![]() By no means a dour or even melancholic tale, what Azure gets right in its themes is that balance between hopeful idealism and harsh reality. A story that once more expands on the tensions between neighboring nations of Erebonia and Calvard - Crossbell sandwiched between the two, struggling against seemingly impossible odds to find its sense of self and identity slip away as the game progresses. ![]() ![]() An overall narrative progression that’s more in tune with the encroaching unrest that with Azure builds across its handful of lengthy chapters. A tone this time that’s a touch less light-hearted, even with its ample number of comical moments. If there’s one major factor that helps Azure stand out - even in the midst of latter-day and mechanically-interesting entrants and contrasted too with the prior Zero - it’s the general feeling of unease. Even if that end isn’t exactly the most, shall we say, “happiest” or victorious feeling. An inevitable outcome for anyone who’s played through the latter moments of Trails of Cold Steel II but whose ratcheting tensions, unraveling and subsequent conclusion reaffirms that belief that alongside Zero, Trails to Azure makes the Crossbell arc the most narratively satisfying to see through to its respective end. But that feeling of a journey’s end is felt more so in the tale being spun with Trails to Azure. Only making occasional jumps to other platforms in Asia, but never one major enough to reach either North American or European shores by way of handheld, console or PC alike. ![]() Much like its fellow Crossbell entrant brethren, last year’s Trails from Zero, Azure has spent much of the past decade-plus confined to its original Japan-only release on the PSP. An entrant in Nihon Falcom’s long-running, equally-winding string of turn-based RPGs that prior to now had been for those in the West all-but-impossible to access. A journey not just in terms of its placement in the Trails canon - the second and final part to the Crossbell arc - but a journey that in one sense you could’ve rightly proclaimed to have felt seemingly winding yet never-ending for fans of the series. Years may have past - as has its accompanying follow-ups, sequels and entirely new plot-threads to follow - but in many ways, The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure feels like the end of a journey. ![]()
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