Text difficulty won’t be that bad I hope. It’s been almost 2 years since I muddled my way through reverie and since then I’ve learned some of what grammar is and I can recognize a lot of kanji from reading. It’ll still be kind of tricky imo just because there’s a lot of dialogue but better than it was the last time I tried something like this.
1 Like
During the long gap between the initial English release of Trails in the Sky FC on PSP and the eventual English release of SC, I eventually decided to import the Japanese version so I could find out what happens next. But I was completely out of my depth when it came to the complexity of the Japanese text, and after some painstaking attempts to trudge through line by line with a dictionary quickly burned out. The script’s usage of kanji and specialized terminology puts it on a considerably higher level than most video games, and trying to parse out the low-res font on the PSP version is a real pain.
I have a much more solid foundation for Japanese learning now, but I still don’t think I’m ready to tackle this series in Japanese, or at least I’d rather tackle some other games with less complex language first. But major props to those of you who are going to. I have a lot of fondness for the Sky trilogy in particular.
6 Likes
I went through the intro right now to get a feel for the Japanese, I haven’t encountered anything particularly hardcore so far. I’m playing the PSP version and, as discussed earlier, it’s certainly true that I’m guessing the kanji more than I’m reading them in many instances due to the bad resolution. If you don’t recognize the last kanji on the 2nd line here then good luck looking it up…
If you manage to get @RebBlue’s high-res version working it will be a non-issue however.
As far as vocab and grammar are concerned, it’s all fairly standard “shounen” fare so far. Definitely seems like a decent intro for somebody trying to get into playing games in Japanese IMO.
The real question is how fast we’re going to go through the game. If we want to be beginner-friendly we certainly need to go slowly, especially at first. Going through the pre-intro-FMV dialogue would have taken me a good hour I think when I was a complete noob.
Personally I’m fine going very slowly in order to accommodate everybody but that means that it’s going to take us a long while to progress through the game.
With that in mind I think all the dialogue until you gain control of the characters can be enough for the first week. Anything more than that is probably too much for beginners IMO.
4 Likes
I spent a good number of hours on the opening already, though it would have been quicker if I weren’t looking up and tallying every word for the vocab sheet. The time it takes is going to vary wildly from person to person. There’s not really a natively level or anything for this so it’s hard to guess how it will go until you start playing.
I think it would definitely be a good idea to start slowly and discuss speeding up later, even if it is going to take a long time. Though, it’s going to take a long time either way. I agree that just getting to the point you can save is more than enough for week 1.
Also, I feel like I should clarify for beginners, that it’s more than okay to not get through the entire opening in one sitting. It took me a few sessions of reading a bit and getting tired and coming back to it later.
5 Likes
Having played all (mainline) Trails games up to the end of Kuro 1 in English or Japanese, I’d definitely be interested in joining!
I originally finished Sky 1 in English, but got around half way through the evolution version which is Japanese only before dropping it for no particular reason.
I’m glad it won the poll because in my opinion it’s way easier in terms of the level of vocabulary compared to later games in the series where there are more political elements, different factions and loads of different characters and events from throughout the series who get referred to in cryptic ways regularly.
I don’t have the stats but I can be fairly certain that the overall amount of text in the game is also a lot less than most later entries, and the later ones have so much that my first playthroughs still easily go over 100 hours on normal difficulty while being relatively (but not completely) thorough.
One thing to bear in mind is lack of voice acting in most versions, but Sky 1 doesn’t have many lengthy sequences of cutscenes like the later games so I believe it’s less of a barrier to entry for this entry.
I agree with going slowly at first and then discussing pacing. One thought is that it might be useful to gauge who is planning to be very thorough (talking to most NPCs, doing most/ all side quests) and who is planning to focus on the main story. Because this could potentially accommodate a fairly wide variety of reading levels while still keeps a somewhat reasonable pace as some members may be reading a lot more text than others in between main story beats. That being said I’m personally fine with a pace slower than I’d otherwise go (within reason) due to the fact that I’ve already beaten the game before.
(Also if we ever get to Sky SC I might just look up the ending cutscenes because I really don’t want to go through the final area of that game again because I remember it taking a very long time)
4 Likes
Speaking of Kanji being potentially hard to decipher, people may find this site with the game’s script in English and Japanese helpful (note that the English translations for these games are very much not direct/ literal translations, and they’re mostly better off for it imo).
In the above example, let’s say you don’t recognize any of the kanji. You can still search “よけいに” in the search box and it’ll show the relevant line of dialogue. This can also be used to find the filename of the scene you’re viewing, which I could see being useful if people would like to use a tool like yomichan if they’re finding a section tricky. I suppose it would also be useful for people who are into making flashcards out of sentences with unfamiliar words that they encounter.
Perhaps the above link should be added to the initial post of the thread if people think it’s a useful tool.
3 Likes
The benefit of starting with Sky FC is that it begins in a very small-scale and domestic setting, so as @generalteddie mentions the language is going to be much more ordinary and approachable than the political and military terminology and lore exposition that becomes more prominent as the series goes on. So in that sense it’s probably a pretty decent choice for intermediate Japanese learners who are comfortable without furigana. There being a full searchable script database available online is really handy.
4 Likes
Moving a little slowly is more appealing for me actually joining just because I’m in the middle of reading a lot of things – given that, I think I’ll be here for the first weeks at least, and hopefully I can stick with you all through it 
3 Likes
I got the secret method for putting the Japanese text into the steam version so it runs at a good resolution and everything. I think I’ll play some this week and then play daybreak when it comes out in English. As long as we keep the pace a bit slow, I think I could keep up with it. The opening cutscene will probably take some lookups but it’s not terrible.
7 Likes
Hi! I’m new to WaniKani (just reached level 3) and this is my first time posting in the community. I was more than stoked to see that someone is talking about TRAILS IN THE SKY considering it’s not known much among my friends, let alone a random Japanese learning app.
I’m currently playing Daybreak as I started the series a year ago and caught up but am excited to speak with more Trails enjoyers!
8 Likes
For anyone else who’s thinking about the secret method (or just wants to play the game in English), the steam version is 50% as of the summer sale.
5 Likes
Me reading this post:
Yay! 
WHAT. THE. MEOW?! 
Oh, well, still, thank you for the recommendation! 
3 Likes
The reasoning is something to do with copyright or something that I don’t fully understand.
3 Likes
Yeah it’s because it’s a version of the game published by XSeed and apparently they only purchased the license to distribute their own localized version of the game. Probably something to do with Falcom already publishing a PC version. It’s not an issue with any of the games after the Sky trilogy.
The recent games have a steam version with Chinese and Korean (not Japanese), and then a separate listing for the NIS America version which includes Japanese language support. At the moment, Kuro II (the most recent game) only has the former for example, but the latter should appear a decent amount of time before an English version is released (if Kuro 1/ daybreak is anything to go by).
I think the main takeaway is to always verify which languages are available when purchasing a game. It’s worse on switch - Valkyria Chronicles is listed on the American switch store as supporting Japanese and English, but it’s only audio that’s available in Japanese, not interface nor subtitles! (I’m never trusting Sega again after purchasing it, thinking it would include the japanese version…)
5 Likes
Same thing for Dragon Quest XI, only audio without Japanese subtitles. Fortunately I wasn’t studying Japanese back when I bought it so I didn’t feel cheated…
4 Likes
I had been thinking of getting a PSP to play all those cool games I missed out on by not having one back in the days, this convinced me to pull the trigger. If everything goes well it should be delivered this week and I can play it on the real hardware instead of emulating!
6 Likes
Could you elaborate on this secret method? I have the Steam version and would love to play along. I am a rabid Trails fan.
I haven’t done it (I’m intending to use the native Japanese PSP version instead of the PC one) but just searching for “trails in the sky FC Japanese text” online yields a bunch of relevant results.
3 Likes
I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to stick with y’all (busy summer + fall for me) but FC has been sitting in my steam library unplayed for ages and it’ll be fun to finally start it with a group. As language practice, too 
I made the necessary preparations for my version this morning, so I’m ready for next week!
5 Likes
Figured it out! It was actually quite simple. I’m just working to overlay voices with the text, too. I went through the intro scene with Estelle and Cassius–the text is a little muddled like discussed up above, but it’s still possible to decipher. This will certainly help me get used to using a dictionary!
4 Likes