As with all Trails games, Trails through Daybreak II is a good game. This is, however, one of the more flawed experiences in the series for reasons I'll be covering in a bit.

Daybreak II fleshes out Calvard as a setting quite a bit without diving too deeply into the more important lore elements, a choice that seems intentional on Falcom's part as they seem to be saving the good stuff for the next game. The game also has this issue where the different elements of the story come together in this disjointed way that still kind of works, but lessens the impact that you might have expected from the early set up. There's a whole chapter in the game that felt like a complete non-sequitur that, funnily enough, was probably my favourite part of the game from a story perspective. So the main plot writing, while it works, is just a bit messy.

While the main story feels a bit messy, I really loved the work done on the characters in this game. There's a fair few returning characters that get a lot of screen time and quite robust and complete character arcs. In addition, the connect events in this game are my favourite bonding events out of all the games in the series. The general sense of banter between the crew is still there and is even stronger now that they've bonded. There's some absolutely hilarious dialogue in this game, and the banter alone is worth the price of admission in my book. I can't extend the same praise to the work done on the main villain of this game though, but I think I'll leave it there for now as some further re-contextualising from a sequel might change my mind.

The combat has some small new additions that make the overall feel of the game incredibly slick and streamlined, even more so than the first Daybreak. Things like field arts and ex-chains weave in so naturally into the current combat framework that it almost felt like Falcom had filled up little holes in the system I didn't even realise existed. Also, the final boss fight for this game, mechanically speaking, is not only just the best boss fight in the series, but one of the best in the JRPGs that I've played.

Minigames, an element that was a staple in the past several entries barring Daybreak, make a return with a decent range of activites. I particularly really liked the mechanics for the new fishing minigame and the hacking minigame was really fun too. The basketball minigame was a bit too simple for my tastes, but I still had fun watching this cast of characters basically be the second coming of Kobe Bryant. I wasn't a fan of the new card game though, felt a bit shallow and random.

The music hit about the same as the first game for me. There are a couple of standout tracks and some decent battle themes throughout the experience. To my ears, at least, it felt like there was less repetition of the tracks between scenes in comparison to Daybreak, which is a welcome change for me. There is a dungeon crawler mode in this game as well that allows you to choose music from a bunch of older Trails games that I thought was just perfect. It was amazing getting into combat and hearing the battle theme from Trails in the Sky kicking in. The voice acting was also pretty good all around, felt like the standard Trails affair.

The visuals, while remaining quite similar from an artistic and fidelity perspective saw huge improvements in the cutscene animation. There are a few scenes in this game that have bombastic action play out and the animation matches the intensity of the moment more often than not in a way that amazed me. I never thought I'd be saying this sort of thing about a Trails game, which have usually chosen the visuals as the first place to cut back on, so I'm a very happy camper indeed.

In the broader scheme of things in the series, this is a set-up game, which follows another set-up game. While a complete experience, Daybreak's most important job was introducing us to Calvard and the new cast while setting up some elements and Daybreak II continued with that task while traditionally fans would expect the game after the set-up game to be where things start moving quickly. Personally, I welcome this change as Calvard as a setting is much too diverse to simply get through in one game, but I do sympathise with people that feel like this game failed to move the needle of the overall plot much.

Obviously, this is a Trails game, and a sequel to boot, so don't skip this one. "Filler" might be a term that people use for this game but I assure you there are enough things in this game that make it anything but filler. On its own merits, Daybreak II does a lot right and stumbles at points, but it's a great game that I enjoyed. It's worth playing.

This is the best video game.

I really wish I could tell you more about it, but words fail me and I really want you to see this for yourself.

There's nothing else like it.