Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter review for Nintendo Switch 2 and Switch
Posted on September 16, 2026 by Ellie Lutes in Reviews, Switch, Switch 2
System: Switch 2 (reviewed) / Switch
Release Date: September 17, 2026
Developer: Falcom
Publisher: GungHo
At the end of Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter, Estelle Bright finally understands just how deeply entwined her heart is with Joshua. Then, in one of the most heartbreaking endings I’ve experienced in an RPG, Joshua kisses her, gives her his harmonica, tells her he has something he needs to take care of, and disappears into the night. Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter begins immediately afterward, and Estelle is shattered and absolutely heartbroken, but she refuses to simply accept that Joshua is gone. She sets out to find him, and what follows is a massive adventure that expands upon nearly everything the first game established while continuing to build one of the most interconnected stories I’ve ever experienced in a JRPG world.
I have played a lot of Trails at this point. I’ve spent time in Crossbell, Erebonia, Calvard, and beyond. I’ve watched characters I first encountered much later in the timeline become younger, less experienced versions of themselves as I’ve worked backward through the series. I’ve seen the consequences of events introduced several games before finally come to fruition. Coming back to where so much of that began is special, and Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter (which I’ll abbreviate to SC from here on) is an incredible way to do it.
Right off the bat, one of the biggest surprises for me was how much I enjoyed simply moving through Liberl again. The environments are presented in colorful 3D, and seeing these areas brought to life at this scale makes exploration feel dramatically different from revisiting the comparatively modest presentation of Trails from Zero and Trails to Azure. It’s satisfying to walk through these locations and appreciate their scale in a way that feels much closer to how I’ve imagined them while playing other games in the series. Every iteration of this world becomes more impressive than the last, and as always, exploration is consistently rewarded. The map system makes navigating both the overworld and dungeons straightforward without taking away the fun of actually exploring. Going off the beaten path is easier than ever, and I frequently found myself checking corners, taking detours, and investigating areas simply because I wanted to know what was there.
That’s exactly what I want from an RPG world: give me a reason to wander, then make wandering worthwhile. The game also gives me plenty of reasons to do exactly that. There are side quests to pursue, optional monsters to track down, items to find, and, of course, fishing. Fishing is once again a feature that I can spend far too much time on, and there are enough rewards and worthwhile catches to make it very easy to justify doing so. The only time I ever felt like I was wasting time in SC was when I was voluntarily standing beside a fishing spot refusing to put the damn rod down.
Combat feels great, too. The Free Roam system brings a more modern approach to interacting with enemies in the field, and I love being able to open up with a stream of physical attacks on monsters before transitioning into turn-based combat. That makes smaller fights feel much more engaging while preserving the tactical depth that I’ve come to associate with a Trails game when a more serious encounter begins. Being able to quickly tear through weaker enemies and then slow down and carefully consider my options against a boss is a fantastic combination.
The deeper combat systems give you plenty to work with as well. Character abilities, Crafts, S-Crafts, Chain Crafts, equipment, and Quartz customization all contribute to a system that rewards paying attention to your party and experimenting with how your characters complement one another. I spent most of my time on Normal, but I also appreciated being able to adjust the difficulty when I wanted to. Easy is a particularly useful option for players who want to move through the story more quickly or make grinding less of a chore. With a game that can easily soak sixty hours into your life, giving players control over how much resistance they want along the way is a welcome feature.
On Nintendo Switch 2, Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter runs beautifully. My entire experience was buttery smooth. I didn’t encounter frame rate losses or crashes, and nothing during my playthrough made me feel like I was compromising the experience by playing on Nintendo’s hardware. The portability also makes an enormous RPG like this considerably easier to live with. Trails has always been the kind of series that rewards settling into a world for a long time, and being able to pick up the title, make progress, put it down, and return later fits beautifully with the way I play games now.
The presentation is especially impressive when you consider where these characters and locations originated. I have spent so many hours imagining Liberl through the earlier games that seeing it rendered in full 3D gives the world a renewed sense of scale. Towns feel like places rather than collections of buildings on a map, roads feel like actual roads connecting one part of the kingdom to another, and dungeons become spaces I am actively navigating rather than simply moving through. Falcom has done a wonderful job making this older adventure feel modern without stripping away what made it special in the first place.
There is a difference between simply enjoying a long-running RPG series and becoming emotionally attached to it. Trails crossed that line for me a long time ago. I’ve played these games out of order enough to have encountered characters near the end of their journeys before coming back to see where they began. I’ve watched story threads introduced in one game become important years later. I’ve seen characters I thought I understood become completely different when viewed through another game’s perspective. SC benefits enormously from that history, just as all of these games do.
Ouroboros is one of the biggest reasons for that. Even this early in the series, there is something completely fascinating about this organization. It isn’t simply another group of villains that exists to give the heroes something to fight. The society has its own strange internal structure, its Enforcers have wildly different personalities and motivations, and its plans feel like pieces of something much larger than whatever is happening in front of Estelle at any given moment. Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter gives us considerably more to chew on while simultaneously making it clear that there is still far more going on beneath the surface.
Having played later Trails games, I have the benefit of knowing just how much these early pieces matter. They were, until now, locked on PC, a place that I am less and less capable of gaming on. The chronology here creates a really interesting experience when going back through Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter. Characters who might initially seem like mysterious additions to the cast eventually become pieces of a much larger story, and concepts introduced here continue to reverberate throughout the series. Trails has always trusted its audience to remember things, and that trust is one of the reasons the eventual payoffs can feel so satisfying.
Kevin Graham is another great example of this for me. I actually encountered Kevin much later in Trails Beyond the Horizon, where he’s already an established character. Coming back here and seeing where he is at this point in his life is fascinating. There is something inherently rewarding about meeting a character after you’ve already seen where their journey takes them and then returning to the beginning to discover the person they were before all of that growth happened. Kevin is also a fantastic party member, and getting to spend more time with him only made me appreciate his presence in the wider series even more.
That long-term perspective isn’t necessary to enjoy Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter, but it adds an incredible amount of texture for returning players. Falcom is building a story that doesn’t simply move forward and forget what came before it. Characters remember. NPCs remember. The world remembers. Events have consequences. Even seemingly minor details can become meaningful later, and SC is one of the clearest demonstrations of why that approach has allowed Trails to become such an enormous interconnected story.
Estelle’s journey is ultimately about much more than finding Joshua. She begins the game defined by what she has lost, and watching her grow into herself throughout the adventure is one of the most rewarding parts of the entire experience. I’ll admit that this particular part of the story was difficult for me. Watching Estelle spend such a tremendous amount of time chasing someone she loves made me feel like I was looking at a past version of myself. There were moments when I desperately wanted her to stop searching for Joshua and start searching for her, for Estelle Bright. She would try to be brave, and she would fail, and try to be brave again, and things would go awry—it was like bashing my head against the same wall. And that feeling was personal.
Losing someone you love can make the idea of getting them back feel like the answer to everything. But eventually you have to figure out who you are when the person you’re looking for isn’t standing beside you, when they have other things they’re focused on, and when they’re not looking for you. You have to decide to be brave. You have to decide to keep showing up. Watching Estelle, an empathetic, almost sickeningly positive girl collapse into absolute despair and still pull through made me root for her, because you and me both, girly. And I can’t spoil this. I won’t spoil this. But the payoff here absolutely wrecked me. I mean it.
There are games that make me emotional because a sad thing happens. Then there are games that happen to find you at exactly the right point in your life to shower you with a moment that fills you with so much joy that it might even revive a seed of hope in your heart. Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter was the latter for me. I’ve always said that the love story in Final Fantasy 9 is something that will stay with me forever. I first experienced that story as a kid, before I really understood how profoundly fictional characters could affect me. I now know that Estelle and Joshua are going to occupy that same place in my heart. That’s an incredible accomplishment for a game.
And that’s the thing: Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter isn’t simply a fantastic continuation of 1st Chapter. It is one of the strongest demonstrations of what makes Trails so special. Its characters matter. Its world and all of its NPCs remember what happened. Its stories are willing to take their time allowing people to change while the world continues moving around them in ways I’ve rarely experienced in other games. The fluid combat allowing you to change from action to turn-based, character building, and other in-depth systems make every bit of fighting rewarding just like every other Trails game.
The later entries have given me an even greater appreciation for some of the characters and events introduced here. Knowing what eventually comes from Ouroboros, seeing where Kevin’s journey begins, and understanding just how much of the larger Trails story grows out of these early adventures gives SC an additional layer of significance for longtime players. But even without that knowledge, this is an incredible RPG.
The combat feels great. Exploration is rewarding. The fishing system remains dangerously effective at stealing my time. The Switch 2 version runs beautifully. The pacing is excellent. And Estelle’s journey is one that I’m going to remember for a very long time.
If you’re new to Trails, do not start here. Play Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter first. Let that story build the foundation Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter needs. In fact, if these are your first Trails titles, I would strongly recommend taking your time with the Sky story before jumping around into the other recent ports. The payoff of seeing this world and these characters develop is part of what makes the series so special. I’ve basically experienced this entire timeline backwards, which has paid off in so many interesting ways. The ideal experience is to go for chronology, from what the fandom has said, and I think they are quite right…but if, like me, you’ve already taken that first step into Liberl, Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter is an extraordinary continuation – and a wonderful way to experience the beginning of one of the most ambitious interconnected stories in JRPGs.
If you’re new to all this and hopped on board with 1st Chapter, I have to warn you – you’re in for quite a trip. You have another game in the Trails in the Sky trilogy to come. But after that, your next adventure will be The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero, which will give you a look at what Trails games used to look like in the beginning, and also give you a brand new story arc to follow with even more characters to get to know and love. I would not advise playing it until 3rd Chapter comes out. You have so much to look forward to.
Falcom has done an incredible job bringing this adventure forward, and seeing these games become more accessible to modern players on Nintendo Switch 2 is something I genuinely love. Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter plays wonderfully, looks fantastic, and tells a story that absolutely destroyed me before somehow managing to give me a little bit of hope. Somewhere along the way, Estelle went looking for Joshua. I tagged along for the ride. And somehow, this game helped me find a little more of my own way forward. This is one that will be buried in my heart forever. Check out Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter, then go pick this game up alongside some tissues – because you’ll probably need them.
Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter copy provided by the publisher for the purposes of this review.
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