1/10. How dare they put Rixia into the post final boss cutscene for like a minute and then not put her in the party for the postgame but give you Fei who also only shows up in that same cutscene.

Ahem. Daybreak 2 is a sequel to Daybreak, but not really to the Trails series. As in it does very little for the overall story, instead giving small character arc steps for the core cast in different ways. It also adds back in a bunch of missing stuff from Daybreak 1, like a card game. And plentiful ingame costumes.

Like the rest of the Trails series, just going to talk through some thoughts and general impressions. No full category talk stuff here.

Daybreak 2 is basically Reverie 2. It has a bunch of minigames, a randomized dungeon that is almost entirely optional that puts together separated party members, chapters where the party is completely split, plenty of fanservice costumes(swimsuits for Van’s main staff, an extra swimsuit for Judith + a spy catsuit, and some recolors and whatever Shizuna’s jeans are suppose to be), and a plot that doesn’t really advance the overall narrative.

Each of Van’s party does get a little bit of arc stuff, but how it does that varies a lot. Judith just has her grandma show up, that’s it. Feri struggles with her identity for basically the entire game because her blood brother is still a dick. Aaron has his whole live get upended again, which is also one of the only character things that tie into a bigger organization change that happens that will still be around in the next game. That and 2 new enforcers for Ouroboros.

Combat is mostly the same with some stuff to speed things up. A new attack that triggers when enemies are stunned. Casting and a new parry attack for the real time system. Lots of over powered gear. Spells that do 2 elements and use the bigger weakness one for damage. It’s all just stuff that makes combat faster. It’s still way to easy once you get a few hours in. It just breaks. Once you get arts to good damage, combat falls apart and it just isn’t setup to deal with you spamming spells that out damage ultimates.

The final boss was great though, favorite in the whole series for the fight itself. Boss 1 flips you into the active system at 2/3 and 1/3rd HP without menu access, so you actually have to engage with both combat systems. Then you get another boss fight that has you use almost the entire party as it swaps you through different big moments in the story.

Time is a big theme, as time travel becomes a plot thing early on. The way it’s used though makes the party come across as really bad at not getting killed. I don’t know if this was an overcorrection to the almost 0 mortality rate of Cold Steel, but the party fails and actually dies a bunch through the game. It’s honestly silly. They just fail at things they should be doing with no challenge.

Rixia not really being in the game makes Judith the main eye candy for the game. Shizuna could work, she joins early on enough and gets some fanservice like costumes, but being honestly I’m not a fan of overpowered sword chick. I know she’s a fan favorite but nothing about her is appealing to me. Like Van does I actually just consider her a headache. I know she’s sticking around though, the next 2 games are still in Calvard with Van and Shizuna sticks around. I think she’s basically made a 3rd love interest for Van, which he didn’t need.

I liked parts of the game. The ending got me to tear up, and I laughed a few times. I did get annoyed at how often they brought up the Cult as a plot point, like the cult feels like a get out of jail card regarding plot progression and an excuse for this game’s side story plot. You can tell they just keep adding things to the cult that were never intended just to justify whatever nonsense is happening.

I liked Daybreak 2 more then Cold Steel 3. So middle of the road as far as where it stands in the series. As a game Daybreak 2 is better then 1, if only for more stuff to do.

Save for Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak 2

For this entry I just made chapter based saves. I somehow missed a food item in act 2, but otherwise all collection based achievements can be finished the the finale section of the game. As of the intermission chapter all costumes were gotten by the next chapter.