Beyond the Horizon
As an avid Trails fan who has played almost every game in the series, Nayuta no Kiseki was that one final remaining title that I’ve yet to play. Released originally as a PSP game back in 2012 and never making it to the States, it is no wonder I haven’t had the opportunity to do so. Luckily, with the growing popularity of the series in the west, an official localization was finally announced and I was eager to find out what I’ve been missing out on all these years.
Dreamers often find themselves gazing off into the night skies, wondering of a world beyond their imagination.
MSRP: $49.99
Platforms: PC, PS, NSW
Played on PC: i7 9700K, RTX 3080, 32GBs RAM
Price I’d Pay: $39.99
Length: 15 hours for main story only, 25~ hours for all post game content
Steam Deck: Verified and plays well except for some hitches
Returning home from a long journey with his friend Signa, Nayuta looks across the seas and dreams of one day proving that the world is more than what it seems to be on the surface. After exploring a newly fallen ruin near his home, he has a fateful encounter with a fairy that leads him on an adventure that promises to reveal the truth of the world as he never imagined.
Despite the “Trails” moniker in the title, this is most certainly not a part of the larger “Trails” canon which spans the Liberal, Crossbell, Erebonia and Calvard arcs. While I knew this fact going in, it was still disappointing to see how much weaker and less interesting the cast of characters and story turned out to be. That’s not to say that I disliked all the characters but they came off as generic and the twists in the story felt very choreographed, as I was able to call out everything that happened with relative ease.
Luckily, like Ys, much of the game’s focus was rather on the combat and exploration of the various levels which played out like stages. There weren’t some big overworld and interconnected areas to explore but rather stages that were selected and entered through a hub world. This approach to level design and progression felt cheap at first but the more I progressed through the game and its various different environments, I found that I was having a lot of fun.
After releasing the guardian of each land, I was able to change the season which dramatically altered the appearance and level layout of the stages which made playing through them again for leveling/quests feel fresh. The big boss fights that capped off each of these lands were big, bombastic affairs, offering multiple phases and dynamic transitions and despite them not offering any real challenge, I was eagerly looking forward to the next boss encounter.
Big, fun boss encounters are a must in any good ARPG!
My performance when completing each stage was rewarded with a stamp that would allow me to unlock new skills or upgrade existing ones which opened up the relatively simple hack and slash gameplay further over time. There were spells to unlock and they would upgrade the more I used them which encouraged me to change things up once I got a spell to its max level. The criteria for getting the maximum stamps per stage differed from level to level but most of the time, it boiled down to objectives like finding all the secrets in a stage or completing it before a certain time. The combination of these factors made going through the stages enjoyable despite the rather simple combat mechanics.
Outside of dungeons, I could take on a few side missions each chapter that would reward me with various useful items and while most of them boiled down to simple fetch quests, some had me using the change of seasons to solve a potentially impossible problem which was a nice touch. It’s just a shame more wasn’t done with the mechanic and that there was so little time spent on flushing out the characters.
After completing the main story which took about 15~ hours, I was surprised to see a rather extensive post-game with new story elements, powered up bosses and a true ending that followed at the end.
Changing the seasons before going into a stage was simple and quite rewarding to do since new, more powerful enemies would appear as well.
Despite the admirable work done by Durante and his team, the visuals and animation work presented here is very rough and there’s no amount of sharpening that is going to make this look like anything more than a remaster of a PSP game. One thing that is truly timeless is music and that’s one area that shines with tunes that fit every scenario and mood. As I listen to the OST of the game while writing this review, it makes me appreciate it even more.
Even though there’s no hiding the PSP roots of this rather simplistic title, there is still a lot of fun to be had in its solid level design, satisfying sense of progression and great soundtrack.
Fun Tidbit: One of the things that made me most curious before playing was the similar appearance of the heroine in Legend of Nayuta and an important figure in the Trails series that is mired in mysteries. After completing this title, I don’t think there are any relations.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
