izigame.me

The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails is the weakest Falcom game I've ever played. It's mostly fine, but it lacks almost everything I love about other Falcom titles. Let's explore the ups and downs of the game (+, +/-, -, ?):
+ The world is pretty interesting as it is not the same (timeline or anything?) as Zemuria in Trails titles. The world has a nice vibe to it and it looks mostly fine. Could it have anything to do with Ys...?
+ Falcom shines in character design and character quality, so it's not surprising that these characters are great. It's always a pleasure to spend time with everyone.*
+ The hack and slash gameplay is mostly fun and acquiring new skills, art and everything is super fun.
+ This is one of a rare games where one-handed and two-handed weapons feel great! Hell yes!
+/- The game looks mostly fine, but it's very blocky and shiny. The characters just standing there with their mouth open doesn't make it any better.
+/- The story starts off very good, and is mostly fine, but I found myself logging out very quickly. In the end, I really didn't care about anything here.
+/- The OST is surprisingly not a very good one. Falcom OSTs are always legendary, but I struggle to find anything diamond tier here. That being said, it's not actively bad or anything.
+/- This games a breeze. There's almost no challenge on normal, but I didn't really mind it.
+/- This is the shortest Falcom title I've played, but it felt very, very long.
- The stages feel very meaningless AND their perfect completion requirements are, at times, infuriating. There are many stages you need to play multiple times, or go back to, or repeat because an enemy attacked you off-screen and made you fall down, or... Personally, the forced speedruns are the worst...
-... or then it's the blocking. The blocking seems not to work all the time. Especially after jumping. It's infuriating to see Nayuta just standing there taking damage...
-...but that doesn't matter. Due to the easy difficulty level, and your healing items, you can just brute force your ass into victory.
- The game gets extremely repetitive in no time. I had to take long breaks between my sessions.
- *Nayuta is a terribly boring protagonist. He's up there with Vaan in "the most boring protagonists" tier.
- Could Noi please shut up for a second. Her supposed cheering has the opposite effect on me.
- The story has many almost meaningless elements to it. If anything happens, it's dealt with almost instantly or it's relevant for just a moment. Also, "I am now on the side of evil. Oh, you beat me. Guess I am good now".
? The final weapon looks a lot like Testa-Rossa hmm....
? The depth perception feels very poor at times, but this might just be me.
The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails is an almost forgotten Falcom title, but for a good reason. While it provides some good mindless action, there's almost nothing here that makes you want to stick with it, or its main characters. This was likely a failed experiment, but it's wasn't a total bomb. There are promising elements here, and I'd like to see this world/timeline expanded. 6/10.