The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky



Legend of Heroes VI, often called Sora no Kiseki or Trails in the Sky, is a JRPG released by Nihon Falcom in the mid-2000s, first on the PC and then on the PSP. It is an entry into Falcom's line of "traditional" turn-based story-heavy JRPGs (as opposed to the action RPGs of the Ys series), and it is without question the single most successful game-cum-franchise Falcom has released since the original Ys duology, despite taking so long to leave Japan.

The story details the adventures of Estelle Bright and her adopted brother, Joshua. They set out to be a pair of "Bracers", wandering adventurer-types who do good around the kingdom of Liberl, much like Estelle's father Cassius was in his prime. Soon after their adventure begins, however, they begin to get pulled into a series of events that could change the face of Liberl, not to mention answer certain questions about Joshua's past... even if they are answers Joshua might not want to hear.

The game is, in a word, gigantic. It was so large, in fact, that Falcom couldn't practically release it as one game; "Sora no Kiseki FC" (short for "First Chapter") was released in mid-2004, with the Second Chapter following nearly two years later (it was so large as to require two UMDs when released on the PSP in 2007). This, naturally, led to some complaining during SC's development, which was generally silenced when SC was released to nigh-rabid reviews. A year afterward, "Sora no Kiseki The Third" was released; it ended up being a bit of a Mission Pack Sequel (since the main plot of the game wraps up nicely in SC), but it still develops a few of the other party members and deals with some of the dangling side-plot hooks nicely, and so is generally respected. The series was so popular as to inspire an Intercontinuity Crossover fighting game with Ys, in the style of Marvel vs. Capcom.

A side effect of the game's bifurcated nature is that this is one of the few JRPGs in which choice matters. While the choices are (generally) not quite as sweeping as those in, say, Mass Effect, since you can carry save files forward between chapters, choices you make in one chapter can affect quests and dialogue in a following chapter and affect how quickly you rise through the ranks of the Bracers Guild. The games are also a bit more open-ended than most JRPGs, with lots of Bracer sidequests available alongside the main storyline (and, in fact, neglecting these can leave you a bit weak for the showdowns which await you at the end of the second chapter).

Each of the three chapters technically tells their own story, although the second chapter follows directly on from the first chapter (as in, it literally starts on the day after the end of the first) and if you dive right into SC you are likely to end up a bit lost and confused. There are sixteen playable characters over the course of all three games, plus dozens of other secondary characters.

Just like the case of Falcom's other great RPG series Ys, the games have suffered greatly from No Export for You, which is the primary reason why the series is massively popular in Japan, right up there with the Tales Series and Shin Megami Tensei (having sold over a million copies between the three chapters of the game, two proper sequels released in 2010 and 2011, both of which also sold like bonkers, an anime adaptation which came out in late 2011 and with fan events still being held six years after FC's release), but practically unheard of outside of it.

Do note, this page has a lot of marked spoilers; this is because talking about most of the tropes related to the game requires talking about the revelations the game makes later in its narrative (particularly in the second chapter, which America sadly won't see until at least 2012), and some of these are legitimately amazing and shouldn't be casually ruined. Highlight spoilers at your own risk, and beware of spoilers on other sites, to boot.

Last but not least, the soundtrack for the series is awesome, especially once you get into Second Chapter and The Third. Falcom's JDK Band pretty much hit it out of the park again, and some of the songs included with the game have been hailed as among the best game themes ever, through vote, on places like 2channel.

The first chapter was localized and released in March 2011 for the PSP courtesy of XSEED Games (who worked on Nihon Falcom's Ys series previously). Due to the huge script, expect large gaps between games, but hey, Slow Export For You is better than No Export for You.

The aforementioned sequel is Zero no Kiseki, which follows a new set of protagonists a few years after the events of Trails. That title was followed up by Ao no Kiseki, which continues the Zero story in the same way Trails SC continued the Trails FC story.

This series contains examples of:
"Canpanella: By the way...i know i'm not the one to talk, but...*looks into the screen* i don't know who but can you please stop peeping?"
 * Action Girl: Pretty much all of the playable female characters are this (it's that kind of game), but even then Estelle, our protagonist, manages to stand out.
 * Actually Four Mooks: Played straight with most of the random battles, where a single monster on the field map turns out to be one or more.
 * Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: That he does. Even at the end of the game, when you are explicitly saving the entire kingdom from a shattering cataclysm and pretty much everyone has acknowledged this, even major characters will still charge you for items.
 * All Powerful Bystander: Cassius Bright, he's the strongest Bracer in Liberl, an ex-Master Swordsman, a resident Mary Tzu, he managed to, the earth trembles when he spins his rod, second strongest character in the trilogy after Loewe according to the author, in fact he's so broken the Big Bad's plan is to set up a disaster in a different country so Cassius wouldn't disturb his plan.
 * Interestingly, though,
 * All in A Row: How the party appears on the travel map.
 * All There in the Manual: If the in-game universe wasn't complete enough, there are multiple drama-cds, comics and game guides which expand on the universe further. Recently released was a whopping 800-page Scenario Book for the second chapter.
 * Aloof Big Brother:  They are not related but the dynamic is the same.
 * Always Someone Better: Cassius, no matter how many great deeds Estelle has done to save the world, Cassius always managed to top everything that she and her party has done, then again we're talking about Cassius here...
 * Anachronism Stew: Applies somewhat, especially to the party members. This is a fairly modern setting which has automobile analogues, flying ships, guns and even includes laptops (well, briefcase-tops, Tita has one), but out of sixteen playable characters between the three chapters, only three use guns, with most of the other characters preferring melee weapons and the only other ranged user wielding a crossbow. (Okay, Tita uses enough gun to count for an entire party, but still.) The clothes (especially uniforms) are way, way more 19th century than modern, to boot.
 * 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.
 * Art Shift: The cover art for 3rd is very different from the cover art for the previous games and the art used in the games themselves.
 * Ascended Extra: Several popular NPCs in first two games become playable in the last installment. Kevin even becomes the main protagonist!
 * The Atoner:  Also,
 * Badass Army: The army of the Liberl Kingdom doesn't come across as this at first (that "gate music" doesn't help), but the special divisions like Special Ops and the Royal Guards manage to make an impact in FC, and the entire army steps up to the plate magnificently in SC.
 * Badass Adorable: Renne and Tita. Estelle may also count as well.
 * Badass Family: The Bright family. Enough said.
 * Badass Longcoat: Loewe, in order to counter this Joshua relies on his Scarf of Asskicking. Olivier and Kevin wear these as well, Olivier having several over the course of the plot.
 * Bag of Spilling: Slightly subverted in that while the characters lose all their items, their levels can be carried into the next game if the clear data of the previous game is present.
 * Battle Butler / Cool Old Guy:
 * Battle Couple: Estelle and Joshua basically define the trope, especially in the later parts of the story.
 * BFS: Agate's sword.
 * The Big Guy: Zane and Agate share this role.
 * Beware the Nice Ones: Joshua may look a bit girly, but he's  because he is that dangerous. He's usually a pretty chill, nice dude, but if you threaten to harm Estelle? Aidios help you.
 * This applies to Leonhardt, too, . He is capable of being disarmingly nice and polite, even when you're actively fighting him.
 * Big Damn Heroes: FC's final chapter. The princess is rescued but a little girl has been taken hostage. Ohai,, who we haven't seen since 1/4 of the way into the game.
 * Big Eater
 * Big Screwed-Up Family: The imperial royal family is implied to be one.
 * Black Knight: There's one in Third. Anyone who played the last two games can guess that it's.
 * Blood Knight: Walter in SC
 * Bokukko: Josette. Estelle actually calls her this.
 * Bonus Boss
 * Bottle Fairy: Scherazard. Aina combines this with Big Eater
 * Aina too. Not only that, she's a bottomless hole.
 * Brainwashed and Crazy:.
 * Breakout Character: Kevin becomes the main character of The Third; it might be said that the reason why it's called The Third and not Third Chapter was because Estelle and Joshua aren't really the main characters anymore.
 * Loewe,
 * Break the Cutie:, and Loewe's pasts are riddled with this, although.
 * Breaking the Fourth Wall: In The Third's sub quest to open the Star Door, one of the Star Door shows us the meeting of Ouroboros leaders meeting and their conversation regarding the events in Liberl and revealing that this is all just the beginning. After the meeting, Campanella laughs finding this would be interesting, then...
 * Breaking the Fourth Wall: In The Third's sub quest to open the Star Door, one of the Star Door shows us the meeting of Ouroboros leaders meeting and their conversation regarding the events in Liberl and revealing that this is all just the beginning. After the meeting, Campanella laughs finding this would be interesting, then...

"Joshua: This soul that has"
 * Brother Sister Incest: Something that jams up the gears of some people who play the game. Estelle and Joshua aren't even remotely related by blood, and they first met as not-quite-teens, so they weren't so young that the Westermarck effect would kick in to prevent them falling for each other... but at the same time, they basically lived together as siblings for years and Cassius even formally adopted Joshua after the events at the start of the game, when he came to live with the Brights, so he has the last name Bright himself. Some fans just try not to think too hard about that.
 * Of course, this all serves as a bit of a stinger later on.
 * The really hilarious part to all this is that a ton of incidental characters in the Rolent area are surprised this isn't happening at the start of FC; meanwhile, Estelle and Joshua are both oblivious and wonder what the hell everyone is going on about.
 * Central Theme: Trails is unrepentant about wearing its theme on its sleeve, that theme essentially being: "No one person, no matter what they've done in the past, no matter what they've done with their lives, is completely beyond love and redemption. Any life can be given meaning so long as you're willing to reach out to a person."
 * Char Clone: Lorence.
 * Chekhov's Gun:.
 * Chekhov's Gunman: Almost too many to list; in FC is a great example, but nearly half the main cast has a secret identity... which is part of the reason so much of this page is spoiler-tagged.
 * Chessmaster: Cassius Bright and Weissmann. Kevin has his share of manipulation as well.
 * Chick Magnet: Joshua. Estelle does not find this particularly amusing.
 * Church Militant: Kevin and Lise are from this.
 * Climax Boss: Loewe in SC and.
 * Colonel Badass: Alan,.
 * Cool Big Sis: Scherazard to Estelle.
 * Corrupt Church: Averted with special mention, especially in comparison to the wider meta-genre. One of the most believable aspects of the setting is that the Septian Church is, by and large, a benevolent organization and doesn't really meddle with politics or massive plots at all in FC or SC. Its clergymen clearly believe what they preach, are peaceful, benevolent presences in their towns (they even teach school for most people), and they even act as obvious allies to our heroes in FC . Nearly all the characters are faithful to a greater or lesser degree, as well, with invocations to Eidos/Aidios relatively common in places you'd expect a real life person to invoke God. There's ultimately nothing sinister about the church in FC or SC.
 * Third makes it a little more complicated, although in that case we're dealing more with the Church as a continent-wide organization and Kevin's place in it, with the general message being: "in an organization as large as this, and based on beliefs as fundamental as this, you are always going to get good people and bad people".
 * Cuteness Proximity: Analace
 * Dead Little Sister: Agate's backstory. This is also the reason why he shows his soft side to Tita.
 * lost his older sister during the destruction of his village, which led to his and Loewe's joining the Ouroborus.
 * Death Ray: Pater Mater has one.
 * Despair Event Horizon:
 * Determinator: Estelle will stop at nothing to save those whom she cares about.
 * Disc One Final Dungeon: Interestingly played. When the game was originally in development as a single unit, it's clear that were going to be this; sure, you  but clearly not everything was answered and it would serve as what would in other games be the "big twist point" when the real villain was revealed and whatnot. Once the project got too big to contain in one game, though, it was chosen to be the actual final dungeon of FC, meaning it is and isn't a final dungeon; it's the end of FC, sure, but it's barely the beginning of the real story.
 * Disney Death:
 * Doing It for The Art: How else do you explain XSEED Games's willingness to localize a trilogy of games with such ginormous amounts of text, which no other localizer showed signs of having plans to work on?
 * The Dragon: The Black Knight, AKA, serves this role to the king of Phantasma in the third installment.
 * Dual-Wielding: How Joshua prefers to fight.
 * Dude Looks Like a Lady: Joshua can ding this at times; his Japanese VA being female does not exactly help.
 * Dysfunction Junction: The game does manage to avoid treading into Wangst territory, but good grief, the party has some issues. When all is said and done, let's see: . Estelle is lucky Tita and Zane are around in all three games, or she'd find she's the Only Sane Man among this cast of nutters.
 * Easter Egg: There are several paintings within the game that show Falcom's other installments such as Ys.
 * Elegant Gothic Lolita: Renne, good lord Renne.
 * Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors
 * The Empire: Perhaps not too surprising for a Japanese RPG. Their being billed as fairly obvious villains and an external threat is not very surprising at all.
 * Enfante Terrible:.
 * Everything's Better With Princesses: is a princess,  is a prince...
 * Expy: Dr. Russel is often described as "Dr. Wily gone good".
 * Olivier is a guns-and-devices using, blond-pony-tailed, blue-eyed ladies man . This draws a number of comparisons to a certain King of Figaro.
 * Eyes of Gold: Joshua. And Renne.
 * Fantasy Gun Control: Mostly averted, actually. The technology base of this setting is rather high, and you'll encounter quite a few firearms-wielding Mooks, not to mention some bosses who pack heat of various kinds.
 * We say "mostly", though, because while firearms are reasonably common in this setting.... as noted above, out of a grand total of sixteen people who can join the player party, only three of them actually use guns. This can get a little silly when the party charges down gun-armed mooks with swords, daggers, a crossbow and a staff and wins.
 * Fiery Redhead: Agate.
 * First Girl Wins: Kloe and Josette never really stood a chance. Especially when the first girl is also the main character of the game.
 * Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Estelle and Joshua, somewhat, as they're not actually related.
 * Foreshadowing: Goddamned EVERYWHERE. The game absolutely loves to tease upcoming reveals and plot points; sometimes this is blatant, sometimes you'll barely notice them 'till later and you play through the game again.
 * This is so prevalent that the director has gone on record as saying that there are things in the upcoming Ao no Kiseki that were foreshadowed back in FC.
 * Four Star Badass: Every general of the Liberl Kingdom Army qualifies.
 * Funny Animal
 * Gadgeteer Genius: Tita.
 * Genki Girl: Estelle, Estelle, and... Estelle. Okay, maybe Tita a little, too, but everyone is eclipsed by the Monolith of Genki that is Estelle.
 * Giant Dragon Scales Save Lives:
 * Glass Cannon: Tita. Until she busts out the orbal gear at least.
 * Guide Dang It: Many examples, such as getting all recipes, netting the s-rank for Bracer, etc.
 * Handsome Lech: OLIVIER. Jesus Humphrey Bogart Christ, Olivier Lenheim. He makes Edgar Figaro look restrained.
 * Heroes-R-Us: The Bracers' Guild.
 * Heroic Sacrifice:
 * Hero of Another Story: A lot of the other bracers, particularly Team Kurt (Kurt, Carna, Grant and Anelace) come across this way. Cassius definitely comes across this way.
 * Also, this game takes its NPC dialogs seriously. If you take the time to Talk to Everyone as often as possible, you will find a lot of recurring NPCs all having their own stories going on in parallel to yours. It's quite fun really.
 * Hey It's That Voice: You want another reason Lowe is awesome? He's Leon Magnus!
 * Olivier is voiced by none other than Takehito Koyasu. You know, Mu La Flaga. Among a billion other roles. This is one you really can't unhear once you hear it.
 * Joshua is voiced by Rossiu. Once you hear it, you can't unhear it. Alternately, he's Elk.
 * Oh yeah, listen closely. Agate? He's Ryuichi Naruhodo. You know, JAPANESE PHOENIX WRIGHT. Once you hear it, you keep expecting him to object to everything (except Tita).
 * And Estelle? Sounds like a certain other twin tailed Action Girl
 * Kloe is Hotaru and Videl
 * Hikaru Midorikawa: Because Lowe wasn't awesome enough already. And what do you know, Takehito Koyasu is in the game too...
 * Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Agate and Tita have a dynamic like this, especially since Agate is pretty much the second most physically-imposing party member in the game, behind Zane.
 * Also applies, after a fashion, to
 * Humongous Mecha: Pater Mater, which is a boss in SC . Tita's Orbal Gear is somewhat less humongous but otherwise qualifies.
 * I Knew It: Almost everyone can figure out the Black Knight's identity, treated so in-universe as well.
 * Implausible Fencing Powers: Loewe and Joshua.
 * Impossibly Cool Clothes: Most of the cast. Joshua and Estelle are by far the most sensibly-dressed, and the latter has a tendency to wear a bomber jacket with cut-off sleeves as everyday wear.
 * Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Gilbert, Gilbert, and Gilbert.
 * Intercontinuity Crossover: Alternative Saga crosses Sora no Kiseki with Ys using the engine from Ys Seven and includes support characters from Gurumin, Zwei, Brandish, Legend of Heroes III and Zero no Kiseki.
 * Interface Spoiler: Josette, Anelace and Kurt are all voiced when you face them in combat in FC, despite their compatriots not being voiced and despite them not joining the party proper.
 * When Renne joins you as an NPC, you will probably notice that she somehow has a whooping 10202 HP (compared to the 3-4k that your party members are likely having at the moment).
 * It's All Upstairs From Here
 * Kansai Regional Accent: Kevin speaks like this. This gets a little odd considering that the setting of the games is profoundly Western European.
 * Killed Off for Real:.
 * Kirk Summation: Estelle delivers a great one to in FC's last dungeon. Given Estelle's role in the party, this isn't surprising in some ways, although everyone else is amazed at her sudden, momentary eloquence.
 * Late Arrival Spoiler: With FC being a good seven years old as of this edit and SC being five, avoiding these has become fairly difficult as Falcom now assumes most interested people in Japan already know about all the major spoilers and revelations... and uses them in promotional material and whatnot, making them kind of hard to avoid if you're outside of Japan and following the news at all! (Places like The Other Wiki casually ruining the plot of all three games also doesn't help.) The biggest offender is probably
 * Last Episode New Character: just about every new characters in The Third. But Ries and stand out from the rest, especially since there's no hint whatsoever about their existences and their roles in the next series is HUGE. But the others  are mentioned several times during FC and SC.
 * Law of Chromatic Superiority: Lorence wears a red colored version of the Special Ops outfit, and he is even stronger than his boss.
 * Let's Split Up Gang:  Justified, as there are Loads and Loads of Characters and quite a bit to do.
 * Limit Break: S-Crafts.
 * Lolicon: Some players accuse Agate of being this, thanks to all that Ship Tease he gets with Tita.
 * The rest of the cast agrees.
 * Loads and Loads of Characters: GOOD GRAVY.
 * MacGuffin: The Black Orbment in FC, the Aureole in SC and the cube in Third.
 * Magitek: A cornerstone of the setting; "orbments" allow for all kinds of technological feats, from airships to cannons to computers to combat magic effects for our heroes, and are basically mechanical devices powered by Applied Phlebotinum.
 * The Man Behind the Man: behind almost everything in FC and SC. In a wider meta-series sense,.
 * Manipulative Bastard:
 * Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: Clearly fits Joshua and Estelle (at least in FC).
 * The Maze: A lot of dungeons are like this.
 * Meaningful Name: Loewe's real name is "Leonhardt" which means "The determination of the lion", hence why he is called "Loewe" which means, of course, "lion" in German.
 * Also present in the title, at least in the original Japanese. You see, the kanji used for "Sora no Kiseki" fairly clearly state "] of/in the Sky", but "Kiseki", as a spoken word, has another meaning: "miracle". The title can therefore be heard as "Miracle in the Sky" in addition to the written meaning.
 * This gets especially crazy (awesome) with the vocal theme song to SC, "Silver Will, Golden Wings": every single time the word "kiseki" is said in that song, it can mean either "trail/path" or "miracle" and the song will still make perfect sense.
 * Estelle's surname is Bright, everyone thinks she is as bright as the sun that shines through the darkness. She is even called the Sun Girl by Kevin in 3rd.
 * Metal Slime: Shining Poms
 * Mission Pack Sequel: The third chapter caught some flack on release over perceptions that it was, basically, this, since the plot had nicely wrapped up in the previous game. The final judgment was, essentially, that it may not have been strictly necessary or really innovative, but it was still worth picking up.
 * More Dakka: Who else but... Tita, of course.
 * More Than Mind Control: is an absolute master of this; it's largely how he maintains control over  Ouroboros.
 * My Beloved Smother: Erika to Tita. Poor Agate has to suffer because of it.
 * Names to Run Away From Really Fast: . Their real names are, respectively.
 * Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
 * More to the point,
 * No Export for You: This is being fixed at last courtesy of XSEED Games, although it still took nearly seven years for the first chapter to make the jump across the sea, and for a long time fans had resigned themselves to never seeing a release. (The fate of the PC version remains a question-mark.) The delay is mostly attributed to Falcom's past rocky relations with other localizers/publishers in America and the sheer, staggering size of the scripts for each game. The second chapter had to ship on two UMDs for the PSP release, after all.
 * An English release for the PSP version of SC seems to have been all but scrapped (a casualty of the Vita's release), with XSEED now turning their efforts towards attempting to get the PC version released on Steam, instead.
 * Obfuscating Stupidity:.
 * Obviously Evil: Played straight and subverted six ways from sundown at the same time.
 * Odd Name Out: First Chapter, Second Chapter and...The Third?
 * Offscreen Moment of Awesome: During
 * The Omniscient Council of Vagueness: Ouroborus's headquarters
 * Ominous Floating City:.
 * One Game for The Price of Two: Accusations of this went flying around during SC's development (and we can most likely expect them to show up among American reviewers and new fans, too). In Japan this died down once people saw how mind-blowingly huge SC was and how it simply couldn't have been included in the original release. Remember, two UMDs for the PSP version, and it really makes use of that second UMD.
 * Third, meanwhile, sparked rather different accusations.
 * One-Winged Angel:
 * Paper-Thin Disguise: Anyone who played first two games can figure out that the black knight in Third is.
 * Plot Induced Stupidity: A villain side rare example. Considering who Weissmann is, you would thought that he would take account to the fact that
 * Phantom Thief: Blblanc. In fact, it's his title in Ouroboros.
 * The Plan: in FC and SC.
 * Point of No Return: Beginning the mission to in FC, the core of   in SC and the Castle of Phantasmagoria in Third.
 * Portmanteau Series Nickname: With the English version, the game's initials are "TiTS". Whether this is a bad thing or not is best left to the viewer.
 * Promoted Fanboy: XSEED Games once proclaimed that the game translators are fans of the trilogy.
 * Pink Girl, Blue Boy: Estelle and Joshua during FC, though Estelle is more red than pink.
 * Purple Eyes: Surprisingly rather common. Olivier, Kloe, Anelace and Loewe all have various shades of them, and aside from Loewe there's nothing particularly supernatural about any of them, and Loewe's "supernatural" abilities have nothing to do with his eyes.
 * (Zero no Kiseki/SC spoilers):
 * Randomly Drops: A ton of equipments in 3rd. Most of them aren't really the best equipments (in fact, all of them have multiple "levels", so you might find a weapon, then the same weapon except with more attack and a "+1" as an affix later), but there sure are a lot of them. Really painful for those who wants a copy of every item.
 * Red Baron: Some high-ranking bracers and all the top agents for Ouroboros and the church have titles like this.
 * Loewe: The Sword Emperor
 * Walter: The Lanky Wolf
 * Luciola: The Charming Bell
 * Blblanc: The Phantom Thief
 * : The Black Fang
 * : The Angel of Extermination
 * : The Faceless
 * : The Heresy Inquisitor,.
 * : The Sword Saint
 * : The Sword Fox
 * Scherazard: Silver Streak
 * Agate: Heavy Sword
 * Zane: The Immovable
 * Redemption Equals Death: in SC.
 * Red Oni, Blue Oni: Estelle (red) and Joshua (blue).
 * Or Estelle and Kloe, respectively.
 * Ridiculously Cute Critter: A fair number, starting with the "Crop Munchers" Estelle and Joshua deal with in the FC prologue.
 * Roaring Rampage of Revenge: in SC.
 * Royals Who Actually Do Something:.
 * Rule of Cool: The games do apply this principle to a few things. For example, if we're being remotely realistic, even briefly pulling the trigger on any of her weapons should result in Tita being knocked flat on her butt from the recoil, if not injured outright . Tita looks awesome using them, though, so nobody cares a whit.
 * Samus Is a Girl:
 * Savvy Guy Energetic Girl: Joshua and Estelle, naturally.
 * Scarf of Asskicking: Joshua picks up one of these in the second chapter.
 * Serious Business: The Fishing Guild.
 * Shadow Archetype: There are two really prominent examples, both of which are somewhat spoilery.
 * First is
 * The second is
 * Shout Out: One can't really help but suspect that Anelace's outfit was intentionally designed to resemble Adol's "classic" armor.
 * In the English version, during the ending walkabout sequence in Grancel, one NPC is taking a picture of his daughter and says "Okay, say "fuzzy pickles"!"
 * Sinister Scythe:
 * Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: The main story arc (in FC and SC) actually slides along the scale as it goes on. It starts off pretty light and idealistic, but then gets more and more cynical and dark until we're at almost Berserk levels of [Magnificent Bastard bastardity]] and cynicism, to the point that even Estelle begins to crack under the strain.
 * The third chapter, meanwhile, works partially because it examines the concept of this and how we bury ourselves in our perceptions.
 * Smug Snake: Most villains.
 * Sorting Algorithm of Evil
 * Spell My Name With an "S": While officially spelled Patel Matel, given that  it should probably be translated as Pater Mater, Latin for 'Father and Mother'.
 * The game tends to feature a lot of R/L sounds, which of course cause contortions when trying to transcribe certain names. Liberl/Riber/Libel/Ribel, anyone?
 * Or how about Ries/Lise/Liese/Riese/etc etc etc? XSEED hasn't even announced what they're doing about her name yet.
 * Hell, even the title causes a few problems. If you want to be really strict about it, the kanji for "Kiseki" most literally means "tracks made by a wagon", referring the contrail-like cirrus clouds featured in parts of the game. Even the hardest-core literalist fans agree that "Wagon Tracks of the Sky" is a bit... prosaic, though. Also, the "no" can be rendered as "of" or "in", and both could make sense. Some people prefer "Tracks in the Sky", some people prefer "Path of the Sky", others "Trail/s in the Sky". XSEED Games went with "Trails" (and was also kicking around "Road to the Sky" as an idea for a bit).
 * The title also causes a bit of anguish over the fact that it's virtually impossible to get the proper double meaning of the title into English.
 * A couple characters run into this, too, especially compared to their "given" spelling. "Anelace" is arguably the worst; her name is usually consistently spelled that way, but sometimes it's given as "Analace" or "Analece". Given this, you'd think the last part of her name would sound like, well, a "lace gown", right? No, the actual katakana given for the name actually end up sounding like "Aneras", with a chopped off, short "s", which doesn't match any given spelling. Most fans just throw their hands up at the situation and go with one of the given spellings, despite new fans technically getting the pronunciation wrong consistently; XSEED left it with the "Anelace" spelling as well.
 * Renne can throw newcomers off, too; that's a silent "e" at the end of her name, guys. The katakana for her name is literally "re-n", spoken as a single syllable. They most likely avoided calling her "Ren" straight out since, well, that would be a little problematic, even in Japan. A few fans still call her "Ren", though, just for the sake of clarity.
 * "Olivier" also has it kind of bad... since his "masculine" name is phonetically spelled "Olivie" in katakana. (The soft r at the end is "implied" in transcription at times.)
 * Is it "Loewe" or "Löwe"? Even Falcom sources disagree at times. Both work, though (they're the same word in German). "Leo" is also quite close to the given katakana, and would probably be a bit clearer to English speakers. XSEED chose to go with "Loewe".
 * "Scherazard" dings this a bit too. Falcom is usually consistent in spelling her name in English, but some fans prefer "Sherazade" or some varation therein, since it also matches the katakana and makes the obvious reference a little clearer to English speakers.
 * The English version released by XSEED makes a few minor name alterations as well for pronunciation purposes - namely, Klose to Kloe, Zin to Zane, Keel to Kyle, Doln to Don, Kurz to Kurt and Rolance to Lorence.
 * Relatedly, in the original Japanese, the Goddess of the Septian Church was named "Eidos". For fairly obvious reasons, this was a problem in English, and so the name was changed to Aidios. Also counts as a Bilingual Bonus, since in Spanish, Aidios, pronounced phonetically, sounds like the Spanish exclamation ¡Ay Dios! (Translated as Oh God!)
 * A bit of debate also springs up around the title for the agents of Ouroboros. The title is given in kanji as 執行者, shikkousha, which strictly speaking is a term variously applied to "those who perform, execute or serve business" (and also actual executioners) and also has Buddhist connotations for righteousness and the pursuit of enlightenment. However, the kanji are always accompanied by furigana, in katakana, indicating that the word the characters are saying is "Legion", which is meant to be the actual, in-universe term spoken by characters. The problem, of course, is that "legion" is a term for a unit of soldiers and not an individual person, and doesn't really carry the concept of the kanji forward regardless. While a majority of western fans currently stick with the indicated title from Falcom, some do use other terms to try and convey the kanji better - Enforcer, Legionnaire, Executioner and the like have all cropped up over the years.
 * During the scene at the end of FC wherein, the XSEED translation uses both "Enforcer" and "Legion".
 * Relatedly, the Ouroboros codename for Enforcer Fifteen runs into a problem as well. For all the other Enforcers, the "intended" English version of their codenames is given in secondary sources, particularly promo websites - "Sword Emperor" for 剣帝 (kentei), "Phantom Thief" for 怪盗紳士 (kaitou shinshi) and so on. With Fifteen, however, all we have is the kanji - 殲滅天使, senmetsu tenshi. The "angel" part is obvious, but there have been some debates over the best way to render "senmetsu" (which, most literally, means "total destruction/slaughter/annihilation/etc; Apocalypse How in a can, basically). "Angel of Extermination" is one of the more common translations, though some fans feel this is a little awkward; others go with "Annihilation Angel" or "Angel of Slaughter". XSEED has not yet announced an official translation for the term.
 * Sprite Polygon Mix: One of Japan's most famous recent examples. While not extremely sophisticated by modern standards (though FC wasn't too bad for 2004), it's still the best-looking game out of the group that uses the Ark of Naphistim engine.
 * Standard Status Effects
 * Stripperiffic: Scherazard
 * Student Council President: Jill. is revealed to be one in charge before Jill, during.
 * Tarot Motifs:
 * Taken for Granite: Kind of.
 * The Dog Was the Mastermind: You guys remember ? He's that guy you keep bumping everywhere for Comic Relief conversations,  
 * The Southpaw: Remember kids, every swordsman that is left-handed is a Master Swordsman, just ask Loewe.
 * Together in Death:
 * Token Mini-Moe: Tita and Renne.
 * Tomboy: Estelle practically defines the trope, both as a young girl in the prologue and during the main game itself. Anelace and Josette also have elements of this.
 * Tomboy and Girly Girl: Estelle and Kloe's relationship in a nutshell.
 * Translation Convention: Maybe. It's really unclear exactly what the hell the characters are supposed to be speaking; the setting is obviously western european, and the lettering that appears in-game is the Roman-derived modern alphabet. Furthermore, a number of terms appear in kanji - like "orbment" and all related terms or the various ranks in Ouroboros - but then include furigana in katakana above the kanji, indicating what "foreign" word the characters are speaking while retaining meaning for Japanese readers.The original script is full of turns of phrase and whatnot that'd only make sense in Japanese, though, and Kevin is rocking a pretty specific Japanese dialect. Text in-universe is sometimes in English, like the Bright family photo album seen at the end of FC, sometimes not (but never Japanese). Basically, the characters probably aren't speaking Japanese, but the original script sure acts like it's their first language and what they'd be speaking "for real" isn't clear.
 * Confusing things even further are names: in Liberl a number of place names (Zeiss, Bose, Ruan, arguably Grancel) and some noble names (like Klaudia von Auslese and her entire family, even pronounced in katakana with a proper, sharp Z-like S) are obviously Germanic, but most other personal names (Estelle Bright, Jill, the Russel family name, Foreman Murdock, Nial/Neal Burns, Dorothy Hyatt, etc. etc.) are all consistently and obviously Anglic in origin and pronunciation. Erebonian names (like Olivier Lenheim, Mueller Vander, ) are somewhat more consistently Germanic but still have anomalies such as . So is Liberl bilingual? Has "Erebonian" seeped into the vernacular of Liberlian? Do the two share a linguistic history? The usually detailed Trails setting is dead silent on the matter. (This is in spite of having a dictionary for cat-speech.)
 * Truth in Television: Joshua accurately describes the conditions of what happens to the citizens of a country that focuses on its military might. The notion of high taxes, weapon development, military conscription and others contrasted to a peaceful government focused on peace through diplomacy and trading felt like a Take That against a lot of Western countries, particularly the United States.
 * Tyke Bomb: in FC and SC. Hell,  counts too, for that matter.
 * Underestimating Badassery: In the final chapter in FC, when Estelle, Scherazard and Kloe, they encounter Liutenant Lorence. Estelle, who defeated his team during the tournament, confidently states that even though he is strong, there is no way he can take the three of them all by himself. Estelle...you are so very, very wrong...
 * Unwitting Pawn: The party becomes this to in FC., in particular, does not take it well.
 * Very Definitely Final Dungeon: Several, across multiple chapters.
 * Wake Up Call Boss: The first boss of 3rd.
 * Walking the Earth: The game is very "Ys-scale" about this. While you will, naturally, do some wandering about (Estelle and Joshua are "Bracers", or adventurers who openly wander about doin' good (with organized HQs in multiple towns even)), the game is confined to the Liberl Kingdom in terms of scope. This is partially because the crisis is local, and partially out of realism since wandering the planet, even with a conveyance, would take months.
 * Wham Episode: The end of the First Chapter.  This one left people spinning when the game was first released, and marked the point at which the main narrative started to get a lot darker.
 * Wham Line: "Allow me to clear away your confusion. *fingersnap*" Congratuations, Joshua,
 * "Enforcer Fifteen - The Angel of Extermination - ." What. What.
 * "Now, hurry and take off that disgusting mask of yours...Lord of Phantasma--No, "
 * Whip It Good: Scherazard
 * Whip Sword: Ries uses one.
 * The Worf Effect: Agate often falls victim for this trope. In FC, he seems to win against Lorence... but then we find out that was a just a mirror body-double. Played straight in SC, in that he gets beaten easily by Loewe. Then again, in his defense
 * World of Cardboard Speech: Joshua pulls one to Loewe in SC.
 * The Worf Effect: Agate often falls victim for this trope. In FC, he seems to win against Lorence... but then we find out that was a just a mirror body-double. Played straight in SC, in that he gets beaten easily by Loewe. Then again, in his defense
 * World of Cardboard Speech: Joshua pulls one to Loewe in SC.

"Loewe: Karin is an exception! That kind of human is not easy to be made! That's why--
 * And once again...

Joshua: Then--I'll prove it! I who has lived by"


 * Wrench Wench: Tita, naturally, though with rather less emphasis on the "wench"
 * Your Princess Is in Another Castle: One of the most epic and memorable in Japanese gaming history, at the end of FC. It seems like the plot is done, but aren't there a few things left over?... oh, by the way, Joshua: *fingersnap*. The fact that, back in 2004, Falcom gave no indication that the game had been split into two parts until after the credit roll, fueled the fire in Japan even harder.
 * You Shall Not Pass
 * You Should Know This Already: This is getting pretty bad in Japan, from the perspective of new fans in North America. The promotional material for the Trails Animated Adaptation, and the announcement article for Ao no Kiseki.