The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • 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!
    • "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: George Weissman, the Big Bad of both FC and SC, starts off as a seemingly kind and helpful archaeologist named Professor Alba. This falls away at the end of FC, when he reveals himself as an evil wizard who was manipulating Joshua and the other protagonists even before the game started. A high-ranking member of the secret organization of Ouroboros, Weissmann has the desire to remake the world damaged by the cruelty of humans in his own image. He was behind the massacre of the village of Hamel, which claims the life of Joshua's sister and Loewe's lover Karin. This in turn sparked the Hundred Days War, which affected the life of the main protagonist Estelle and created the events of the game. Weissmann then had Joshua brainwashed to become a ruthless, cold-blooded assassin, who slaughtered countless politicians and other influential people who were in Weissmann's way. After failing to assassinate Estelle's father Cassius, Weissmann attempted to have Joshua himself assassinated for his failure. At the end of FC, Weissmann restores Joshua's lost memories and gleefully observes as he goes through an emotional trauma. Towards the end of SC, Weissmann pursues the ancient city of Liberl Ark in the hopes of obtaining the ancient artifact Aureole and merge himself with it. Manipulating Joshua's mind once again, Weissmann attempts to have him execute Estelle so that he can free him from his mind spell and enjoy seeing him break emotionally. Despite considering himself as the savior of all mankind, Weissmann is completely blinded by his own sadism and hypocrisy, even to the point where he doesn't even realize that most of the events caused by the humanity are the cause of his own actions.
  • 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 lack of reaction to Chester and Loewe and Lloyd not recognizing Renne or the Brights in Zero no Kiseki that the events of the game didn't 'really' happen. 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 at least up until its very last act 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 SC's 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, Alan 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 like Joshua and Renne have it particularly bad. And then there's what Weissman does during the game, and what ends up happening to him... Needless to say, despite being ultimately optimistic, this game gets really, really dark at times.
  • It Was His Sled: The fact that Renne's a villain, at least for a while, is actually kind of hard to avoid now that SC's been out for half a decade in Japan. Alternative Saga practically references it wholesale, never mind all the videos and whatnot spread all over the Internet.
  • Magnificent Bastard: Cassius. A rare case where such a character is on the protagonist's side. Mostly.
  • Memetic Mutation: Among the Japanese fanbase - DRAGON Lolicon DIVE!!!
  • Moe: Tita. Just ask Estelle.
  • Moral Event Horizon: Weissman crosses this when he reveals that not only did he mind control Joshua and turn him into a puppet, but also indirectly cause the attack on Joshua's village that led to Joshua's sister's death and made Joshua and Loewe's lives a living hell.
  • 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.
  • That One Boss:
    • Loewe in SC, Cassius and the Black Knight in TC. Loewe takes the cake though, he is so hard, the game actually let you choose to proceed the game without defeating him!
    • Renne also tends to make people pull their hair out in SC, particularly the last fight with her when she's accompanied by Pater Mater. It's bad enough that she can use her reaper-esque S-Crafts to one shot your entire party if you're positioned badly. When she's accompanied by a mountain of steel and HP that can punt you across the arena and revive her when she's knocked out? The suffering never ends.
    • Grimoire!Kevin and his cannons from The 3rd. For starters, he likes to spam Grail Sphere EVERY TURN. And the cannons... OHMAIGAWD THE CANNONS. Unless you bring Kloe for her +50% Def S-Craft bonus, you won't survive against their 3-hit cannonballs.
    • The spider boss in Chapter 5 of The 3rd might qualify too. Let's say that you hurt its children too much.
  • 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: Master Swordsman with a Golden Sword? Rides on a black metal dragon? Silver-haired purple-eyed Aloof Big Brother for the male lead? Has the most awesome Leitmotif? Voiced by Hikaru Midorikawa, named Leonhardt and known as The Sword Emperor? Admit it, it was the only way for the Sora no Kiseki world to not to be frozen by Loewe's epic coolness.
    • Although his subsequent appearence in The 3rd and his apparent resurrection in Alternative Saga suggest that Falcom might consider him Too Cool To Die.
  • 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, it's Loewe.
  • The Woobie: Joshua, Loewe, Kevin and Renne.
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