Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter Review: Falcom Sticks the Landing

Twenty-plus years after it first charmed JRPG fans in Japan, Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter finally gets a proper modern remake, picking up Estelle Bright's story right where the first game left off as she chases down the truth behind Joshua's disappearance and the shadowy Ouroboros organization. Falcom clearly knows what made the original tick, because this is less a reinvention and more a lovingly polished restoration of a series highlight, and based on the wave of recent user reviews pouring in since launch, that was exactly the right call.

The Steam numbers back that up. At the time of writing the game sits at "Very Positive," with roughly 97% of nearly 460 reviews recommending it, and the ten most recent reviews we read through to write this were unanimously positive, several of them long and detailed rather than drive-by thumbs-ups.

Pros

• The writing and character work are the headline act. Reviewers keep circling back to Estelle as one of the best protagonists in the genre, and the supporting cast gets singled out by name as the game's "strongest suit."
• Several players describe the story as a genre-defining, timeless piece of writing, with more than one review ranking it among the best JRPGs ever made rather than treating it as just a nostalgia trip for series veterans.
• Returning fans of the first Trails in the Sky are being told, repeatedly, that this sequel earns its reputation and then some, with multiple reviewers calling it the best sequel they've ever played.
• World-building depth keeps coming up unprompted. Players like how much lore, history, and texture the kingdom of Liberl has beyond the main plot, and how much of it rewards people who go talk to every NPC.
• Combat and exploration are praised as a satisfying, substantial JRPG loop on top of the story, not just a vehicle to get between cutscenes.

Cons

• The opening stretch is slow by modern standards. More than one reviewer flags a sluggish start and "slow burn" pacing before the story properly kicks into gear, which is worth knowing going in if you're impatient.
• A couple of the longer, more detailed write-ups mention inconsistency in how certain combat encounters are tuned, and call out a pacing dip around the game's fourth chapter specifically.
• Voice acting is flagged as a mixed bag in at least one detailed review, uneven in places rather than a uniform strength.
• This is a dialogue-heavy, text-forward JRPG at its core, so anyone coming in expecting fast, flashy action rather than a slow-building character drama will likely bounce off it.

Performance & PC

Falcom hasn't asked for much hardware here. The listed minimum spec is a Ryzen 5 1600, a GTX 1050, 8 GB of RAM, DirectX 11 and 52 GB of storage, which is a low bar for a 2026 release and should run comfortably on most mid-range PCs from the last several years, let alone anything built recently. Encouragingly, none of the recent reviews we looked at mention crashes, freezes, or stability problems, and there's no chatter about Steam Deck or Linux-specific issues either. For a game this menu and dialogue-heavy, that tracks: it simply isn't pushing hardware hard enough to run into the kind of trouble flashier, more demanding releases do. If you're on the fence about whether your rig can handle it, the honest answer is almost certainly yes.

How it compares

Baldur's Gate 3 is also a deeply narrative RPG that lives and dies by its characters, though it trades turn-based JRPG combat for tactical party-based D&D rules, so reach for it if you want more player agency over how the plot actually unfolds.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt scratches a similar "get lost in a huge, well-written world" itch, but it's a sprawling open-world action RPG rather than the more linear, chapter-structured storytelling Trails is built around.

Cyberpunk 2077 shares the pedigree of a story-first RPG anchored by a strong cast, though its neon dystopia and shooter-driven combat couldn't be further from Liberl's cozy fantasy kingdom and turn-based skirmishes.

Summary

Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter is exactly the sequel longtime fans hoped for, and based on the chorus of "best game," "best sequel," and "timeless masterpiece" showing up across recent reviews, it's landing just as hard with the current Steam audience as it did on arrival in Japan decades ago. It asks for patience during a slower opening, has a couple of rough patches in combat pacing by its own fans' admission, and won't convert anyone who bounces off text-heavy JRPGs, but for the genre's core audience this is close to essential. At close to full price it's a real ask, but with 50-plus hours of a story people are already calling one of the best the genre has ever produced, and a technical package that just works without drama, it earns its keep.