The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky/YMMV


 * Anticlimax Boss:
 * Loewe used to be this, but after Falcom released a patch to upgrade him, he's sometimes considered to be harder than even the last boss.
 * The Final Boss of The 3rd is basically a preemptive strike for the party, meaning they'll have enough turns to cast their buffs before the boss can even act.
 * Awesome Music: Metric tons of it. There is no bad music in Trails, only tracks that are marginally less awesome than others.
 * "Silver Will" is more than worth mentioning, since it isn't an overstatement to say that this music may be even more popular than the game itself. Hell, it's even listed as the Best RPG Battle theme on 2ch and Youtube!
 * And then there's the vocal version, which takes it even further.
 * "Hoshi no Arika" or "The Whereabouts of the Stars", ranked first on several "Best Game Theme Song Ever" lists in Japan. Give it a gander.
 * Complacent Gaming Syndrome: In The 3rd, it's easy to end up sticking to the same party members for most of the game, especially those listed in Game-Breaker, at least until the final dungeon makes the player use all of them.
 * Complete Monster:.
 * Die for Our Ship: Surprisingly averted. While this series has Ship Tease for most of the cast (even the Ho Yay and Les Yay variants), the Ship-to-Ship Combat is mostly civil and near to no-existance. This naturally leads to Ship Mates, as explained below.
 * Ensemble Darkhorse: Renne. She was popular enough to have one of the Drama CDs focus on her, which wasn't planned originally.
 * Apparently Loewe was popular enough to appear in Alternative Saga as a playable character. His Leitmotif really helps his popularity...
 * Naturally, Renne's popularity led to her being playable in Alternative Saga, too.
 * Epileptic Trees: One's worthy of noting outside the WMG page, with the speculation that this game may take place in the future of the world Ys is set in. Of course, this crops up with other Falcom games and is usually scoffed at... but then Alternative Saga came out, and the shaking trees caught fire. The Word of God hasn't explicitly clamped down on this or confirmed it... yet. Another popular option is that it takes place in the far, far future of the same world as the Gagharv trilogy.
 * The idea that the Kiseki world is the future of Ys seems exclusive to the English-speaking (and non-Japanese-reading) fandom; the game itself says the characters were drawn from different worlds (the setting is also largely derived from Xanadu Next, but nobody seems to think that it's the same world as the Ys or Kiseki games), and it's pretty clear from . The connections to Gagharv are much more solid, mostly centered around the Doll Knight novels from Cagesong of the Ocean.
 * Even Better Sequel: While the backstory and setting of FC is sweeping in scope, the combat is fun and the characters likable, FC ultimately plays a fair number of tropes relatively straight and even comes across as a little cliche at times, and really serves as more of a setting-establishment piece. It was SC that completely blew the lid off of player expectations (and a whole mess of tropes) across the board and cemented Trails place in history and the Japanese gaming zeitgeist (given what initial reactions to SCs announcement were, there's a level on which this is intensely amusing).
 * This could be applied to the previous Legend of Heroes series too, taking the best aspects of those games Up to Eleven.
 * Evil Is Sexy: Lucciola.
 * Fashion Victim Villain: The Lord of Phantasma, anyone?
 * Game Breaker:
 * Agate in SC, in The 3rd.
 * In Alternative Saga, Loewe. His Arc Drain has the ability to drain the enemies SP, if it hits 3 enemies, it would refill the skill's AP cost and add an extra for it so the skill pays for it's own cost. Not to mention his Kienzan is not only fast, but also has the power that rivals an Extra Skill.
 * God Mode Sue: Cassius is OP, both as an NPC and when he is playable. When he appears, you can very much assume that the heroes' behinds have been saved from whatever impending doom might befall them, no exception.
 * High Octane Nightmare Fuel: Man, by the end of the main plot a lot of characters have generous helpings of this in their backstories. The younger Ouroboros members  have it particularly bad. ... Needless to say, despite being ultimately optimistic, this game gets really, really dark at times.
 * It Was His Sled:.
 * Magnificent Bastard: Cassius. A rare case where such a character is on the protagonist's side..
 * Memetic Mutation: Among the Japanese fanbase - DRAGON Lolicon DIVE!!!
 * Moe: Tita. Just ask Estelle.
 * Moral Event Horizon: Weissman crosses this when he reveals that.
 * One True Threesome: It's not unheard of for some fans to ship the Official Couple of Estelle and Joshua with Kloe, since she already had a crush on Joshua to begin with and develops a close friendship with Estelle.
 * Sequel Displacement: The trilogy-cum-franchise has proven to be so popular that it's basically supplanted its parent Legend Of Heroes franchise; the following two games are Zero no Kiseki and Ao no Kiseki, both of which still technically keep the "Legend of Heroes" franchise title but practically as a footnote, and don't even bother with numbering any longer. And the next one, aka Nayuta no Kiseki, drops "The Legend of Heroes" altogether.
 * Ship Mates: Joshua/Estelle shippers tend to support Agate/Tita and Olivier/Schera as well.
 * As sequels popped out, they add these ships in their list: Zane/Kirika,, /Kloe and Kevin/Ries.
 * Those who ships Olivier/Mueller pairs Schera with Aina or Lucciola and Julia with Kloe.
 * That One Boss:
 * Loewe in SC, in TC. Loewe takes the cake though, he is so hard, the game actually let you choose to proceed the game without defeating him!
 * also tends to make people pull their hair out in SC,.
 * from The 3rd. For starters,.
 * The spider boss in Chapter 5 of The 3rd might qualify too..
 * That One Sidequest:
 * Some of the doors in The 3rd will involve flashback battles, where you're stuck with limited arts, items and equipment. In some cases, you don't even get to use arts.
 * Star Door 6 ("Training - Agate-style") stands out in particular, as you're using three Joke Characters with weak stats, no Arts and a heavy reliance on CP, have very limited healing items and have to take on a full dungeon rather than a single fight.
 * The fishing minigame door is dreaded by many for the difficult timing mechanics and the AI opponent's luck in getting larger fish.
 * Too Cool to Live:.
 * Toy Ship: Harry and Mina in Bose city. Somewhat hard to notice as they're non-essential NPCs that the player has to talk to on their own initiative.
 * The Untwist: The Black Knight's identity is so obvious, even the characters weren't surprised when they saw his true face, and in case you haven't figured it out,.
 * The Woobie: Joshua, Loewe, Kevin and Renne.
 * The Woobie: Joshua, Loewe, Kevin and Renne.