Trails Through Daybreak 2 brings Van and his allies back to uncover the mysteries surrounding a mass murder and a "Crimson Beast!" Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth buying

Trails Through Daybreak 2 Review Overview

What is Trails Through Daybreak 2?

The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak II (or simply Daybreak 2), released in Japan in September 2022 as Kuro no Kiseki II: Crimson Sin, is a direct sequel to The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak. It continues the story within the Zemurian continent, specifically focusing on the Republic of Calvard. This entry further develops the ongoing narrative threads established in the previous Trails game and explores the political landscape and interconnected destinies of its characters.

The story picks up a couple of months after the events of the first game. Though the dust has barely settled following the dissolution of Almata, Van, Daybreak’s protagonist, can’t catch a break. In the intervening months, a series of killings, seemingly the work of a "crimson beast," rocks the Republic, stirring up old wounds and threatening the stability they fought so hard to achieve. As various factions, including Van and his colleagues at Arkride Solutions, launch their own investigations, they uncover a conspiracy that reaches far beyond the beast’s trail, threatening to plunge the Republic into further chaos.

The gameplay builds upon its predecessor’s mechanics of seamless transitions between field exploration and turn-based combat. New systems are also introduced, such as the Cross Charge, which allows players to perform a Perfect Dodge during field battles, and EX Chains, which are abilities that can be activated under specific conditions during turn-based battles .

Trails Through Daybreak 2 features:
　⚫︎　Enhanced Combat System and Character Customization
　⚫︎　An Optional Dungeon in Märchen Garten
　⚫︎　Diverse Missions and Minigames
　⚫︎　Deep World-Building

For more gameplay details, read everything we know about Trails Through Daybreak 2’s gameplay and story.

Digital Storefronts
Steam		Epic		GoG
PlayStation			Switch
Price		$59.99

Trails Through Daybreak 2 Pros & Cons

Pros	Cons
The Best Battle System in the Series So Far Charming and Likable Characters Cutscenes Look Smooth	Weak Narrative and Pacing Disappointing Time Travel Plot Device Uninspired Minigames

Trails Through Daybreak 2 Overall Score - 70/100

Trails Through Daybreak 2 is as divisive as they come, with some praising it as a worthy successor and others dismissing it as a low-stakes follow-up that feels more like DLC than a true sequel. Unfortunately, I lean toward the latter. Yes, the combat, deep customization, and charming cast kept me engaged all throughout, but the narrative felt shallow, and the absence of player agency in moments that cried out for it only deepened this frustration. I had hoped the criticisms from its Japanese release were overblown, but hour after hour, time leap after time leap, Daybreak 2 did nothing but confirm my worst fears.

Trails Through Daybreak 2 Story - 6/10

Trails Through Daybreak 2 is caught in a contradiction: Death is prevalent in the story, yet death rarely seems to ever really matter. The early game hints at a darker tone, but constant time travel undermines any real sense of loss. Fortunately, the game shines in its characters—their relationships, personal growth, and the quiet moments they share provide a warmth the plot lacks. It’s a strange mix—the small details are wonderful, but the bigger picture feels flawed. I was left, then, with an equally bittersweet feeling; I’m fully hooked on the characters and their stories, but I lament all of the squandered potential.

Trails Through Daybreak 2 Gameplay - 9/10

Daybreak 2 wisely avoids tinkering with a winning formula, only polishing the already excellent combat system from the first game. The series’ signature turn-based combat remains intact, but the real-time system from the first game has been refined to an impressive degree with the addition of Ex Chains and Cross Charges. Pair these with a deep customization system—one that practically begs you to tinker with builds—and the procedurally-generated Märchen Garten, and you’ve got a gameplay loop that could have you scouring guides or losing yourself in the Orbment menu, theorycrafting across a roster of more than ten playable characters. If only the same level of care extended to the game’s many minigames. Their return after being absent in the first game is a welcome sight, but their charm fades fast, leaving them to be little more than skip-worthy distractions.

Trails Through Daybreak 2 Visuals - 7/10

The Trails series has never been one to boast cutting-edge graphics, and Daybreak 2 is further confirmation that it won’t be dethroning giants like the Final Fantasy VII Remakes of the world anytime soon—and it doesn’t have to, really. What it lacks in fidelity, it makes up for with stunning cinematic cutscenes and flashy combat animations, especially during the over-the-top S-Crafts. Its presentation, however, walks a tightrope. Daybreak 2 reuses much of the first game’s assets, and that’s not inherently a bad thing; I enjoy revisiting old locations and seeing how they’ve changed over time. But when a lot of what it reuses—enemy designs, menus, and even animations—remains virtually untouched, the game starts to blur the line between sequel and expansion. If you’re jumping in right after finishing the first, you might feel like one of the characters caught in a time leap—everything looks just familiar enough to give you déjà vu.

Trails Through Daybreak 2 Audio - 8/10

Be me. Start a boss fight. Do absolutely nothing for a solid minute—just bask in the electrifying riffs blasting through the speakers. Daybreak 2’s soundtrack is phenomenal, rivaling the best of the Tales series, with battle themes ideal for grinding through levels or powering through an all-night study session—the kind of tracks you’d find on compilations on YouTube. But for all its highs, the game’s audio presentation stumbles with its inconsistent voice acting. Some cutscenes start fully voiced, only to drop into silence mid-scene. This has been a quirk of the Trails series, yes. It was jarring then, and it’s still jarring now. You think a scene is fully voiced, so you leave it alone to autoplay, only to realize that half the dialogue is missing, leaving you scrolling back through the logs to catch what you missed.

Trails Through Daybreak 2 Value for Money - 5/10

My playthrough of Daybreak 2 clocked in at just over 70 hours. Factor in the post-game content, and it’s easy to see that number stretching well past the hundred-hour mark. That’s on par for a $60 JRPG of Trails’ pedigree. But when the credits rolled, I had no particular urge to dive back in for more. And it wasn’t out of burnout from playing almost nonstop, but simply because there wasn’t much pulling me back to it. Unlike the other JRPGs I've played that offer the same amount of hours in their main story and side quests alone, Daybreak 2 felt like a "one and done" deal. Sure, you won’t see every Connect event—those character-bonding moments—in a single playthrough, and they’re certainly a treat. But the prospect of replaying through a significant chunk of the game just to unlock the ones I missed just isn’t enticing enough, to be frank.

Trails Through Daybreak 2 Review: Barely Breaking Through

It wouldn’t be until last year that I dipped my toes into the Trails series. The sheer scope of its interconnected narratives, stretching all the way back to Trails in the Sky in 2004 and continuing with the still Japan-exclusive Kai no Kiseki, had always felt overwhelming. It was the kind of thing where the more trains you miss, the more Herculean catching up becomes. But the passionate fan base it had always piqued my JRPG-loving heart, and so, for years, it remained as something I observed from a distance rather than experienced firsthand.

I would finally bite the bullet at the recommendation of my friend and dive into the Trails of Cold Steel games. One playthrough led to another, and before I knew it, I was deep in Trails Through Daybreak, chasing after a story I had once deemed too daunting to touch. A little late to the party? Perhaps. Did I skip a few entries? Guilty as charged. But I’ll get to them—probably.

Even back in 2022, though, when Trails Through Daybreak 2 (known as CRIMSON SIN in Japan) was fresh off the press, I had caught wind of the game’s reputation. The Trails fandom is not one to stay quiet, and the reception to this game was a storm of conflicting opinions. Some swore that it was a worthy successor, while others decried it as a misstep, an unnecessary detour in a series built on careful worldbuilding. The echoes of that debate reached even my relatively distant orbit in the JRPG space, which should tell you something about how fiercely people felt about it.

Now that I’ve finally played it for myself? Well… it’s alright, I guess.

Don't get me wrong; after personally finishing it, I think it’s a good game hiding underneath all its issues, no doubt about that. It doesn’t quite live up to the momentum set by its predecessor, but it at least offers longtime Trails fans plenty to chew on.

Sadly, the story isn’t one of the palatable things about it.

So Many Deaths, So Little Consequence

For those unfamiliar with it, the Trails series is a saga that seems to have an endless supply of stories to tell. Longtime fans of Falcom are likely familiar with the drill, but newcomers should know that the Trails series weaves one massive, interconnected narrative. Each game or arc explores a different nation, introduces a fresh cast of characters, and opens the door wider to a grander story that has been unfolding since 2004’s Trails in the Sky.

Daybreak 2 continues the Calvard arc and picks up several months after the first game in the year 1209. Here, we find Van Arkride, still at the helm of Arkride Solutions, working as a Spriggan—private detectives-for-hire. When childhood friend and Bracer Elaine Auclair calls on him for help, they find themselves drawn into a case involving a "Crimson Beast," which has been caught on camera decimating a squad of elite special forces.

What follows is a series of tragic events, incidents where lives are lost, characters fall, and the party faces defeat in one form or another. But with the Genesis devices—artifacts made to "observe the world"—from Daybreak in play, the rules of time itself are bent. Deaths and disasters can be rewound, outcomes can be altered—and that’s where the problem lies.

The start of the game at the very least felt heavier, more somber. Deaths were more prevalent, and each one felt consequential. But as the story went on, I eventually reached one of the many issues with the game’s use of time travel: When you can simply undo a catastrophic event, does it even matter that the party dies? With each reset, each death nullified, the sense of consequence is diluted, and the emotional weight of events fade. The game wrestles with this tension, especially during one particular act where you’re forced to retry multiple times before reaching the "canon" conclusion.

This issue is made worse by how Daybreak 2 sometimes forces characters into uncharacteristic incompetence just to justify these Dead Ends or bad outcomes. Take Van, for example—the first game made it clear that he has a keen sense of smell, a trait that often played into his investigations. Yet, there are moments in Daybreak 2 where he completely misses crucial details that the Van of the first game would’ve easily caught. It felt as though the game was pushing the player toward failure.

When a character’s established strengths are conveniently overlooked just to manufacture a bad route, it weakens both the immersion and the stakes, and these moments end up feeling like the game is simply yanking the rug out from under you for the sake of the gimmick.

What makes these Dead Ends even more frustrating is how artificial they feel. They exist purely as plot devices and carry little weight in the actual story or gameplay. Despite being about leaping back in time, Daybreak 2 remains a linear experience, with most rewinds occurring at predetermined moments—hardly the kind of system that invites player agency.

This wouldn’t have been such a letdown if the game had integrated this mechanic as seamlessly as something like Atlus’ Radiant Historia, where time travel was a core gameplay feature that allowed players to explore non-linear timelines with meaningful consequences that actually affected the narrative. Here, however, it functions more like a deus ex machina.

The potential for something greater was there. If only it were a system where players could actually make choices, experiment with different paths, and if they failed, learn from their mistakes to find the right way forward. Instead, what we got was a structure where you have to fail first, only for the game to then point you toward the solution.

Even the return of the Law, Gray, and Chaos (LGC) Alignment system from the first game feels hollow. Previously, this system impacted Van’s combat stats and certain plot points. In Daybreak 2, player decisions in resolving 4SPGs (side missions) still nudge an alignment gauge, but the impact is minimal. Aside from unlocking a few items, the system has no bearing on the story. It whispers promises of player agency but ultimately delivers very, very little.

More Heart Than Story

Surprisingly, the game’s time-travel mechanic wasn’t what made Daybreak 2 so divisive. The controversy stemmed from how little it contributed to the overarching Trails saga. Rather than feeling like a full-fledged sequel, it plays more like a lengthy expansion of the first game. In fact, if fan discussions are anything to go by, the follow-up, Kai no Kiseki, will be the real game-changer that pushes the story forward in ways Daybreak 2 simply doesn’t.

Many of the lingering mysteries introduced in the first game—Van’s origins, Mare’s true nature, and the larger forces at play in Zemuria—remain unresolved. It offers little in the way of answers but plenty of time to slow down and simply exist in its world.

But maybe that’s for the best. Maybe Daybreak 2 was created to deliver something else entirely. Because while Daybreak 2 might not push the overall narrative forward, it excels in something just as important: its characters. Their charm, their relationships, and the smaller, more intimate moments of their lives are what truly pull you in. Though they fall into familiar archetypes, they’re undeniably likable, and seeing them interact, joke around, and go about their daily lives after the events of the first game is nothing short of heartwarming.

This is especially evident in the Connect events, which offer meaningful moments of bonding. One standout for me was Renne’s. As a recurring figure in the series, her Daybreak 2 event felt like a beautifully handled conclusion to her arc. Seeing her story reach such an emotional peak made me want to just wrap her in a hug.

Staying True to The First Game’s Combat

Trails Through Daybreak 2 may not have the strongest narrative—far from it, in my opinion—but if nothing else, it boasts some of the highest highs in the series when it comes to combat. The game continues the hybrid battle system introduced in its predecessor that blends real-time action with traditional turn-based combat. On the surface, it’s a mix that might remind some of Metaphor: ReFantazio, but in execution, it retains the depth Trails is known for.

The Field Battles—the game’s real-time action mode—have seen some notable improvements. Characters can now use Quick Arts for ranged magic attacks that help damage enemies from a distance. Then there’s Cross Charge, a special attack executed by performing a perfect dodge and switching to another character mid-combat. Not only does this make battles more fluid, but it also makes stunning enemies far easier.

Meanwhile, the turn-based combat remains intact, with all the series’ signature elements. Standard attacks provide a basic but reliable option, while Arts function similarly to magic in other RPGs, requiring EP (essentially a mana pool) to cast a variety of offensive, defensive, and support spells. Crafts, on the other hand, are more akin to character-specific skills, fueled by CP, a resource that builds up through combat actions. Then there are S-Crafts—the game’s equivalent of Final Fantasy VII’s Limit Breaks—which allow characters to unleash powerful, cinematic attacks at the cost of a large chunk of CP. Unlike typical Limit Breaks, however, S-Crafts can be used multiple times in a single battle, provided the character has enough CP.

There was never a need to fix what wasn’t broken, but Daybreak 2 continues to elevate an already solid system. No wonder many fans consider this the best combat system in the series—it’s fast, flexible, and highly customizable, especially when it comes to tweaking each character’s Art Drivers, Plugins, Cores, Orbments, and so on.

A Garten of Content

But where better to really unleash your party’s builds than in the Märchen Garten? Reminiscent of Trails into Reverie's True Reverie Corridor, it’s a completely optional, randomly generated dungeon and the perfect place to see what your party’s made of. Inside, you’ll face increasingly challenging enemies, culminating in a boss fight that rewards you handsomely with in-game resources. Even better, party composition isn’t restricted here—unlike the main story, where characters are often split up due to plot reasons, you’ll be able to experiment here however you please. And in a game where combat is arguably its strongest pillar, that’s a welcome addition.

That said, after a couple of floors, ascending Märchen Garten gradually turned into a slog. The randomized layouts and reskinned enemies eventually became repetitive and offered little in the way of variety beyond tougher foes with inflated health bars. Still, despite it all, it remains a reprieve from the main story—a space where you can enjoy the battle system without the narrative reminding you of its flaws. It also extends the game's lifespan by providing post-game content for those hungry for more after the credits roll.

Minigames Are Meh at Best

But not all of the game’s extracurricular activities are as engaging. Minigames have long been a staple of the Trails series. The first Daybreak notably lacked them, but in what seems like an overcorrection, Daybreak 2 rams in a lot. Players can shoot hoops in basketball, take control of Mare or Quartre’s drone FIO in a hacking minigame, duel in the card game Seventh Hearts, engage in tailing missions, and, of course, fish to their hearts content.

This variety might sound like a win at first, but the execution leaves much to be desired. Many of these minigames feel as though they’re there to pad out playtime. While there are some bright spots—basketball and fishing, in particular, can be fun in short bursts—their novelty fades quickly. What started as fun distractions soon felt as though they primarily served to pad out playtime rather than offer anything meaningful. Worse still are the tailing sequences, which boil down to slow-paced "walk-and-hide" segments that add little to the overall experience.

Is Trails Through Daybreak 2 Worth It?

Yes If You Love the Characters, Tolerable At the Very Least If You Don’t

As someone relatively new to the Trails series, I can’t say I was entirely blown away by Daybreak 2—but at the same time, I can’t deny that I had fun. The story may have felt like a slow burn with a few too many narrative shortcuts, but the game’s characters and battle system made the journey worth it. Without these, I doubt I would have been able to endure my 70-hour playthrough, especially considering the story’s numerous cop-outs.

$60 is a tough ask for a game that essentially serves as an epilogue to its predecessor. For those hoping to see the world of Trails expand, Daybreak 2 isn’t it. It offers little in terms of fleshing out Zemuria or advancing the grand narrative. But despite this, it’s not really a game you can skip if you want to see the entire arc through, particularly because of the mysteries it touches on that will come to a head in Kai no Kiseki.

However, those looking to see more of Van and his friends’ story will find plenty here, which is enough to satisfy me until the next installment drops (whether this year, next year, or whenever NIS America decides to localize it). And in a series as rich as Trails, sometimes that’s all you really need.

Digital Storefronts
Steam		Epic		GoG
PlayStation			Switch
Price		$59.99

Trails Through Daybreak 2 FAQ

What are Trails Through Daybreak 2’s PC System Requirements?

Game8 Reviews

You may also like...

	Tales of Graces f Remastered Action, RPG
	Suikoden I&II Remaster RPG, Adventure
	Ys Memoire: The Oath in Felghana RPG, Adventure
	Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 RPG, Adventure, Action

Trails Through Daybreak 2 Product Information

Title	THE LEGEND OF HEROES: TRAILS THROUGH DAYBREAK 2
Release Date	Japan September 29, 2022 East Asia January 26, 2023 NA/EU February 14, 2025
Developer	Nihon Falcom PH3 Gmbh
Publisher	Nihon Falcom (Japan) NIS America (Worldwide)
Supported Platforms	PC (Steam, Epic Games Store, GoG) PlayStation 5 PlayStation 4 Nintendo Switch
Genre	Action, Adventure, RPG
Number of Players	Single-Player (1)
ESRB Rating	ESRB Teen
Official Website	Official Website for Trails Through Daybreak 2

L A R Opalec

Lloyd grew up bonding with his big brother over video games. While RPGs like Disco Elysium and Final Fantasy IX hold a special place in his heart, he's always up to try new genres.