空の軌跡 // Trails in the Sky ⚔ Story Club・Week 41

[RebBlue]

Week 41	14th April 2025
Last Week	Week 40
Next Week	Week 42
Home Thread	空の軌跡

This week’s stopping point is after having a conversation with the 大佐.

Side Quests

Nothing this week.

Screenshot

Vocabulary

Vocab Sheet , thank you to everyone who has been helping with this.

We also have an arts sheet if you’re struggling with the in-game version.

Please read the guidelines on the first page before adding any words.

Discussion Guidelines

Everybody should feel free to post and ask questions–it’s what makes book clubs fun! But please do not post until you are familiar with Spoiler Courtesy!

Spoiler Courtesy

Please follow these rules to avoid inadvertent ネタバレ. If you’re unsure whether something should have a spoiler tag, err on the side of using one.

1. Any potential spoiler for the current week’s reading need only be covered by a spoiler tag. Predictions and conjecture made by somebody who has not read ahead still falls into this category.
2. Any potential spoilers for external sources need to be covered by a spoiler tag and include a label (outside of the spoiler tag) of what might be spoiled. These include but are not limited to: other book club picks, other books, games, movies, anime, etc. I recommend also tagging the severity of the spoiler (for example, I may still look at minor spoilers for something that I don’t intend to read soon).
3. Any information from later in the book than the current week’s reading (including trigger warnings that haven’t yet manifested) needs to be hidden by spoiler tags and labeled as coming from later sections.

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Discussion Questions

1. What sentence/passage gave you the most difficulty? Feel free to request some help, or if you figured it out on your own break it down for the rest of us!

2. What was your favorite new vocab word from this week’s reading?

3. Was there any passage that you found particularly intriguing? Did it resonate with you (either positively or negatively)? Was it surprising? Offer any insight or new perspective? Was it just beautifully written?

4. Have you had a look around the castle?

5. How was the feast?

6. What do you make of the conversation with the 大佐?

Participation

Will you be playing along with us this week?

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[Daisoujou]

Sorry Jin, women only like guys who have AoE abilities

We’re out of the sewers and back to real plot progress. I see where the marrying the princess off thing tripped me up – it’s a scheme to get rid of her (possibly with other benefits given the cross-national political nature of it) and keep the easily controlled idiot. At least the 公爵’s butler got to appear in one scene without having to do any babysitting; that guy usually exists to suffer.

It feels obvious that the queen is locked away as part of the scheme, but they did say she will announce it herself. Are we about to get back into whatever… hypnosis, mind control kind of thing has happened with our villains in the past? That hasn’t been a super satisfying plot device to say the least, but it seems like a way to tie things together, and an easy explanation for how this is going to happen. Maybe if the mechanics of that one day become clearer it’ll start feeling less… cheap? I could be wrong but it feels like where we’re headed.

Nice to see all the old political figures again, look back on the journey a little.

Can’t say I can make much of what the 大佐 is up to with that conversation, but I want him to be at least partially genuine contrary to Joshua’s suspicious nature, because I think whatever attachment he has to Cassius adds some depth to his character. Honestly what interested and caught my attention most was how deeply opposed the the 大尉 was to them having a conversation. Yeah they’re suspicious of Joshua and Estelle for good reason, but she’s seemed totally on board with his plans thus far and it’s like she didn’t trust him to meet alone with them. We haven’t seen anything like that from her so far, that I can recall.

[RebBlue]

Belated warning: high res fonts crash the steam version in a scene in the 空中庭園.

[simias]

@RebBlue

空中庭園

I remember hesitating to put this word in my Anki deck when I was playing Legend of Legaia but then decided that it was too low-frequency to be worth it. I’ve seen it in like 3 other videogames since then. Japanese devs love their 空中庭園.

[polv]

The word seems simple enough to remember without Anki, providing you know both halves.

Finally, castle sightseeing of country bumpkins.

I think guest rooms have 2 beds by default, and they prepared the 3rd bed when we arrived. Or perhaps the 4th bed were removed?

The pub won’t serve the drinks or specialties.

Good luck meeting Hilda, and she was able to chat then.

[simias]

Sometimes I just add words just because I think they’re cool. I also like to add “easy” words from time to time because if I only add difficult things the reviews can get really frustrating…

[simias]

Nothing quite conveys opulent luxury like sharing a room dormitory-style.

Also 慇懃無礼 is a fun 四字熟語.

[simias]

week 41

These long dialogue sequences are testing my stamina, especially since I didn’t have time to play this week so I had to rush it today to keep up. I was yearning for a dungeon/combat sequence to relax a bit but I guess we’re going to have a lot of text from now until the end of the game. Maybe with a bit of luck the infiltration sequence to reach the queen will involve some dungeoning? I could use a sewer sequence, I take back what I said last week.

Also the hanging garden was a bit underwhelming I thought. Just a few trees and green splotches on the ground. Legend of Legaia wins this one:

@Daisoujou

Are we about to get back into whatever… hypnosis, mind control kind of thing has happened with our villains in the past? That hasn’t been a super satisfying plot device to say the least, but it seems like a way to tie things together, and an easy explanation for how this is going to happen.

I hope that it will involve some more cunning blackmail/quid pro quo but I guess mind control can do the trick as well.

By the way I had a very bad feeling when 雌ギツネ hastily proposed to make the cocktails. sus.

@Daisoujou

Nice to see all the old political figures again, look back on the journey a little.

I thought it was super weird to have this very sensitive political discussion with all the heads of state and… two kids and an MMA fighter from a foreign country. At least it was addressed though, they’re meant to notify the bracer’s guild. Fair enough I suppose, although still weird to involve a foreigner.

@Daisoujou

Can’t say I can make much of what the 大佐 is up to with that conversation, but I want him to be at least partially genuine contrary to Joshua’s suspicious nature, because I think whatever attachment he has to Cassius adds some depth to his character. Honestly what interested and caught my attention most was how deeply opposed the the 大尉 was to them having a conversation.

Indeed. I wonder if the twist will be that Richard’s intentions are pure somehow? An “ends justifying the means” type of character. So far the game has characterized the 雌ギツネ as being very cunning and mean-spirited, but the authors have not really character-assasinated Richard yet. And of course we don’t really know where Cassius himself stands in all of this.

[RebBlue]

Reply

@simias

I thought it was super weird to have this very sensitive political discussion with all the heads of state and… two kids and an MMA fighter from a foreign country. At least it was addressed though, they’re meant to notify the bracer’s guild. Fair enough I suppose, although still weird to involve a foreigner.

Because the dinner was arranged before デュナン公爵 decided on a whim to invite whoever won the tournament. It’s lucky for the 大佐 that we’re bracers so he could claim that’s why.

[simias]

That’s true but I still feel like he could have just asked the other guests to join him before or after the dinner in order to discuss this. Not very important however. It’s a convenient way for the authors to have us witness this important discussion.

[RebBlue]

ended up being another long one

空の軌跡 // Trails in the Sky Story Club・Week 42

Week 42 21st April 2025 Last Week Week 41 Next Week Week 43 Home Thread 空の軌跡 This week’s stopping point is once you’ve returned to the guild. Side Quests Screenshot Vocabulary Vocab Sheet , thank you to everyone who has been helping with this. We also have an arts sheet if you’re struggling with the in-game version. Please read the guidelines on the first page before adding any words. Discussion Guidelines Everybody should feel free to post and ask questions–it’s what makes …

[eagleflo]

Week 41

Yeah, not buying one word of this.

Glad that nobody else is either. Quite the description!

Hahah, loved this expression. Honestly this game has such expressive models, I’m quite impressed. Not sure I’ve ever seen ギロリ before, but added it to my onomatopoeia deck just to be sure.

This whole marriage plans of course stinks to high heaven, but yeah, arranged political marriages are a feature of monarchy; historically quite successful at preventing wars, even… Love that the game gets a tiny bit into Crusader Kings-esque politics.

We knew that he is a big カシウス fan already, but attributing the entire war outcome to his actions is new. The hero worship culture is just gathering steam…

I like it that 大佐 actually seems to have some rhyme & reason behind this whole play. He certainly himself believes that he is on the correct path here, with the end justifying the means.

[Voi]

Don’t mind me lurking~

@eagleflo

Honestly this game has such expressive models,

I’ve been experiencing the remake vicariously through you and I gotta say it makes me want to break my “don’t not buy unless it’ll get played immediately” rule. It just looks really good. I doubt by they’ll do the same with the crossbell arc since they just rereleased it, but if they did my rule would be shattered…

[eagleflo]

Thanks for the comment! It honesly is really good. The still screenshots don’t really do the real game justice; it’s in motion and (mostly) voiced… I’m confident any fan of the series will get much enjoyment from playing the remake one day. I only recently learned that the banter that is omnipresent in the remake didn’t appear in previous versions; if you like these characters that alone could be a good reason to replay this.

@Voi

I doubt by they’ll do the same with the crossbell arc since they just rereleased it, but if they did my rule would be shattered…

From a recent two-part interview in Dengeki Online that I was now able to read after finishing:

――『空の軌跡SC』の次の『空の軌跡 the 3rd』以降のリメイクについてはいかがでしょうか？

近藤
『the 3rd』にするか、『零の軌跡』にするかは我々の中でも意見が分かれています。
『the 3rd』より『零』のほうがいいんじゃないかという意見もありますね。

So not only are they planning to remake 零の軌跡, they might do it before the 3rd – the team is split on which way to go. The team itself seems to really like the Crossbell Arc.

[simias]

I have to admit that I’m a bit frustrated reading your effusive praise because I feel like I’m missing something. I enjoy this game well enough but honestly half of the fun comes from the club format for me, and being able to chat about it here. If it wasn’t for that I probably never would have picked up SC.

After all I did buy that game when it was first released on Steam over a decade ago and dropped it halfway through during the Ruan arc.

I also know that this game has a super devoted fanbase, I was listening to the music on Youtube a little while ago and many of the comments were calling it the best RPG ever made or made similar commendations. People feel about this the way I fell about Chrono Trigger, FFVII or Grandia. But I just don’t see it and it annoys me.

To me it’s a fairly by-the-numbers JRPG with a rather primitive presentation (ignoring the new remake which I haven’t played), a middling combat system and a decent story that’s probably too ambitious for its own good.

The highlight is the huge amount of NPC dialogue that makes the world feel bustling with life and that is indeed a very real achievement that deserves praise, but I feel like many other RPGs do that well enough (although not at this scale necessarily) while not neglecting the other aspects of the gameplay so much. I really like the attention to optional NPC dialogue, don’t get me wrong, but I could also use an antagonist with a motive I can understand… Or a vague sense of why I’m doing what I’m doing besides tagging along with Estelle while she does random chores around the world.

It’s a 6/10 for me, potentially more if all this Ouroboros plot gets a satisfying conclusion at the end of 3rd. If instead the game kicks the can again with more mysterious characters doing mysterious things for mysterious reasons involving mysterious ancient civilizations and their mysterious technology, I think that will be the end of my journeys in Liberl for good this time.

I hope that I don’t sound too adversarial, I don’t mean to rain on your parade or tell you that you’re wrong for liking it more than I do, I just wish I understood what is so appealing about this game for so many people, especially given that I consider myself a big JRPG enjoyer usually.

[Daisoujou]

@simias

I think that will be the end of my journeys in Liberl for good this time.

Yeah, because I think we go to a new country after that one!

I feel like I’ve already said this elsewhere but just to chip in I am leaning much more on the side of loving it but I do also see and have said similar things to some of what you mention about the combat, or elsewhere the dungeon layouts and etc. I’m just pretty charmed by the character and tone of it all, but it did take time for that to hook me and in earlier weeks I remember I really wasn’t feeling it because those bad aspects were sticking out instead. It’s not doing anything that different from any other series but those characters are just a little more likeable, the towns a little more cozy, which is totally ephemeral and subjective. My tastes in things are weird anyway so I’m probably not representative of the broader praise. But I think it’s common for this genre of games to want to be huge and bombastic and I appreciate that this one, largely, isn’t. We’re just solving little jobs – if anything I’d like it if they stuck even harder to that.

That said, I’ve mentioned it a few times in SC threads now but combat is growing on me. I had a few very rough patches in FC but especially as I keep changing how I approach games I’ll definitely take a few annoying thorns over combat as just a formality the way some turn based games unfortunately end up.

I agree the plot is kinda spinning its wheels with mysteries on mysteries but I guess there’s a part of me that thinks, for obvious sales reasons, most games want to make every sequel a perfectly accessible starting point for newcomers, so I respect someone taking the opposite approach with 13 games you better play in order, SC so directly continuing where FC let off that starting here would be ridiculous. So I’m kind of happy to let it take its time and string me along, at least at the point we’re at now.

Do hope you start enjoying it more, but yeah not every game’s gonna land for everyone, I don’t think you’re exactly missing something about the point, just subjective preferences here.

[eagleflo]

@simias

I hope that I don’t sound too adversarial, I don’t mean to rain on your parade or tell you that you’re wrong for liking it more than I do, I just wish I understood what is so appealing about this game for so many people, especially given that I consider myself a big JRPG enjoyer usually.

Absolutely not too adversarial! I’m actually still trying to understand myself what this game did so well that it completely grabbed me in the last chapter. The hooks were in earlier, but the real spell was cast somewhere towards the end of chapter 3 and the beginning of the final chapter.

I tried writing a bit of a review at Backlogged, but of course without spoilers it’s very hard to get into any sort of detail. One thing I didn’t manage to convey in that review (yet) is that this game fully understood the assignment when it comes to Being on a Journey. It felt like an adventure… dare I say just like クロノ・トリガー does.

Having constantly changing party members during the trip creates some great storytelling possibilities that I think this game did particularly well – actually just like a certain other SNES RPG… Very few JRPGs compare in this regard – it’s too easy to not fully even explore the cast of characters in your own party.

@Daisoujou

But I think it’s common for this genre of games to want to be huge and bombastic and I appreciate that this one, largely, isn’t.

This is another aspect of the game that I just love. We are just beginners. The stakes are initially very low. The game takes it sweet time to develop the characters – in many reviews that are not effusive about the game, a common point is that it feels slow! To me that’s a point of praise. It doesn’t try to be a big 4-disc PSX JRPG to its great benefit, and this is coming from a person who usually likes those kinds of grand-scale things! (I loved FF7, FF8 and FF9.)

I initially ranked this as 4,5 stars, but had to bump it up to 5 – it’s not many games that kind of stay with you like this after playing them for 100+ hours… and honestly those 100+ hours just flew by. It has more flaws than a typical game I’d place at full five stars, but the high points and enjoyment just kind of cover up for all the not-that-great bits.

The characters grew up on me a lot, and I think voice acting played a big role in that. I’m not sure I would have liked this game this much on the PSP or originally on PC? I’m not yet sure how much the battle system being slightly more streamlined in this remake affects my judgement – I had much more fun with it in the end than I initially assumed I would, based on the building blocks. It was only during the very last dungeon that combat became somewhat rote for me, with not much thought into it – that’s much better than most JRPGs!

The worldbuilding is a very big part of what drew me in initially, but let’s be honest, some of the dungeons and outside environments between the cities are pretty meh. This is definitely a weak point of the game, but I wasn’t really bothered by it by that much – there was always a next interesting place to visit on my list. I feel like these transitional places are necessary for the full sense of adventure to blossom?

@simias

I could also use an antagonist with a motive I can understand

I was also puzzled during most of the game, but it honestly feels like this was a lot of setup work for real payoffs later in the trilogy. Unlike many baddies in JRPGs, I could somewhat understand what this power grab plot was all about. I expect many payoffs to materialize in SC, it being a direct continuation…

Edit: oh, one very marked difference from most of the club is that I just devoured this thing towards the end. I think certain emotional beats hit me harder because I didn’t have a full week to reflect between playing sessions.

[Daisoujou]

@eagleflo

I’m not yet sure how much the battle system being slightly more streamlined in this remake affects my judgement – I had much more fun with it in the end than I initially assumed I would, based on the building blocks. It was only during the very last dungeon that combat became somewhat rote for me, with not much thought into it – that’s much better than most JRPGs!

I wonder how much it has changed, but personally FC started really having this feeling of needing to have ways to blitz down the enemies or they would quickly land you in status effect hell, which can start to feel a little like a coin flip at times, and a lot of the options really started falling off in potential damage. I’m open to the idea I was doing some of it wrong too though, I’ve only realized now in SC how powerful certain debuffs actually can be, etc.

@eagleflo

The worldbuilding is a very big part of what drew me in initially, but let’s be honest, some of the dungeons and outside environments between the cities are pretty meh.

More directly, I dunno how it looks in the remake, but I think the biggest problem @simias has (and one I’ve shared) is that basically every dungeon is a small maze of right angle turn hallways. Nothing organic, nothing really distinct about layout ever, no gimmick, all pretty much the same thing. The towers with their stairs between floors up and down are genuinely like the only time in FC a dungeon has a different feel from another at all, and in doing so they basically copied that one other type of layout 4 times. The outdoor areas technically are different from that in that they have curved hallways! But they’re still narrow hallways with a few big circle rooms and taken as the layout alone it’s super boring. Like I said I love the game and I’m overlooking these things but they’re aspects that I’m unsure how much you saw the same things as us or not. In SC the dungeons have been slightly better by adding a few gimmicks sometimes. Not to the point that I think the layouts so far are a strength, but points for improvement for sure so far.

[RebBlue]

I guess the short version is I just really like the characters. I like how they talk to each other, how real they feel. I like Estelle, and Joshua, and most the rest of the party. I like the townsfolk in rolent, Mayor Maybelle and Lila, Zach in Manoria who’s (minor npc spoiler) the nephew of weird mushroom guy and goes on to apprentice with the lighthouse keeper, Payton the mechanic who keeps showing up, the girl in my pfp. I like various villains and spoiler characters you have yet to meet.

I’m not saying I like everyone. I don’t get the appeal of Schera, or Zin, or Anton. It took me a while to come around on Kloe and someone else who I hated until their backstory was revealed and was relatable to me on a personal level.

But as a whole the cast, both playable and not, is good to me.

Another thing is the localisation. It’s really good I don’t have the words to describe it. For a lot of fans, that’s the version they know and love. It’s not a 1-1 translation and it shouldn’t be. The translation is so natural it’s impressive. I’m not comfortable enough with Japanese to tell how much of that is the work of the localisation team and how much was in the source material.

The foreshadowing is great. It’s not one that’s easy to talk about yet. One of the screenshots shared in a later week mentioned ハーメル. You’re not supposed to know what that is yet. The first mention of it is by an NPC back at the ハーケン門 in Chapter 1. All I’ll say is this will be relevant in SC. And, this early, most of it doesn’t feel like foreshadowing. It just feels like people talking about the world they live in. A lot of effort has gone into making Liberl feel like a real place that real people live in.

I’ve always been a story > gameplay person. I won’t argue your point on that, it just isn’t something that’s as important to me. And quite frankly I haven’t played enough JRPGs to say definitively this is the best one. I love this one, though.

I’m talking specifically about the Sky trilogy here. I’ve mentioned before my opinion goes downhill as the games go on, and I’m going to keep this really vague. But some of the things I dislike about later games were present early on, I just didn’t have an issue with them in lower doses. Or some of the things I did like got less focus. Like, (and this is still vague but I’m spoiler tagging now) The NPCs in Crossbell are great. Happy to spend two hours running around the whole city every time that updates. But the NPCs in Cold Steel are so lackluster because they decided to put effort into a smaller subset of the NPCs. Or, I think Estelle and Joshua is the best romantic (sub?)plot in the whole series. Partially because it is genuinely well-written and partially because everything else makes me Seethe with RAGE.

I wish I had the words to explain why I love these games so much. I know it’s not for everyone (because nothing is), I don’t know how to say “these parts are good” to the people who will agree they are good. I don’t know how to say “these parts are bad” to the people who would take it as a dealbreaker. Because as much as I love them I also hate them sometimes. I don’t know how to explain it.

I am glad the club makes it more enjoyable though!

[Daisoujou]

@RebBlue

the girl in my pfp.

Wait, I had never looked closely. The black ribbon… white dress… oh no