The next entry into the series, Daybreak takes place in Calvard, the last 7 game’s countries (Erebonia and Crossbell) neighbor. You play as Van, a morally loose man who goes by Spriggan as he works with Agnes, a girl related to the crazy scientist who basically started their entire industrial revolution, who is searching for 8 Genesis. These are basically prototype devices to test arts and quartz, basically the usable magic rocks. As apparently the world will end if she can’t find all 8. That’s what her grandpa’s diary tells her at least.

The rest of this write up will follow the early Trails entries styles where I mostly rant and praise things at mostly random.

New main character is fairly similar to Rean. Van is self-sacrificing, blue haired, has a big mystery tied to the game’s main plot and so on. Van has more traits than Rean does though and morally is more interesting than Rean’s goody too shoes thing.

Romance is basically gone. No dating connections or anything like that, as Van is pretty against the whole thing do to his whole self guilt stuff. He has an old flame but he really just acts like he wants her to hate him and the new love interest, our heroine of the game, is to young and Van never shows interest in her. It feels like a step to far away from Cold Steel. Like romances are fine, just don’t do the everyone is a harem option stuff so it doesn’t screw over your writing future events. As it is, none of the main cast have romantic options. It felt really weird playing an RPG without any focus on that beyond a simple crush from Agnes, our heroine.

Gameplay got changed. Mostly added a simple action gameplay system for field combat. It switches between field and turn based really well and makes running back through the game really easy as basically all field fights are optional. Evasion tanks got more or less removed which the series needed to happen, Reverie made them way to busted. In it’s place, Van just gets a hate draw move so it’s just HP tank instead. Even on Nightmare combat never really got that interesting save for like 3 boss fights which were close shaves. I gameovered 1 time I think. Overall the changes are a nice change of pace but not enough that I could ever play this back to back with the rest of the series.

Fanservice is pretty weak overall, which is kinda weird with the whole sexy movie producer plotline the game has. Chapter 3 is entirely about a movie festival with one of the greatest in world director’s being very sex appeal obsessed. Very little of that chapter is actually all that sexy, though you do get a pole dance bit where a lot of plot actually occurs. The only other sexy moment is Judith, the movie actress party member, has her robe fall off after a boss fight, giving Van a frontal peak and the player some cleavage at an odd angle.

There are no in game costumes until NG+, and the ones you get are pretty boring. Everyone gets thier hot spring towel, a hot spring yukata esque outfit, casual clothes and of course their standard work outfits. Agnes gets a shoeless version of her casual outfit, which is basically her highest sex appeal outfit, despite being the bustiest part member. Judith is the only girl with an in-game swimsuit you unlock and she’s only in the party for like the last 25% or so of the game. She’s also the second smallest bust of the four female party members, the smallest being the 13 year old.

The actual… issue if I had to say I had one is that no one really has an outfit that shows their ass off other then Judith’s swimsuit. In the rest of the series since Cold Steel 3 I just always had some butt on screen for a majority of the playtime, you just can’t do that here.

On the other side, boob jiggle got another update from Reverie. Most of the female cast jiggle as they walk, and if you rotate them their boobs move. None of that start stop running jiggle from Cold Steel, their boobs have their own physics now. Rixia is glorious even though she’s not around much.

Alignment system is underused. That’s all I really have to say about it. Do grey if you want to play with Rixia in the party, law if you want Elaine the bracer who’s Van’s ex, chaos if you want to hang with Ouroboros, and law and chaos if you want the new hot Samurai/Ninja girl. Beyond that it gives you some extra final tier weapons.

Not a fan of removing scanning enemies manually. I know it’s tedious, I just like doing it.

The new Master Quartz system(Holo Cores) is less interesting since their bonuses are always optional, no downside if you don’t use activate them. Their bonuses are also more boring then the Master Quartzes.

The game’s plot really could have done without Chapter 5 and Final being so similar. Or just a chapter that stood out from the rest more, really the whole series relies to heavily on the same formula for chapters. At least the heroes party never felt they weren’t accomplishing anything at all, unlike Rean’s up till Cold Steel 4. That’s a major issue I had with Cold Steel, that nothing Rean and his friends did until his 4th game mattered as it was all according to plan for the villain. Hell, until the true end you were still basically doing exactly as the villains wanted anyway.

I have no real idea what Daybreak 2 is going to be about. I’ve seen people mention it’s kind of an extra or afterthought plot wise, and that wouldn’t be surprising. There’s like 3 plot threads to follow up on here, the next game really should have had a new protag. The series only has like 3 or 4 total games left based on stuff the dev has said. No idea why this far into it we get what is apparently an aimless entry.

Saves for Trails into Daybreak

I beat the game twice, made a bunch of saves for achievements. NG+ saves to each chapter so you have the costumes and the game is easy, saves to the two fanservice moments, an import save with everything for Daybreak 2 and that should be it.