Media in Review: The Legend of Nayuta - Boundless Trails
Nayuta is an interesting entry in Falcom's catalog. It's a standalone remaster of a PSP original game that isn't quite Trails or Ys, with its closest DNA match probably being the Zwei games. I've never played those, but if you imagine a more platforming-focused and stage-based Ys Seven, you're about 80% of the way there, so that's what we're gonna go with. Anyway, in a similar manner to Tokyo Xanadu, Nayuta attempts to blend the action combat of Ys with a Trails-like home town where you do quests and follow around NPCs. But where Tokyo Xanadu was a Cold Steel game with action combat, Nayuta is very much on the other side of the coin; an action platformer where you occasionally come back to town to see your friends and get a meal from your sister before heading back out into combat.
Mechanically, it's...fine? It's not going to win any GOTY awards or anything, but the platforming is largely passable and outside of some really weird combat decisions, the action bits are solid enough. I'm not a big fan of the decision to not have any i-frames after taking damage, and some of the bosses are absolutely dreadful (looking squarely at you, Fire Temple), but by and large nothing is really going to ruin your day here. If you've played Ys Seven, you'll be right at home, seeing as it's built on the same engine. As for the plot...well, it sure has one. Like most Ys games, you'll be able to spot the twists from a mile away and both the characters and the storytelling are largely paper thin. If you go in expecting a Trails-level narrative, you will undoubtedly be disappointed, but what's there is executed well. It's just not very interesting.
And at the end of the day, the question I have trouble answering is "Who is this for?" I don't know if Falcom originally sold it as a Trails spinoff (although the title being Nayuta no Kiseki probably indicates that it was), but there are absolutely no relations to the larger series here, so anyone looking for that came up shorthanded. If you were looking for a more action-oriented title then you came out a bit better, but Ys blows it out of the water on multiple levels. The decision to break everything into 3-5 minute distinct levels works, but it doesn't really let you get into a groove when you're playing, and leads to the designers reusing a bunch of them in lieu of actual new levels - "Oh, it's Dragon's Graveyard but in the SUMMER instead of the Fall. Now the platforms are slightly different!"
I guess the actual answer is "People like me who have already played all of Falcom's other games", huh? $40 will buy you a lot of Ys and Trails games, so anyone who isn't in that boat should probably look elsewhere first.