of the game, I was barely seeing enemies attack in random encounters as I would always be able to begin the battles either with a burst attack or an S-Craft. Burst attack spam became almost as bad as S-Craft spam by the end as using Burst attacks fills the Burst gauge, creating an infinite ouroboros of Burst attacks which never run out.
Now that isn’t to say I didn’t have any trouble at all during my playthrough, as there were still a few boss fights which gave me a hard time. In fact, the same bosses which gave me a hard time in this remake were the exact same ones I struggled with in the original game, such as Jubokko and Zaqqum in Mistwald or Bleublanc.
It’s also hard to tell if my party being strong enough to just completely negate normal encounters is something that will effect all players, as this game has no shortage of optional ways for the player to become stronger that I took advantage of at every opportunity.
Cooking meals which increase your entire party’s max stats, upgrading weapons at orbal factories, clearing every side quest in every town before moving on to the next, equipping accessories which negate status effects which you know the next boss will inflict on you. At every step of the journey the player is presented with optional ways of growing stronger.
My experience of defeating every end-game random encounter within seconds is one that I created, by taking full advantage of the optional systems the game presented to me. I’m sure that players who don’t take the time to engage with each of these individual systems will have a harder time with the game, and thus I should feel rewarded for my efforts.
At the same time though, I wonder how out of the way these systems and the power you gain from them actually are. Sure you’ll need to buy food recipes and ingredients to get those stat boots and actively go to Orbment Factories and use materials to upgrade your weapons, but neither of those feel particularly out of the way or like something the average player will neglect.
Regardless of if my party being complete monsters near the end game was a result of me taking full advantage of the game’s many systems to gain strength or if the game just wasn’t balanced around the new mechanics present in this remake, I would advise that you play the game on either Advanced or Hard difficulty during your playthrough.
Closing Thoughts
When it first released in 2006, Trails in the Sky Second Chapter was one of the greatest RPGs of all time. That remains true to this day, and this 2nd Chapter remake has done all it could to replicate the magic of the original release. While I wouldn’t say that it’s as good as the original, as I feel the difficulty balancing of this game and the complete destruction of normal encounters makes me prefer the original, it’s still one of the best RPG releases in recent years and a title that I heavily recommend to anyone even slightly curious about the Trails franchise. At this point in time, Falcom has me completely hooked and I’ll be there for whatever the next game is. Whether that be a remake of 3rd Chapter, the conclusion of the Calvard arc, or something completely new.
Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter
Bottom Line
The task of remaking one of the greatest games of all time is a hefty one that most developers would be wise to avoid trying. Despite that, Falcom has put their best foot forward an delivered a near-perfect game that is sure to please any fan of the RPG genre, be they hardcore or casual. While Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter doesn't quite live up to the original game, it's still one of the best RPGs of this generation and should be given your time and attention.
