Help for new player trying to get into the Trails series

Well, again, I personally haven’t gotten past Sky yet, so I can’t give any specific advice beyond just telling you what I’ve seen from others and what I’ve experienced. However, from what I understand, Crossbell is just as important as any of the other games. I know a couple of very small things about how Crossbell ties into CS and Hajimari (the newest game currently only in Japan), but I won’t say them here. Regardless, from what I understand, Crossbell is extremely important to getting the most out of CS3/4 and Hajimari, and probably beyond.

Of course, this all ultimately boils down to you personally, and everyone will be a bit different. CS1 and 3 both do a lot of work to attempt to summarize the games before them (CS3 is even recommended by the publishers as a good starting point, but I think most players strongly disagree), so if you’re satisfied with that, then that’s totally cool. If you’re good with just a summary, then you probably won’t be lost- but you also won’t get the most out of it.

All of this being said, this is a series which truly rewards you based on how much you put into it. Just to use the smallest possible example of this- take a single chapter in Trails in the Sky. Each chapter puts you in one main region with one central city. Within that city and the surrounding villages and military forts, there are dozens of NPCs. Each of these NPCs have names, personalities, jobs, goals, fears, histories, relationships with other NPCs, their own little stories. And all of them get new dialogue after every major main story event. So, if you wanted, you could speak to every NPC after every main story event. That’s a lot of work, but you’re rewarded with new dialogue which progresses these stories, and so many of them have excellent, satisfying arcs.

You could skip all of those if you want and just focus on the main story. The main story is still great and you’ll still get a lot out of the game. But you miss... so much if you don’t speak to at least a handful of your favorite NPCs after each story event. Spending thirty minutes after every event to speak to everyone might be a bit much, but spending ten minutes talking to some of them is... so rewarding and so worthwhile. Same goes for things like reading all of the books in the game.

And then, these NPCs each carry into the next game in the sub series, and some show up in games outside of their sub series too.

These games really do reward you more than anything I’ve ever played... if you put in the time to earn that. So, that’s my answer to you. If you want to get the most out of these games, yes, you should probably play Crossbell. You can choose how much you want to interact with the series, but the less you put in, the less you’ll get out- so it’s all about what kind of person you are and what you want to get out of these games. You might be perfectly content just playing CS1 and 2 and getting that story arc resolved. You might want a bit more or a lot more. All of this is up to you.

/r/Falcom Thread Parent