I'm like 35 hours into
Hajimari no Kiseki and I'm pretty sold at this point that game-design-wise this is the best Trails game ever made by a good deal.
Now since Trails games are like 95% about the story, it likely won't end up the best Trails game overall since the story is good and has nice interactions and legit let's do this highs, but nothing amazing so far. Still won't know this until the end.
But in terms of just fun gameplay, this really feels incredibly well designed and next-level and is the first real jump forward Falcom has done with the series game structure/gameplay design since Trails in the Sky The Third.
The game is like two games in one that are both great and intertwinned. One game is essentially an iterative sequel to The Third's dream-party, character episodes, dungeon crawler, and the other is a great traditional jrpg with 3 different teams doing 3 different interesting things at 3 different locations at all times.
I kinda wish this game was like 200-300 hours long because it just works so well. Gonna be sad when it's over but it honestly seems like a huge thank you to the fans package game to the western Zemuria arc.
I'm pretty sure just like how CS4 retroactively made CS3 worse imo, Hajimari is retroactively making CS4 better. The reason is that when CS4 seemed like the end of the western Zemuria arc and goodbye to all these characters and their subplots...it just didn't pull it off and a lot of characters were mysteriously missing and major events missing and it just didn't deliver. So if we went on to Calvard and new cast members and slow beginnings in Eastern Zemuria arc #1 next game it's just a shitty sour way to end everything that was built up from Sky FC to CS4. But now that CS4 is
not the last game, and instead Hajimari is and Hajimari is delivering CS4 works better as just an end to Rean's & the schoolkids story and it's not great but it doesn't sink the overall story, just a kinda weak arc overall.
I have a feeling if Falcom survives for the next decade or two, which I think is very, very debatable at this point as their games just keep losing sales and they can't even afford to hire more employees to port their games to other systems and have to ask license companies to do the work, then I think after the final Trails arc finishes, they'll do another game like this that will be the third and final iteration of The Third. It just makes sense and would be a nice way to finish it all.
Also I still have zero clue what the middle arc in Eastern Zemuria is going to be. Calvard is the first country, churchland Arteria would make sense to be the final country with every church member being present in the final arc vs Oroboros, but if they're going for 3 arcs again, the middle is still
we don't even know the rest of the continent and countries on the other side of Calvard so in a few years at least we'll get the rest of the map. I kinda half-expect them to throw off expectations and do Arteria church arc after Calvard and then some place total new for the final arc. They could wipe out the church (or the church could become the villains) which would make the final arc more interesting, while Calvard probably won't be all that interesting off the bat, the setup it brings for the last arcs should be really interesting in a couple years. Calvard should be 2022/2023 (probably a new title or Ys for 2021 from Falcom).