I'm starting to suspect JRPG developers get some sort of sick satisfaction in stealing me away from other games, consuming my life, and making me hate myself. I was already excited for the Trails in the Sky remake, a reimagining of the cult classic JRPG The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky, but now that anticipation is flavored with a touch of anxiety as developer Nihon Falcom has said it'll take roughly 80 hours, twice the length of the original game, to beat.
Talking to Japanese publication Gamer (transcription via Automaton), Nihon Falcom CEO Toshihiro Kondo said it took the remake's lead programmer about 80 hours to beat the game, compared to the original's roughly 40-hour runtime.
"There's more map exploration compared to previous games, and we found that if you explore those areas, listen to the voiced lines, and complete all the quests, it takes twice as long as the original," said Kondo, according to the translation. "Maybe it's also because you spend more time watching the events. Back in the day, we really did tend to scroll through text at the speed it appeared, and that gave the original a kind of snappy feel in its own way."
I have a love-hate relationship with 80-hour JRPGs. On one hand, I'm playing them for a reason. I like exploring rustic countrysides and sprawling vistas, floating architecture high above me, and fighting tentacled weirdos with big swords alongside hot people with inexplicably voluminous hair and predictably tragic backstories. What I don't love is the whole confronting my own mortality aspect of them. How many 80-hour games do I have left in me?
Anyway, Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter, as it's officially titled, is the upcoming remake of the very first game in the now-legendary Trails series, initially conceived as a way to aid JRPG newcomers in finding out just where the heck to start in this long-running and prolific series.
I played it on PSP as a kid, and remember very little about it, maybe because after almost two decades of subsequent JRPG-ing, its story about a brother/sister duo journeying through the world to become elite peace-keeping soldiers reads fairly cliche these days. But I do remember it being a pretty good time! And with the remake modernizing the visuals, audio, controls, and combat with a new real-time action option in addition to the original turn-based grid, I'm pretty hyped for the remake.
Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter is coming to PlayStation, Switch, and PC at an undisclosed date, but you can Wishlist it now on Steam.
In the meantime, here's a list of the best JRPGs I helped out with.
