空の軌跡SC // Trails in the Sky SC ⚔ Story Club・Week 45

Japanese Language Book Clubs
1
Week 45 13th July 2026
Last Week Week 44
Next Week END
Home Threads 空の軌跡 // SC

Content Warning: (moderate) death

Details of CW

One of the deaths is from a character being petrified and then shattered.

Finish the game!

Side Quests and Missable Content
Boss Tip

In the last stage of the boss fight, he’s going to start removing the floor. If a character is on a floor tile as it’s removed, they are removed from the battle and will not be coming back (to the fight, they’ll still exist afterwards).

Vocabulary

Vocab Sheet, thank you to everyone who helps with this.

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.
Instructions for Spoiler Tags

Click the cog above the text box and use either the “Hide Details” or “Blur Spoiler” options. The text which says “This text will be hidden” should be replaced with what you are wishing to write. In the case of “Hide Details”, the section in the brackets that is labelled “Summary” can be replaced with whatever you like also (i.e, [details=”Chapter 1, Pg. 1”]).

Hide Details results in the dropdown box like below:

Example

This is an example of the “Hide Details” option.

The “Blur Spoiler” option will simply blur the text it surrounds.

This is an example of the “Blur Spoiler” option.

Posting Advice

  • When asking for help, please mention the page number, and check before posting that your question hasn’t already been asked. As the threads get longer, it becomes more convenient to use the Search function, which is located in the upper right corner of the forum. It is the magnifying glass which is near your profile picture! The best way to search is usually to type part of the sentence you are confused about, and select “in this topic”. This will show you all posts within the current thread which has that string of text.

  • Be sure to join the conversation! It’s fun, and it’s what keeps these book clubs lively! There’s no such thing as a stupid question! We are all learning here, and if the question has crossed your mind, there’s a very good chance it has crossed somebody else’s also! Asking and answering questions is a great learning opportunity for everyone involved, so never hesitate to do so!

If necessary, include an explanation of any discrepancies in the Ebook page numbers from physical page numbers. If there is an easy shortcut for some ebook versions to relate back to physical page numbers, it would be worth it to include it as a third bullet here, or if you want to use chapter page numbers instead of volume page numbers, as is the case with some manga. For example:
Example

For the Kindle version of this manga, the page numbers and the location number are always 3 apart. If you subtract 3 from the location, this will give you the accurate page number!

OR

Please use the chapter page numbers, instead of the volume page numbers. These are located in between the panels!

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. How did you manage the remaining fights?

  5. Were you surprised by ケビン?

  6. What did you think of the ending?

Participation

Will you be playing along with us this week?

  • I’m playing along
  • I have finished this part
  • I’m still playing the game but I haven’t reached this part yet
  • I’m playing this game after the club has finished
  • I’m no longer playing the game
0 voters

If you’ve already played this game but are still going to join the discussion, please select “I have finished this part.”

Party Members Poll
  • アガット
  • アネラス
  • エステル
  • オリビエ
  • クルツ
  • クローゼ
  • ケビン
  • シェラザード
  • ジョゼット
  • ジン
  • ティータ
  • ユリア
  • ヨシュア
0 voters

Don’t forget to set this thread to Watching in order to stay abreast of discussion!

2
Finale!

I remember thinking at the time of the flashback that Josh & Levie’s village being attacked by mercenaries was a little too convenient and that we’d probably have a villain take credit for it, but somehow I didn’t think it’d be this soon. I mean it’s the end of the game, but we have an entire 3rd game and all the unrevealed ouroboros members to take down.

And whoa, not only did two people actually die in present game time, one of them was straight up murdered by a party member. If only Simias were here to appreciate this :’)
Gosh I wish Kevin had done it earlier, although I’m left wondering how he managed to sneak off from everyone to do it while they were all running to the ship. His ninja skills are better than Josh’s apparently.

Ha, I didn’t know this when I had Olivier and クローゼ off in the corner and they were targeted. “I’ve got earth wall up constantly, what are they gonna do? Remove them from the game?” Turns out, yes :joy: luckily Estelle and Joshua were enough to finish the boss!

why does he have to sit like that
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Damn you Cassius you eternal last minute show off. I’d forgotten about the dragon even though I knew when it was introduced it’d have to come back at some point.

So SC ended quite cleanly compared to FC, though seemingly a lot more open-ended. No giant cliffhangers aha. Like ワイスマン is taken care of, the 環 that was the focus of the last 2 games is gone (?), but there’s still the rest of the unseen ouroboros organization and the dragon’s foreshadowing about… stuff happening maybe. The last scene after the credits was cute, and we learn Estelle and Josh are traveling more, maybe out of リベール possibly? That’s interesting.

Except I took a peek at the premise for the 3rd game and immediately noticed that we have Kevin and a new character in the spotlight on the cover :eyes:

Fin! Can’t believe we managed it a couple weeks under what we ended up with for FC, even though that game was shorter. Thank you SO much @RebBlue for putting these threads up every week, giving advice and info on the bosses, story, etc., you’ve been an absolute hero about it. Thank you @polv @Daisoujou and @simias for playing through most of the club with me and contributing all your interesting thoughts!

Overall thoughts

So although SC seemed more eventful than FC, I think I enjoyed the FC more. I kept thinking we were running around the same areas and talking to the same characters about (generally) the same problems, and not much of what our heroes did felt very impactful to the overall story up until the very end. On the other hand, the world is still as lovingly detailed as before with all the NPC stories and reactions to current events, which I still liked a lot! And I enjoyed getting to work with the new characters in combat in the latter half, too. There were plenty of story beats that were very entertaining, like Kevin jumping in from out of nowhere to take down Kanone’s giant tank, and the Jin vs. Valter fight scenes, as a couple examples. I feel that Trails shines when it does these smaller, more contained stories that wrap up within a chapter.

I’m a little torn on if I want to play 3rd, at least not until after a long break. Even if things aren’t completely wrapped up in SC, it’s well enough that I wouldn’t mind putting the series down for a bit.

3

Oops, I was really bad about contributing to these, realized after a bit it got pretty hard to remember the details of what happened when because I was definitely just chunking it larger in my head.

Congrats on finishing though!

I felt much the same as you about the game in the end. I think small scale stories simply suit these devs much better so I’m an FC fan. I actually think for the most part the gameplay was a noticeable improvement in SC, but this strikes me as a series where you really need to be here for the story and world. In the end I still had a rather good time and my backloggd review read like I have a bunch of problems but am choosing to mostly just de-prioritize them because the overall experience, by the end, went down pleasantly. Was in a weird headspace with the bad illness but I’m glad I was able to tap into the right place to meet the game where it’s at and appreciate its merits.

I quite liked the final dungeon area, large scale hype moments and aura in JRPGs can work pretty well for me.

I want to play 3rd sometime whether that ends up here or on my own. I think I felt the same about a bit of a break but also since I rushed ahead I’m already pretty deep into that break, heh.

4

I want to finish this but I completely burnt out right before the interesting thing ( exploring the city) finally happened. I’ll get to it after a break.

It’s clear now that this series isn’t for me. I thought FC was fine but stretched too thin. I expected that SC, building on top of the same location, characters and drama, would be where the devs would gear up and deliver on the promise of their world building. I got functionally the opposite.

For instance the whole “Darth Joshua” arc fell completely flat for me. At the end of FC I thought that they were building up towards him becoming a big antagonist, succumbing to the dark side. At the very least I expected a complex back and forth between him and Estelle before they would join forces again. Instead he just goes through an emo phase for a few chapters while Estelle doesn’t actually do anything concrete to find him since she’s too busy dealing with the Ouroboros’ Scooby-Doo dastardly “experiments”, then eventually he appears and after a quick chat everything is basically reset. Oh, ok then. I also still think it’s a trash, lazy, uninteresting romantic pairing and I’ll die mad about it.

The scale of the artistic project in these games is genuinely impressive, but to me it feels as if someone is set on making the world’s biggest lemon pie and they decide bake one the size of a football field. It shows massive dedication to the exercise, certainly, but then I taste it and it’s pretty bland, uneven and a bit underbaked in a lot of parts and I end up thinking “yeah I’d rather have a smaller, denser, better pie”.

At any rate thank you @RebBlue for running these clubs, I understand how much work this is and there’s absolutely no way I would have gotten thus far without your work and the weekly interactions with @Daisoujou, @Sasabonsam and @polv !

5

Thank you all for playing with me.

I am also going to need a break before I get started on the 3rd. It has a bit of a different structure from the rest of these games so I’ve been thinking on how to handle that, but I don’t want to say too much yet.

What I will say is this: This is one of the cleanest endings of the series, if not the cleanest. While there are a few threads to tie up, the 3rd is going to open more than it closes. If this series is not for you, then this is probably the best place to stop.

I’ve been reading the criticism of the games, and I cannot disagree with it. All I can say is I didn’t realise they were already problems this early on. Some of them I didn’t have the words to describe why things were kind of weird. There will also be new flaws, or at least flaws I don’t recall seeing anyone mention, the one most uncomfortable for me starts to be apparent in the 3rd.

If you enjoy these games despite their flaws, they will likely still be enjoyable for some time to come. I do look forward to playing the 3rd with you. It is highly likely I will want to run games 4 and 5. I, at the moment, would be alright with running games 6 and 7, except I wouldn’t really want to run game 8 and I don’t want to touch game 9. Games 4 and 6 are considered “starting points” where it is easy for new players to join, and that could be fun.

A 'little' rant about game 9 (spoilers that start minor and grow to moderate)

The writers cannot imagine a platonic relationship between a male person and a female person. By this point the games have bonding events where you choose which party member or supporting cast you want to hang out with. In game 9, some of these events are explicitly labelled to be romantic. Up until this point, there had been a veil of plausible deniability. This shatters that.

In this game, your protagonist is a 20-year-old teacher. The romantic options include:

  • 6 women I have no issue with
  • your (ex-)teacher
  • your students, the youngest is 14, and one of whom tried to drug you last game
  • your sister (adopted, but handled so much worse than Estelle and Joshua)

That’s my main problem, because it squicks me out. This is going to start in the 3rd, where it becomes clear that all of our characters are shipping Tita and Agate. Who might I remind you will be 13 and 25 for the 3rd. I miss the not-so-plausible deniability, that they were just being weird and teasing and we weren’t supposed to take it seriously or agree with them.

Another is more structural. Basically, there are too many characters. So every time there is a plot relevant scene, there are a handful of people having a conversation and 20-40 others who all need to chime in with one line to show they’re still there.

Returning characters seem to have lost all sense of their personality. There never seems to be any kind of disagreement. Everyone implicitly understands the protagonists are the most important people in the room and will be making all the decisions.

The stakes are so low. They want to be seen as high but they just don’t follow through. It was said very well earlier: the most horrific things can happen in backstory land, but in the present time everything is all fine and dandy. Even the backstory stuff can be retconned to make an antagonist more palatable.

There are too few deaths, for the stakes they are claiming to have. Of the deaths that do happen, too many are fake out deaths. Characters die, and I do not care because I don’t believe they’ll follow through. And I’m right. At least this week’s deaths actually stick.

It is very hard to feel like anything matters.

Okay! Rant over. That’s why I won’t be touching game 9. But, we have plenty of other games to enjoy before that point, if you are sticking with us!

6
about those future spoilers

I am absolutely aghast at the idea of the game canonically shipping Tita and Agathe. I remember you offering a couple of months ago to tell us what’s in store for them if we wanted back when we joked about it during the Bose arc, I assumed that you would have told us “obviously they just have a substitute brother/sister relationship going forward”.

I cannot even begin to comprehend what could lead the writers towards anything else, especially given Agathe’s backstory.

7

I’ve been lurking in the threads and enjoying things by osmosis, but just want to chime in to say that if these are what I think you mean (crossbell arc) then I will absolutely join you.

more thoughts on future games

While it introduces new issues, it also fixes some from Sky and IMO is the tightest arc in the entire series and I’d happily replay it over and over. That said if you do get to cold steel arc I’d at most play the first two–while I liked the characters alright I share the same gripes you described and the execution overall was poor. The writers clearly don’t know how to handle very large casts and do best with smaller, focused ones. Also spending 200+ hours playing that arc in English was enough for one lifetime. Oh, and I think they did Olivier and his heavily hinted plotting dirty by removing any teeth from it.

Thanks for running the club! I’ve had a lot of fun lurking and biting my tongue on spoilers :smiley:

8
Fin. in 137:46:10

So Löwe comes, tho he has to go.

Prof. Weissmann (credits got everyone’s spelling) turned into a literal multi-winged angel, only to be eventually defeated.

I have 3 vanished in the first try, and 2 in the second. Not try standing on the to-be-removed tiles yet, but I have no time to run away from angel’s dark magic. (and 2 in the second are fainted comrades.)

And Campanella comes off scene in the end. I also wonder about 盟主, but nothing revealed.

We almost lost MC, but they are saved ofc. The village that was deleted from the map, still have ruins that can be visited. And Joshua has to go there, so he needs to live (and goes in place of Löwe).

ULJM05278_00247
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I love how characters have movable arms, fingers, and body posture.

Thank you so much for @RebBlue for organizing and giving hints, tho I eventually missed getting all the books and being an A class or maybe more. Also thank you everyone joining, some people have to push through, and I am enjoying everyone’s discussions.

Anyway, I plan to join to continue with 3rd. As for criticisms with the 3rd, I am looking forward to them. For other choices in Game Club, I indeed have access FF1-6 and several of Pokemon, but I am not particularly want to join, and I don’t plan to play anything on my own… (I might consider 逆転裁判 tho. I plan to go casual here.)

I think FC have better storytelling, but I don’t dislike SC (tho maybe more should be revealed). Any pairing don’t stand out to me, and most main one is still weird. I might dislike S-craft animation a little – I can’t skip them with PSP version. I don’t think gameplay is particularly outstanding in either versions. SC may have more, but not by much. And oh, I like the ancient city in sky.

9

Yeah gameplay has plenty of interesting ideas but it all just kind of adds up to… fine. I had fun in some boss fights but it’s definitely a game that falls victim to making only them matter at all. Common RPG problem so it’s not Trails alone. We’ve talked about upcoming writing mostly but I do get the impression people broadly like where they go with the gameplay? I haven’t looked into it too much for specifics but I’m curious once we’re out of this trilogy what the combat will look like.

I’m on board until the games annoy me enough to stop because I still quite like it as a sort of cozy, comfort food type series I guess.