![The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails Review - Screenshot 1 of](https://images.nintendolife.com/screenshots/139776/900x.jpg)
The Trails collection is understood for its unimaginable worldbuilding via many alternative video games, together with Trails of Chilly Metal, Trails from Zero, and Trails to Azure, in addition to Trails within the Sky. The occasions of these video games culminated with Trails into Reverie, which lastly acquired a localized launch this 12 months.
The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails, nevertheless, has completely no reference to the mainline video games. That’s really a great factor because it means Boundless Trails can implement new mechanics with out being beholden to them. This has a fascinating real-time motion fight system with loads of nice worldbuilding via facet quests. Nonetheless, the story is quite simplistic and typically the platforming feels imprecise. Nonetheless, Boundless Trails is a worthy spin-off deserving of the Trails title.
The story doesn’t have the intricate political and socioeconomic pulls that the mainline Trails video games have, and that may bitter some longtime followers of the collection who anticipate Boundless Trails to be the identical. As an alternative, the story reminds us of traditional Last Fantasy video games—Nayuta and the fairy Noi group as much as acquire elemental Grasp Gears and cease the evil villain Zechts, who’s hellbent on destroying each Nayuta’s hometown of Remnant Island and the magical Misplaced Heaven.
![The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails Review - Screenshot 1 of](https://images.nintendolife.com/screenshots/139784/900x.jpg)
The story additionally has a touch of Kingdom Hearts surprise to it, as Nayuta has desires of visiting different locations exterior of his hometown and Noi’s magical talents let him achieve this. Boundless Trails doesn’t have essentially the most elaborate story by any means, nevertheless it’s good to have the ability to expertise a journey that doesn’t depend on taking part in a bunch of interconnected ones to know.
The sport’s story is bolstered by its fantastic facet quests, that are harking back to these discovered within the mainline Trails entries. I loved tackling these as I acquired to study extra about each Remnant Island and Misplaced Heaven’s inhabitants. One quest, particularly, had me present an elemental god the delicacies of human meals, which supplied context about how they view others within the human realm. Moreover, these quests are price pursuing as they typically give rewards similar to further gold or some helpful fight objects upon completion.
The fight in Boundless Trails is the sport’s greatest energy. It fully goes in the wrong way of the turn-based battles in the primary Trails video games and opts for real-time motion platforming. It’s easy however efficient. The sport allows you to select phases on a map much like that of a 2D Mario sport. We had a whole lot of enjoyable hacking and slashing at enemies all through every of the phases—it was a refreshing tackle the everyday Trails fight components and stored us engaged.
![The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails Review - Screenshot 1 of](https://images.nintendolife.com/screenshots/139783/900x.jpg)
The phases even have spectacular replayability. Every has three stars to gather primarily based on objectives and circumstances. For instance, you may earn a star on a sure stage by reaching the top with out getting hit greater than 10 occasions. You’re even rewarded for reaching sure milestones in your star-collecting journey; each six stars allows you to study a brand new talent or particular assault. It’s a enjoyable mini-collectathon and we felt like we have been a younger teen taking part in New Tremendous Mario Bros. on the DS once more.
Ultimately, Nayuta can even change the seasons in Misplaced Heaven, and that unlocks seasonal variants of present phases, providing much more replayability, with much more star amassing! The seasonal phases combine up the environments, platforming, and enemy selection fairly a bit, so it by no means actually acquired repetitive. Nonetheless, typically the platforming facet within the phases felt imprecise. These phases are introduced as a 2.5D affair, and there have been many cases the place we needed to leap onto shifting platforms, solely to misjudge our distance and incur fall injury. The truth that the digital camera is mounted doesn’t assist issues.
![The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails Review - Screenshot 1 of](https://images.nintendolife.com/screenshots/139777/900x.jpg)
As for the presentation itself, NIS has managed to make this 11-year-old PlayStation Transportable sport as fairly because it probably may. The 3D character fashions have been enhanced they usually’re charming in a retro-style, early-polygonal method. There’s additionally a wise use of cel-shading utilized to the fashions. Positive, the graphical limitations of a PSP port are apparent, however the facial expressions and character actions add to its attraction. On Swap, the sport additionally runs flawlessly with no discernible hiccups or body fee points.
One other addition that we actually liked was the high-speed function. In latest Trails entries, you may click on a button for high-speed mode, which will increase the velocity of the whole sport, gameplay and cutscenes included. Whereas taking the important path in Boundless Trails will get you a 15-20 hour runtime, the sport has loads of content material. Not solely does working again to earlier phases to gather remaining stars add extra playtime, however there’s additionally a playable epilogue after the primary story. The best way the sport is structured is completely fitted to the stop-and-go playstyle {that a} transportable machine was designed for.
Conclusion
The Legend of Nayuta: Boundless Trails is a enjoyable motion RPG that takes parts of the broader collection it is primarily based on and crafts one thing distinctive. The minute-to-minute gameplay can be partaking, though with some minor platforming frustrations right here and there. Whereas the story could also be simplistic and never as politically engrossing because the mainline Trails video games, the heartfelt solid of characters and facet quests assist flesh out its world.