Trails in the Sky 3rd is the final installment of the Grancel Trilogy of what has become the larger series of Trails games. While the narrative focus for this game moves away from Joshua and Estelle Bright (their time in the spotlight finished in Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter) – the third installment instead serves as something of an epilogue for the series, and with it sets up not only the Crossbell arc (Trails from Zero), but also the Erebonia (Trails of Cold Steel) and Calvard (Trails from Daybreak) arcs as well.

Trails in the Sky 3rd shifts the point of view to a supporting character from the second game – Kevin Graham. Graham is a sort of troubleshooter/superspy/Inquisitor for the Septian Church (complete with getting a James Bond cold open in this game), who ends up getting whisked into a magical realm created by a magical artifact from the same civilization that was involved in the plot of the first two games – along with his partner, and eventually characters from throughout the rest of the first two games – with not only all your party members from the first two games, but also several new characters. Through exploring this magical realm – Phantasma – we get some additional backstory about the characters from the last few games, some additional information on what they’ve been up to since the end of the second game, and some places where the story can (and likely will) go in the future.

The game plays in more or less the same way than the last few titles – with a few minor tweaks. A few new events will pop up in combat rounds – such as “Death” (the next attack that lands will be an instant kill, whether against a monster or against a party member), or “Protect” (the attack launched this round will do no damage). This ends up making the initiative tracker much more of an active tactical element in combat – even more than it was before, as it becomes important to shunt enemy actions into positions where they’re not acting on a “Death” action, or so your next action isn’t on a “Protect” action (depending on what role a character serves in the party). This also makes status effect protection accessories much more valuable, and requiring the party to need to change out their load-out in advance of boss fights.

My main objection to these changes is that while if you fail a fight, the game will give you the option to replay the fight, and even replay the fight on a lower difficulty, they don’t give you what might be the better option, which is to replay the fight after tweaking your inventory. Just having the opportunity to change out your accessories to block a status effect that the enemy is using to clean your clock can mean the turning of the tide in a particular battle. The fight can still be beatable at that normal difficulty with your particular level, so long as you change out your accessories. This is particularly an issue in the final chain of boss fights, where you go through 4 fights with 4 different parties – with the last boss particularly abusing the “Freeze” status effect – such that it ended up giving me a lot of problems that could have been resolved with a particular status effect buff. However, I didn’t get a change to change my equipment before that fight, and reloading before that series of battles would mean redoing the 3 fights before it.

That said, there’s a lot of really good plot and character moments in this game, spread out enough, and integrated into the story organically enough that it makes it absolutely worth playing, rather than skipping over after finishing Trails in the Sky SC. It’s still took about 100 hours of playtime for me though, so that is something to keep in mind – but it’s turn-based, and Steam Deck compatible, which should make the play time a little more manageable.

Trails in the Sky 3rd is available on Steam and other digital storefronts (affiliate link to the Humble Store).

Please support my Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/countzeroor
Buy me a coffee at Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/countzero
Watch my Live-Streams on http://twitch.tv/countzeroor
Check out my Let’s Plays at https://www.youtube.com/@CountZeroOrPlays