One thing that’s super interesting about Trails in the Sky is how important money is for progression, what you do to get said money, and what it means to be a part of society in a JRPG.
I wrote a bit about one half of the progression system in Trails, the orbment system, before. The other half of it though, is the equipment.
It’s fairly common of JRPGs to stow away come character progression in the form of items and equipment.
Here’s the basic scenario: every hour or so you might come across some armor piece or a weapon that just flat out has better stats than the one your party member currently has. Once said item is equipped, that character is elevated in some way.
Now you could get into some of the more customizable aspects to those systems in JRPG’s, but when in comes down to it, that’s the blueprint (plus, writing a 400-page book about JRPG equipment would be absolutely cursed).
Trails in the Sky pretty much takes that blueprint. . . and does nothing to it. But that’s not a bad thing! Where it gets wild is what it does around that basic system of getting stronger through equipment.
The biggest thing is that you can only get new equipment by purchasing them at shops with mira, the main currency in the world.
Because you see, the world of Trails is a society. It’s not like the world is ending or you’re exploring some long-forgotten land, you’re just traveling from region to region, and hanging out in cities and villages (the whole first game is honestly just hanging out, but that’s a whole other thing on its own).
Society cleans up its trash. You’re not gonna find a pristine piece of shining armor under a pile of rubble in the forest. Not saying that shining armor would be trash, but you get the idea.
If you want that good shit, you have to earn it by buying it like everyone else. And NO, you do not get money just by killing monsters either. That’s not how this works, that’s not real. Why would a fire-breathing eagle be carrying a three-pound bag of gold everywhere it goes?
So, how do you earn money? Well, you can get paid by doing sidequests.
Well, they’re not exactly sidequests, they’re actually your job. See, you’re playing as a ‘bracer’, who’s job it is to uphold the law and provide help to those in need (like a cop, but good). And you can pick up requests (the sidequests) at the bulletin board inside Bracer Guild Offices.
If you do enough requests, you just might earn enough mira to get that good shit. From my experience, if you take care of at least everyone’s problems in the city, you can cough up enough mira to buy the best equipment and weapons for your two main protagonists.
You’ll probably need to buy that stuff too. Some of the encounters in Trails are CURSED.
Eventually, you’ll need to defend a civilian NPC that dies in two hits against seven dogs. Or go up against two really big dogs that kill you in two hits (I have a lot of trouble against dogs in this game).
And that’s only in like the first two chapters of the game! If you don’t have the best armor you can buy in town, I really don’t know how to help you (you could just be good at the game, but I’m not that).
While that sucks, its still really interesting. Trails in the Sky takes a progression system that, generally, takes place in the open world, exploring hidden areas and opening chests, and chucks it straight into the mundanity of civil society!
You aren’t rewarded for exploration or defeating some random goon in a tree, but for your ability to scrounge up mira doing odd jobs for a living.
It’s cool in the ‘roleplaying’ sense. But it’s also a way for the game to push you into doing the requests, which are fantastic by the way.
For the sake of not repeating myself (as if anyone would read my shitty take on Trails, ha-ha!), let’s just say that the guild requests (the sidequests) in Trails aren’t really ‘filler’ content, but ‘extra-canon’ content. They just add more to the story and lore. They involve characters and events from the ‘main quest’. And they’re just fun as hell. So, who wouldn’t want more of the good stuff, and get paid to do it too?
Plus, armor and weapons aren’t the only thing you need to spend your money on. There’re also all of the healing/cure/revive items, ingredients to cook food (which is a cheaper way to heal than potions), and the expenses of learning new cooking recipes (which is just buying and tasting new food…).
Pretty much everything you need to survive as a bracer needs to be purchased with mira, and you only have so much. It’s a battle with society rather than the great unknown. With your funds rather than. . . your desire to venture into some fuck-off forest?
To be fair though, I lied (just a little bit).
You can find the occasional piece of equipment or weapon out exploring, occasional being the operative word.
For example, there’s one guild request (a sidequest!) where you need to help a dude find the location of the ‘X’ on his treasure map. You end up following some hidden path that barely even shows up on your world map, to some secluded patch of beach, and you find a half-buried barrel in the sand.
Inside, you find. . . another map? The map you had was apparently just a map to a map, this map leads to the actual treasure.
More importantly though, you find a pair of ‘Skull Daggers’, which at the time is better than anything one of your main protagonists is using.
At this point in the game this is probably, at most, the second time you’ve found a weapon just out in the middle of nowhere. And it’s a really great moment because you’re like “Holy cow! Not only is this just a crazy rare find, but now I don’t even have to spend my (very lacking) mira on a new dagger!”
Those moments feel amazing. Like you found something that you shouldn’t have found, like you’re cheating. Because your wallet is supposed to go hurty when you get a new weapon. It feels free, and it is!
Also, can I just say that this happens during a glorious sidequest? (Maybe I’m just pointing out things for the sake of pointing them out now, but still)
But all this stuff just fits really well with what Trails in the Sky is going for. ‘World building’ a ‘society’. But it’s also just straight up fun from a ‘video game’ perspective.
Nihon Falcom took a concept (in 2004!) that we would generally consider pretty bad, and flipped it on its head (I won’t say back then because I barely even qualified as a human back then, let alone qualified to play a JRPG that was only available in Japan).
The idea that ‘you have to buy all your equipment, items, and food from shops’ sounds dull as anything. Yet, the core loop of doing guild requests, getting paid, choosing what to buy, then managing your mira and selling stuff you don’t need anymore, doesn’t get old for some reason.
That might be because its borderline mandatory. As I said, I had a lot of trouble during encounters even with the best equipment.
Or it might just be because doing interesting sidequests and being heavily rewarded for it feels really good. I’m willing to bet most of us would put up with even the most ‘collect 5x wolf pelts’-like quests if it meant a FAT payday (that we needed).
Regardless of why it doesn’t get old, it feels good to be a part of society in a JRPG (because I’m a role playing freak).
Slickaria! 