The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails Overview (Swap)

The Trails sequence is thought for its unimaginable worldbuilding by way of many various video games, together with Trails of Chilly Metal, Trails from Zero, and Trails to Azure, in addition to Trails within the Sky. The occasions of these video games culminated with Trails into Reverie, which lastly obtained a localized launch this yr.

The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails, nevertheless, has completely no reference to the mainline video games. That’s truly a great factor because it means Boundless Trails can implement new mechanics with out being beholden to them. This has an enticing real-time motion fight system with loads of nice worldbuilding by way of facet quests. Nonetheless, the story is reasonably simplistic and typically the platforming feels imprecise. Nonetheless, Boundless Trails is a worthy spin-off deserving of the Trails identify.

The story doesn’t have the intricate political and socioeconomic pulls that the mainline Trails video games have, and which may bitter some longtime followers of the sequence who count on Boundless Trails to be the identical. As a substitute, the story reminds us of traditional Last Fantasy video games—Nayuta and the fairy Noi workforce as much as accumulate elemental Grasp Gears and cease the evil villain Zechts, who’s hellbent on destroying each Nayuta’s hometown of Remnant Island and the magical Misplaced Heaven.

The story additionally has a touch of Kingdom Hearts surprise to it, as Nayuta has desires of visiting different locations exterior of his hometown and Noi’s magical talents let him achieve this. Boundless Trails doesn’t have essentially the most elaborate story by any means, nevertheless it’s good to have the ability to expertise a journey that doesn’t depend on enjoying a bunch of interconnected ones to grasp.

The sport’s story is bolstered by its great facet quests, that are harking back to these discovered within the mainline Trails entries. I loved tackling these as I obtained to study extra about each Remnant Island and Misplaced Heaven’s inhabitants. One quest, specifically, had me present an elemental god the delicacies of human meals, which offered context about how they view others within the human realm. Moreover, these quests are price pursuing as they typically give rewards reminiscent of further gold or some helpful fight gadgets upon completion.

The fight in Boundless Trails is the sport’s greatest energy. It utterly goes in the other way of the turn-based battles in the primary Trails video games and opts for real-time motion platforming. It’s easy however efficient. The sport allows you to select phases on a map much like that of a 2D Mario sport. We had a variety of enjoyable hacking and slashing at enemies all through every of the phases—it was a refreshing tackle the everyday Trails fight system and saved us engaged.

The phases even have spectacular replayability. Every has three stars to gather primarily based on targets and situations. For instance, you may earn a star on a sure stage by reaching the top with out getting hit greater than 10 occasions. You’re even rewarded for reaching sure milestones in your star-collecting journey; each six stars allows you to study a brand new talent or particular assault. It’s a enjoyable mini-collectathon and we felt like we have been a younger teen enjoying New Tremendous Mario Bros. on the DS once more.

Finally, Nayuta may change the seasons in Misplaced Heaven, and that unlocks seasonal variants of current phases, providing much more replayability, with much more star accumulating! The seasonal phases combine up the environments, platforming, and enemy selection fairly a bit, so it by no means actually obtained repetitive. Nonetheless, typically the platforming facet within the phases felt imprecise. These phases are introduced as a 2.5D affair, and there have been many situations the place we needed to leap onto transferring platforms, solely to misjudge our distance and incur fall harm. The truth that the digital camera is mounted doesn’t assist issues.

As for the presentation itself, NIS has managed to make this 11-year-old PlayStation Moveable sport as fairly because it presumably might. The 3D character fashions have been enhanced and so they’re charming in a retro-style, early-polygonal means. There’s additionally a sensible use of cel-shading utilized to the fashions. Certain, the graphical limitations of a PSP port are apparent, however the facial expressions and character actions add to its enchantment. On Swap, the sport additionally runs flawlessly with no discernible hiccups or body price points.

One other addition that we actually cherished was the high-speed characteristic. In current Trails entries, you may click on a button for high-speed mode, which will increase the velocity of your entire sport, gameplay and cutscenes included. Whereas taking the important path in Boundless Trails will get you a 15-20 hour runtime, the sport has loads of content material. Not solely does working again to earlier phases to gather remaining stars add extra playtime, however there’s additionally a playable epilogue after the primary story. The way in which the sport is structured is completely suited to the stop-and-go playstyle {that a} transportable machine was designed for.

Conclusion

The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails is a enjoyable motion RPG that takes parts of the broader sequence it is primarily based on and crafts one thing distinctive. The minute-to-minute gameplay can also be participating, though with some minor platforming frustrations right here and there. Whereas the story could also be simplistic and never as politically engrossing because the mainline Trails video games, the heartfelt solid of characters and facet quests assist flesh out its world.